Quote from Wyttenbach

Over 100'000 direct vaccines deaths so far.... really great.

Sigh . . . I realize it is pointless to respond to the constant flood of toxic lies from Wyttenbach and the other Death Cult members, but in case anyone is new here, let me say that for the record: the number mRNA deaths is zero (0). A few people have died from the adenovirus vaccines.

Wyttenbach and others who quote numbers like this sometimes refer to databases such as VAERS. As explained in the database website, and in every article by experts, and by me, the deaths listed here are coincidental. When you vaccinate hundreds of millions of people, many of them old, many will soon die of natural causes. There is no evidence of causality. The death rate among vaccinated people is no higher than a control group of people in a normal year. Obviously, it is much lower this year, since many unvaccinated people die of COVID.

Wyttenbach is not only liar, he is also an idiot, because he does not understand arithmetic, causality, or control groups, or actuarial statistics . . . or anything, really.

Promising drug duo that may cure Covid

The researchers used this experimental system to screen a panel of drugs that are already approved for clinical use, including drugs like remdesivir and chloroquine that have already being approved or are being trialed as treatments for COVID-19. In an exciting outcome, the researchers found two drugs that provided effective SARS-CoV-2 suppression: cepharanthine, which is used to treat inflammation, and nelfinavir, which is approved for the treatment of HIV infection.

Cepharanthine inhibited the entry of the virus into cells by preventing the virus from binding to a protein on the cell membrane, which it uses as a gateway. In contrast, nelfinavir worked to prevent the virus from replicating inside the cell by inhibiting a protein that the virus relies on for replication. Given that these drugs have distinct antiviral mechanisms, using both of them together could be especially effective for patients, with computational models predicting that combined cepharanthine/nelfinavir therapy can hasten the clearance of SARS-CoV-2 from a patient's lungs by as few as 4.9 days.

Quote from Shane D.

"For most of last year, the idea that the coronavirus pandemic could have been triggered by a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China, was largely dismissed as a racist conspiracy theory of the alt-right."

This is also a ridiculous statement because the WHO took this hypothesis seriously, and tried to investigate it in 2020. The Chinese government stonewalled them. That is suspicious!

Mainstream, mass media reports taking this seriously began in March 2020. They have never been retracted. Both administration took this hypothesis seriously.

As a practical matter, I doubt the Chinese government will ever allow an investigation. Even if it has information pointing to a leak, it will keep it secret.

Quote from Shane D.

That quote you are responding to was from Newsweek magazine. They are left leaning.

Left leaning or right leaning, it is a fact that the WHO tried to investigate, and they were stonewalled. They were blocked by the Chinese government. By the police. That is what the WHO reported. There is a photo of a policeman blocking the WHO investigators, here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com…suddenly-became-credible/

Quote from Shane D.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne…han-lab-outlets-idea.html

This is a good investigative article laying out the timeline of how the leftist media (NYT's, WP, CNN,Huff Post, NPR) evolved from downplaying the Wuhan leak theory as a "fringe theory" -headlined by the NYT's on17 Feb 2020):

Not good at all. It is at odds with the facts. The Washington Post listed the articles and editorials it published about this in the Timeline article linked to above. Their timeline shows that they and other mainstream media took the "lab leak" hypothesis seriously from March 2020 to the present. What they did not take seriously are theories 2 and 3: the engineered virus, and the deliberate leak. Regarding an engineered virus, the Post and others say that most experts dismiss the possibility, but a few think it was engineered. They do not take sides in the news stories I have seen.

I myself have no idea how experts can determine a virus was engineered. No idea, and no opinion.

Hypothesis #3 seems very unlikely to me, for the reasons I gave above.

#1 calls for a police forensic investigation, which the Chinese government will never allow.

#2 calls for genetic analyses that I could not begin to understand.

#3 is mainly a matter of common sense. It is very unlikely the Chinese would do such an insane thing with no military benefit, but then again, people sometimes do insane things.

Quote from Shane D.

This is a good investigative article laying out the timeline of how the leftist media (NYT's, WP, CNN,Huff Post, NPR) evolved from downplaying the Wuhan leak theory as a "fringe theory" -headlined by the NYT's on17 Feb 2020):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…rus-tom-cotton-china.html

AGAIN you are confusing the issue!! Please stop mixing up the 3 hypotheses. They have nothing to do with one another.

First of all, the article you cite does not take sides. It reports what both sides say. It is non-partisan news.

SECOND, and most important, the article talks about hypothesis #2 being controversial, not #1. It does not say that #1 was ignored or dismissed. It says:

"Mr. Cotton later walked back the idea that the coronavirus was a Chinese bioweapon run amok. But it is the sort of tale that resonates with an expanding chorus of voices in Washington who see China as a growing Soviet-level threat to the United States, echoing the anti-Communist thinking of the Cold War era.

Right-wing media outlets fan the anger. Beijing, with its heavy-handed censorship and stranglehold on information, unwittingly gives the conspiracy theories a boost.

The idea of the coronavirus as an escaped weapon has been carried through international news outlets like the British tabloid The Daily Mail and The Washington Times, which suggested that the virus was being developed as part of China’s biowarfare program. . . ."

"An escaped weapon" is #2. #1 is that it is naturally occuring bat virus that was being studied in the institute, but it got out and infected people. No one outside of China has denied that possibility. The WHO tried to investigate it, but they were blocked, which should make anyone suspicious that it might be true.

Quote from JedRothwell

As explained in the database website, and in every article by experts, and by me, the deaths listed here are coincidental. When you vaccinate hundreds of millions of people, many of them old, many will soon die of natural causes. There is no evidence of causality.

This is what dilettantes believe or members of the FM/R/J group...

In general: Number of reported deaths from vaccines so far has increased 5000%. For this figure we need at least 100 FM/R experts to explain it away...

Fact is: All western CoV-19 vaccines kill at a very high level. Every one in 2000 of the vaccinated gets a serious = hospital stay needed ) adverse reaction.

In addition 1.3% of the Pfizer vaccinated get CoV-19 due to immune suppression after first jab (1/6 after second jab). So here we have 50 to 100'000 more extra deaths so far.

Quote from JedRothwell

This is also a ridiculous statement because the WHO took this hypothesis seriously,

Can you stop this free mason bullshit talker? He repeats nonsense. WHO (the FM/R/J buddies) did a fake review and did not look at the studies. They picked some irrelevant ones.

Quote from Shane D.

This is a good investigative article laying out the timeline of how the leftist media (NYT's, WP, CNN,Huff Post, NPR) evolved from downplaying the Wuhan leak theory as a "fringe theory" -headlined by the NYT's on17 Feb 2020)

This has been published by a Chinese researcher in Feb. 2020: Originsof2019-NCoV-XiaoB-Res.pdf

This has been reported by CBS : Report on Cellphone Usage Reveals WuhanVirus May Have Shuttered China's Bioweapons La.pdf

This is partly from MI6 leaked same time around:Analysis of hospital traffic and search.pdf

A woman with HIV had the coronavirus for 216 days. The virus mutated at least 30 times inside her.

https://www.businessinsider.co…-virus-mutated-2021-6?amp

A 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carried the novel coronavirus for 216 days, during which the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations, a new study has found.

The case report, which has not been peer-reviewed, was published as a preprint on medRxiv on Thursday.

The woman, who has not been named, was identified as a 36-year-old living in South Africa.

The coronaviruses gathered 13 mutations to the spike protein, which is known to help the virus escape the immune response, and 19 other mutations that could change the behavior of the virus

A woman with HIV had the coronavirus for 216 days. The virus mutated at least 30 times inside her.

Marianne Guenot Jun 4, 2021, 9:10 AM

A woman living with HIV was found to carry the novel coronavirus for seven months, a new study said.

Scientist detected 32 mutations to the virus, including some seen in variants of concern.

It suggests that HIV could contribute to variant evolution, but probably in exceptional cases.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

A 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carried the novel coronavirus for 216 days, during which the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations, a new study has found.

The case report, which has not been peer-reviewed, was published as a preprint on medRxiv on Thursday.

The woman, who has not been named, was identified as a 36-year-old living in South Africa.

The coronaviruses gathered 13 mutations to the spike protein, which is known to help the virus escape the immune response, and 19 other mutations that could change the behavior of the virus.

It is not clear whether the mutations she carried were passed on to others, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Some of these mutations have been seen in variants of concern, such as:

The E484K mutation, which is part of the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7, which was first seen in the UK).

The N510Y mutation, which is part of the Beta variant (B.1.351, which was first seen in South Africa).

If more such cases are found, it raises the prospect that HIV infection could be a source of new variants simply because the patients could carry the virus for longer, Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and the study's author, told the LA Times.

But it is probably the exception rather than the rule for people living with HIV, because prolonged infection requires severe immunocompromise, Dr. Juan Ambrosini, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Barcelona, told Insider. Indeed, the woman in the case study was immunosuppressed.

The findings are important for the control of COVID-19 because these patients could be a continuous source of transmission and evolution of the virus, Ambrosini said.

Immunosuppressed patients could carry the coronavirus longer than others

This case could easily have gone unnoticed, de Oliveira told the LA Times.

This was because after the woman was treated in the hospital for her initial symptoms, she displayed only mild symptoms of COVID-19, even though she was still carrying the coronavirus, de Oliveira said.

Scientists only spotted this case because she was enrolled in a study of 300 people with HIV looking at their immune response to COVID-19.

The researchers also found that four other people with HIV had carried the coronavirus for longer than a month, they told the LA Times.

Only one other case of a person with HIV carrying the coronavirus for a prolonged period of time had been published previously.

Some patients who have been immunosuppressed for other reasons have been seen to carry the coronavirus for prolonged periods of time, Ambrosini told Insider. For instance, he said, there have been reported cases of people with kidney transplants testing positive for almost a year.

The finding could be of particular importance for Africa, which had about 26 million people living with HIV in 2020. The WHO on Friday warned that a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases could turn into a continentwide third wave of COVID-19.

Quote from Fm1

A 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carried the novel coronavirus for 216 days, during which the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations, a new study has found.

This was one of my first hypotheses that an AIDS sick worker of the lab has been the origin. I would not exclude it that a part of the changes happened that way. See also Fauci e-mail about ADIS add-ons.

Quote from Shane D.

"Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins

Scientists have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it’s the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat."

Sorry, but in my book that does not qualify as: "not taking sides"

It is not taking sides. Hypothesis #2 is a fringe theory. Even the people who believe it would probably agree they are on the fringe, and not in the mainstream. I am sure every scientist would say this is a fringe theory. There is nothing biased or unfair about pointing out the Sen. Cotton's belief is not widely shared by scientists. You would not want the New York Times to fail to mention this. This article is about the dispute. What kind of article would it be if it did not say one side is fringe and the other is mainstream?

Hypothesis #1 is not a fringe theory. It is an unproven suspicion, re-enforced by the Chinese police barring the door to the WHO last year.

"Scientists have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak" is hypothesis #2, or possibly #3 (or both). It has nothing to do with #1, which is that it was an accident. If it was an accident, there is no doubt the Chinese government is covering it up, but that does not make them "behind" the outbreak. It means they are behind the cover-up.

There was a terrible accident on a high speed train in China in 2011, with many fatalities. The government stepped in and started burying the rail cars before an investigation began. I mean literally digging holes and burying the cars in the ground, to cover up the evidence and prevent an investigation. That does not mean the government deliberately caused the accident. It means they wanted to hide the evidence of mistakes.

Quote from JedRothwell

. If it was an accident, there is no doubt the Chinese government is covering it up, but that does not make them "behind" the outbreak. It means they are behind the cover-up.

Bullspeak. It is arguments like this from hyper political people like you that will block the truth from being revealed. The guiltless have no need to cover-up the truth.

Quote from JedRothwell

Left leaning or right leaning, it is a fact that the WHO tried to investigate, and they were stonewalled. They were blocked by the Chinese government. By the police. That is what the WHO reported. There is a photo of a policeman blocking the WHO investigators, here:

On the contrary, WHO investigators were not blocked from the WIV, it was the trailing journalists who were blocked. Also, certain WHO people, in particular CCP sycophant Peter Ben Embarek, were quite pleased with the three hour visit and said so. He seemed quite content to take the WIV staff accounts at face value and thus come to the official conclusion that the lab leak hypothesis was "extremely unlikely" and not worthy to be pursued.

Quote from JedRothwell

AGAIN you are confusing the issue!! Please stop mixing up the 3 hypotheses. They have nothing to do with one another.

Why? Are they independent? Here's a scenario : a natural corona virus, one similar to RATG13, has its spike protein sequence deleted, and in its place is inserted the spike sequence from a coronavirus virus that was lethal to pangolins. In between the S1 and S2 sequence is inserted a short sequence to allow for furin cleavage, and then some HIV sequences added here and there. All this was done at the WIV, where quite possibly civilian research and covert military research coexisted. (According to US state department intelligence the WIV was receiving Chinese military funding.) Perhaps what accidentally leaked out was a weaponized, but premature and unoptimized coronavirus, who knows? That rather mixes things up doesn't it. But let's just simplify and call it a 'lab leak' to cover more possibilities.

Here's an extract from a March 2021 article :

https://nypost.com/2021/03/12/…eapons-research-accident/

... the State Department’s former lead investigator who oversaw the Task Force into the COVID-19 virus origin tells Fox News that he not only believes the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it may have been the result of research that the Chinese military, or People’s Liberation Army, was doing on a bioweapon.

“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute told Fox News in an exclusive interview. “It was operating a secret, classified program. In my view, and I’m just one person, my view is it was a biological weapons program.”

...

Asher says the Chinese government’s behavior reminds him of other criminal investigations he has overseen.

“Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this. And the fact that the initial cluster of victims surrounded the very institute that was doing the highly dangerous, if not dubious research is significant,” said Asher, who engaged the Chinese government as the State Department’s lead representative during the 2003 SARS outbreak.

...

Last fall the US obtained intelligence that indicates there was an outbreak among several Wuhan lab scientists with flu-like symptoms that left them hospitalized in November of 2019 – before China reported its first case. Asher and the other Hudson Institute panel experts said that in 2007, China announced it would begin work on genetic bioweapons using controversial “gain of function” research to make the viruses more lethal.

The Chinese stopped talking publicly about their research at the Wuhan lab in 2016. That, Asher believes, is when the People’s Liberation Army stepped in and went from biodefense research to bio-offense. The same year China’s top state television commentator

“We have entered into an area of Chinese biowarfare, and including using things like viruses. I mean, they made a public statement to their people that this is a new priority under the Xi national security policy,” Asher points out.

The Chinese, according to Asher, stopped talking publicly about the research into coronavirus “disease vectors which could be used for weapons” in 2017, at the same time its military began funding the research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“I doubt that that’s a coincidence,” Asher said.

New research focuses on cow's milk as a possible source of COVID-19 control

https://www.news-medical.net/a…-of-COVID-19-control.aspx

Physiologically, milk contains biocomponents that are highly protective against infections. In light of this, the AGR-149-Infectious Diseases group at the University of Cordoba's Department of Animal Health is doing research that focuses on cow's milk as a possible source of Covid-19 control. The results have been published, partially, in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

This is possible due to "crossed immunity", and there is already evidence of the protection it provides, explained one of the principal investigators, Mari Carmen Borge.

It has been shown that the immune cells that the vaccinated animal generates against bovine coronavirus are capable of controlling other coronaviruses as well, such as SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19".

Mari Carmen Borge, Study Principal Investigator, University of Cordoba

Antonio Arenas, principal investigator on the project, spoke of the similarity that exists between Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) and SARS-CoV-2 to explain the effectiveness of this technique. "There are a number of highly conserved structures of the virus that are similar in both viruses. In fact, both belong to the genus Betacoronavirus. Thus, cow's milk could have a total or partial blocking action against SARS-CoV-2".

In this way, these bovine antibodies could neutralize the virus in people who are already infected, or help prevent the disease in those who have not been vaccinated, or who have been, but have not developed immunity.

Thus, the aim is to come up with a supplement that would boost the immune system through a dairy preparation with a high level of antibodies, helping the system control infection through different immune pathways.

The animals from which the milk is extracted have been previously vaccinated with commercial BCoV vaccines, thus generating high levels of antibodies. However, the time when milk is most effective is just after a birth: "then the level of immunoglobulin in the milk increases - what is called colostrum - but it has a certain duration," Arenas added.

Now the scientific challenge is to be able to extend the colostrum period, and also to study how to always ensure the same level of antibodies in the final product. Plans call for it to be marketed in single-dose format as of September. "For this, we have to readjust the reproduction cycles of bovine farms in order to always maintain a set of animals with high antibodies", the researcher explained.

This dairy preparation, which anyone can consume, has already been tested on more than 300 people. Amongst them, no serious Covid-19 process has been detected. As soon as it goes on the market an observational test will be carried out. In any case, it will not be harmful to health, and it could become a natural resource providing people with a certain level of immunity.

There are other technological challenges: herd management, hygiene processes, conservation, packaging, marketing, medical, etc., that make this a holistic and complex project

SARS-CoV-2 cell-to-cell spread occurs rapidly and is insensitive to antibody neutralization

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…/2021.06.01.446516v1.full

Abstract

Viruses increase the efficiency of close-range transmission between cells by manipulating cellular physiology and behavior, and SARS-CoV-2 uses cell fusion as one mechanism for cell-to-cell spread. Here we visualized infection using time-lapse microscopy of a human lung cell line and used live virus neutralization to determine the sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 cell-to-cell spread to neutralizing antibodies. SARS-CoV-2 infection rapidly led to cell fusion, forming multinucleated cells with clustered nuclei which started to be detected at 6h post-infection. To compare sensitivity of cell-to-cell spread to neutralization, we infected either with cell-free virus or with single infected cells expressing on their surface the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We tested two variants of SARS-CoV-2: B.1.117 containing only the D614G substitution, and the escape variant B.1.351. We used the much smaller area of single infected cells relative to infection foci to exclude any input infected cells which did not lead to transmission. The monoclonal antibody and convalescent plasma we tested neutralized cell-free SARS-CoV-2, with the exception of B.1.351 virus, which was poorly neutralized with plasma from non-B.1.351 infections. In contrast, cell-to-cell spread of SARS-CoV-2 showed no sensitivity to monoclonal antibody or convalescent plasma neutralization. These observations suggest that, once cells are infected, SARS-CoV-2 may be more difficult to neutralize in cell types and anatomical compartments permissive for cell-to-cell spread.

Discussion

We have shown that SARS-CoV-2 infection originating in infected cells is insensitive to neutralizing antibodies. The importance of these results lies in the fact that in natural immunity, the antibody response requires several weeks to reach its peak [36]. Given the rapid infection cycle of SARS-CoV-2 [34], neutralization in natural infection very likely occurs after cells have been infected. If active infection is still present, neutralization may not be effective to the same degree in all infected cell types and anatomical compartments because of cell-to-cell spread of SARS-CoV-2. T cell immunity [37] to SARS-CoV-2 may be required clear compartments refractory to neutralization.

Unlike natural infection, the antibodies elicited by a vaccine should be present before the exposure to the virus. A vaccine eliciting a strong neutralizing antibody response which lasts for months could potentially clear the cell-free infection before it infects cells or cells capable of cell-to-cell spread. If lower neutralization capacity is elicited by the vaccine, some cells could be infected, since any vaccine mediated T cell immunity would target infected cells, not the transmitted virus, and therefore some cellular infection would need to occur. Therefore, syncytia formation could potentially happen.

A caveat to our results is that we used a human cancer cell line, and modified it to express ACE-2. However, syncytia are a common feature of SARS-CoV-2 lung pathology [11, 12, 13], showing that the cell fusion mechanism of cell-to-cell spread operates in this environment. We used infected cells after they already expressed the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on the cell surface, providing a target for neutralization. Despite this, there was no appreciable neutralization.

Both the earlier D614G variant and the B.1.351 variant showed similar insensitivity of cell-to-cell spread in D614G and B.1.351 elicited plasma, indicating that the insensitivity of cell-to-cell spread to neutralization is not specific to the infecting variant or the elicited neutralizing antibodies. We have also verified previous observations about the drop in B.1.351 neutralization by non-B.1.351 elicited plasma in the H1299-ACE2 human lung cell system, as well as the cross-neutralization of D614G by B.1.351-elicited plasma. Interestingly, in these experiments, neutralization of B.1.351 by its matched plasma was weaker than neutralization of D614G by its matched plasma. Despite the overall weaker neutralization capacity, the B.1.351-elicited plasma could still effectively cross-neutralize, showing that cross-neutralization is not necessarily linked to absolute neutralization capacity.

Like with other viruses, cell-to-cell spread of SARS-CoV-2 may prove to play a role in pathology and possibly persistence. Future vaccine and therapeutic strategies should consider approaches to minimize this mode of transmission.

Genetic Link Discovered Explaining Why Some People Who Catch COVID-19 Don’t Become Sick

https://scitechdaily.com/genet…-19-dont-become-sick/amp/

A scientific and medical team led by Newcastle University, UK, has demonstrated that the gene, HLA-DRB1*04:01, is found three times as often in people who are asymptomatic. This suggests that people with this gene have some level of protection from severe Covid.

The study, funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, compared asymptomatic people to patients from the same community who developed severe Covid but had no underlying illnesses, and is published in the HLA journal.

The study team believe this is the first clear evidence of genetic resistance because this study compared severely affected people with an asymptomatic COVID group and used next generation sequencing to focus in detail and at scale on the HLA genes which are packed together on chromosome 6. Other studies have scanned the whole genome but that approach is less effective in the tissue typing complex.

Genome wide studies can be likened to a satellite image. The high density and complexity of the histocompatibility complex and variation in different populations means significant variation can be overlooked. For example, different alleles or versions of the same gene could have opposite effects on the immune response. This study was much more focused and compared symptomatic to asymptomatic in the same population revealing the “protective” qualities of the allele.

It is known that the human leukocyte antigen gene identified, HLA-DRB1*04:01, is directly correlated to latitude and longitude. This means more people in the North and West of Europe are likely to have this gene.

This suggests that populations of European descent will be more likely to remain asymptomatic but still transmit the disease to susceptible populations.

Dr. Carlos Echevarria from the Translational and Clinical Research Institute, Newcastle University who also works as a Respiratory Consultant in the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is a co-author of the paper says: “This is an important finding as it may explain why some people catch Covid but don’t get sick.

It could lead us to a genetic test which may indicate who we need to prioritize for future vaccinations.”

“At a population level, this is important for us to know because when we have lots of people who are resistant, so they catch Covid but don’t show symptoms, then they risk spreading the virus while asymptomatic.”

The effect of genes being linked to geolocation is an accepted scientific concept and it is well known that HLA genes develop over generations in reaction to disease-causing pathogens.

Study author, David Langton, whose company ExplantLab helped fund the study through an Innovate UK research award, added: “Some of the most interesting findings were the relationships between longitude and latitude and HLA gene frequency. It has long been known that the incidence of multiple sclerosis increases with increasing latitude. This has been put down in part to reduced UV exposure and therefore lower vitamin D levels. We weren’t aware, however, that one of the main risk genes for MS, that is DRB1*15:01, directly correlates to latitude.

This highlights the complex interaction between environment, genetics, and disease. We know some HLA genes are vitamin D responsive, and that low vitamin D levels are a risk factor for severe COVID and we are doing further work in this area.”

The study used samples from 49 patients with severe Covid who had been hospitalized with respiratory failure, samples from an asymptomatic group of 69 hospital workers who had tested positive through routine blood antibody testing and a control group from a study into the relationship between HLA genotypes and the outcomes of joint replacement surgery.

The research used next generation sequencing machines to study the different versions, or alleles, of the HLA genes in depth which was combined with a variety of expertise and modeling. The work was limited to samples from North East England during the first lockdown, this reduced variation in the study groups but more studies will be needed in the UK and other populations as there may be different copies of the HLA genes providing resistance in other populations.

Reference: “The influence of HLA genotype on the severity of COVID-19 infection: by David J. Langton, Stephen C. Bourke, Benedicte A. Lie, Gabrielle Reiff, Shonali Natu, Rebecca Darlay, John Burn and Carlos Echevarria, 25 April 2021, HLA.

DOI: 10.1111/tan.14284

The work was a collaboration between Newcastle University, Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust as well as the James Cook University Hospital and North Tees and Hartlepool Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Co-author, Professor Sir John Burn, Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University said: “SARS Cov-2 is one of the greatest threats Mankind has faced. The more we understand why some people become sick, the better we can defend ourselves against this virus and others like it in future.”

To deny that the media ever promoted the lab leak theory as conspiracies is only opinion and not based on fact. It's called rewriting history!!!

Prominent NYC scientist backtracks on COVID origin over ‘disturbing information

https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/…ural-origin-of-covid/amp/

A prominent New York City microbiologist said Friday that “disturbing information” has led him to reverse course regarding his belief in the “natural origin” of COVID-19.

Peter Palese was among 27 scientists who signed an influential statement last year in the British scientific journal The Lancet that denounced as “conspiracy theories” the notion that the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab — or even be man-made.

But Palese — chairman of the Microbiology Department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he runs a lab named after him — said he’s no longer convinced that’s the case.

“I believe a thorough investigation about the origin of the COVID-19 virus is needed,” Palese told the Daily Mail.

“A lot of disturbing information has surfaced since the Lancet letter I signed, so I want to see answers covering all questions.”

Palese declined to specify that information or say what led him to sign the Lancet statement, the Daily Mail said.

In the Lancet statement, the signatories expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China,” and added: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

On Thursday, Vanity Fair revealed that the statement was secretly organized by Peter Daszak, president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.

That organization gave nearly $600,000 in US taxpayer money to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducts research on coronaviruses and is suspected of being the source of COVID-19.

In January, the State Department said the WIV has been collaborating on secret projects with China’s military since at least 2017.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has since said he’s “convinced” that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak and accused the Chinese government of covering it up.

Antibody-laden nasal spray could provide COVID protection — and treatment

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01481-2

A nasal spritz of a designer antibody offers strong protection against variants of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 — at least in mice1.

Since the early days of the pandemic, scientists have been developing antibodies as treatments for COVID-19. Today, several such antibodies are in late-stage clinical trials, and a handful have been approved for emergency use by regulatory agencies in the United States and elsewhere.

Among doctors, however, antibody treatments have not been very popular, says Zhiqiang An, an antibody engineer at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. That’s partly because those available are delivered through intravenous infusions rather than directly to the respiratory tract, where the virus is mainly found — so it takes high doses for them to be effective. Another challenge is the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants that seem to be resistant to some existing antibodies.

An and his colleagues set out to engineer an antibody that could be delivered directly into the nose. They scanned a library of antibodies from healthy humans and zeroed in on those that were able to recognize a component of SARS-CoV-2 that the virus uses to latch on to and enter cells2. Among the promising candidates were IgG antibodies, which are relatively slow to appear after an infection but are precisely tailored to the invading pathogen.

The team stitched IgG fragments targeting SARS-CoV-2 to a different type of molecule: IgM antibodies, which act as speedy first-responders to a broad range of infection. The engineered IgMs had a much stronger ‘neutralizing’ effect against more than 20 variants of SARS-CoV-2 than did the IgGs alone. When squirted into the noses of mice either six hours before or six hours after infection, the engineered IgMs sharply reduced the amount of virus in the rodents’ lungs two days after infection, the team reports in Nature1.

This work is a “big feat of engineering”, says Guy Gorochov, an immunologist at Sorbonne University in Paris. But he adds that there are open questions, such as how long these antibodies will linger in humans.

An envisions these antibodies as a kind of chemical mask that could be used by anyone who has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, and as an extra line of defence for people who might not be fully protected by vaccines. Because IgM molecules are relatively stable, it might be feasible to formulate them into a nasal spray to be bought at a pharmacy and kept for emergency use, An adds.

IGM Biosciences, a biotechnology company in Mountain View, California, that collaborated in An’s study, will test this antibody in clinical trials.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01481-2