Coronaviruses Weren't the Only Viruses Being Manipulated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Samples from December 2019 of early COVID patients in Wuhan contained genetically modified Nipah viruses, a virus more deadly than Ebola!
An American scientist, Dr. Steven Quay, analyzed sequences uploaded to GenBank in December 2019 from patient samples who had “unidentified pneumonia disease” in Wuhan. What he found, was very troubling.
“We identified 20 unexpected contaminants in the specimens that we suspected to be the inadvertent amplification of other research going on in the laboratory. Things not expected to be found in a human specimen like honey suckle genes or a horse virus. For 19 of the 20 unexpected contaminants, we then found published research from the previous two years, confirming that the lab had indeed been working on these unexpected genes. This also validated that our methods could detect covert research efforts.”
The analysis of nine patient samples found the samples contained reads from several other viruses: H7N9 influenza A virus, HIV, Spodoptera frugiperda rhabdovirus and Nipah virus (NiV). They found sequences for NiV in not just one, but five patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 sampled by the Wuhan Jin Yin-Tan Hospital at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Others have interpreted the presence of these virus sequences as indicative of co-infections of the patients in question by these pathogens or laboratory contamination.
This makes me wonder how many more patients were possibly infected with NiV as a co-infection. Could this be why “COVID-19” seemed so deadly at the outset?!
Quay said what he found most likely resulted from contamination from different experiments being conducted in the Wuhan lab making their way into the samples, as well as evidence of Henipah virus.
“We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.”
He said the genetic manipulation of the virus was likely for the purpose of vaccine development because the genes were contained in synthetic vectors. This indicates that research was most likely being conducted on an assembled NiV infectious clones. In other words, scientists were using a reverse genetics system for NiV at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Oddly, research involving Nipah infectious clones has never been reported to have occurred at the WIV. This contaminant was not accounted for in published papers.
Before we Get Into the Implications of This Finding, What is Nipah Virus?
The first cases of NiV infection were identified in 1998, when an outbreak of neurological and respiratory disease on pig farms in peninsular Malaysia caused 265 human cases, with 108 deaths and the eventual culling of about 1.1 million pigs.
After the first outbreak, fruit bats were found to serve as the natural reservoir for NiV. Fruit bats with NiV fed on date palm sap. At the index farm, fruit orchards were in close proximity to the piggery, allowing the spillage of urine, feces and partially eaten fruit onto the pigs. NiV can survive for up to 3 days in some fruit juices or mango fruit, and for at least 7 days in artificial date palm sap. Contaminated fruits were then consumed by pigs and other animals. Pigs act as intermediate as well as, amplifying hosts. The virus could be transmitted to humans through the consumption of date palm sap, handling of, and/or consumption of infected pork. The combination of close surroundings of fruiting trees, fruits-like date palm, fruit bats, pigs and humans together formed the basis of emergence and spread of the deadly zoonotic NiV infection.
Human infections with NiV range from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory infection, seizures and fatal encephalitis. Infected people initially develop non-specific symptoms that include fever, headaches, myalgia, vomiting and sore throat.
Highly pathogenic NiV causes symptomatic infections in pigs and humans. Respiratory symptoms are much more severe in pigs as compared to humans. The virus is responsible for causing severe and rapidly progressing illness in humans with the respiratory system as well as the central nervous system (CNS) mainly getting affected, ultimately progressing towards coma within 1–2 days.
The incubation period is from 4 to 14 days but an incubation period as long as 45 days has been reported.
Most importantly, NiV has a high fatality rates in affected persons. The case fatality rate of NiV infection is estimated at 40–75%. And there are currently no drugs or vaccines that specifically target NiV infection.
Keep in mind Ebola virus case fatality rates have varied from 25–90% in past outbreaks. This makes NiV as deadly as Ebola virus.
NiV is Among a Short List of Pathogens Designed as Having Pandemic Potential
NiV is an emerging zoonotic and highly deadly virus having pandemic threat. The WHO’s Research and Development Blueprint priority list designates emerging diseases with the potential to generate public health emergencies for which insufficient preventive solutions exist. A WHO tool distinguishes which diseases pose the greatest public health risk due to their epidemic potential and/or whether there is no or insufficient countermeasures. On the latest list published in 2018, NiV was one of the ten priority diseases.
The potential for a global pandemic due to NiV appears to stem from several features: availability of susceptible human population, several viral strains with potential for person-to-person transmission, and error-prone nature of RNA virus replication.
What This Points to is WIV Had a Serious Breach of Biosafety Protocols
Identifying genetic sequences from NiV showing signs of having been manipulated in the lab, especially when the lab did not have authority to do so, is a gross violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. Most disturbing of all was finding traces of NiV in seriously ill patients in Wuhan and work with those specimens was being carried out at only biosafety level 2 precautions. Biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory facilities are required for NiV isolation as well as propagation.
In summary, the finding of NiV gene sequences attached to synthetic vectors, presumably for assembly as a full length infectious NiV clone of the highly pathogenic Bangladesh strain, in RNA-Seq datasets for earliest sequences COVID-19 patients in Wuhan is potentially a significant breach of BSL4 protocols.
How Much More Evidence Do We Need That SARS-CoV-2 Came from WIV?!
The world cannot afford the consequence of not only manipulating a virus with a near 75% mortality rate and possibly giving it the ability to transmit via aerosols in a laboratory but someone walking out of the lab with it.
I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that SARS-CoV-2 ultimately dominated and spread worldwide instead of NiV given the case fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is only about 0.5% to 2.0%.
Dr. Quay ended his article with a call to action:
We call on WIV to explain the purpose of this research on infectious clones of Nipah Virus, the full chronology of this work, and to explain how and at what stage of sample preparation this contamination occurred.
Great article. Considering the CCP controls WIV, it would not be surprising if there was weaponizing going on. At the very least it is gain of function research combined with leaks. I analyzed the sequence when it was released in 2020. First thing that pops out is the furin cut site. Scientists in March 2020 pushing that it was of natural origin were actually the same scientists who had done experiments on using the furin cut site engineered into SARS1. They easily could have kept an open mind, but instead pushed one side. The RaTG13 sequence emerged later, but was swabbed and collected from bats in 2013, but was put up on NCBI I think as a decoy to argue that it rose naturally etc. Why did suddenly all these older sequences start getting submitted in 2020 and 2021?
There is also a reason Wuhan is where this insitiute is located...it is a hotspot for zoonosis.
Crazy thing about sequence is it doesn’t lie. However, I remain skeptical about many of the annotations associated with the sequences have been altered or mislabeled to drive natural origin narrative. It seems anyone can submit a sequence these days, and there is no way to know if the meta information associated with them is correct? Who actually checks these things?