Let's add another reason to not trust the CDC or the FDA and the media. This should be headline news!!!
Wuhan Lab: From Nipah Virus to COVID-19
Nipah virus (NiV) is a zoonotic virus, i.e., it normally spreads between animals and people. The main culprit is the fruit bat, known colloquially as flying foxes. Infection often leads to encephalitis and can cause mild illness to severe illness to death. Most outbreaks are annual in Asia, mainly in Bangladesh and India. In the hospital setting, there can be person-to-person transmission. In those infected between 1998 and 2018, deaths occurred in 40-70% of patients. On August 4, the Epoch Times took a look at NiV in the context of a Senate hearing. The headline is dramatic: “Wuhan Lab Was Genetically Manipulating Deadly Nipah Virus, Expert Testifies at Senate Hearing.” According to this piece, forensic study has shown that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was genetically modifying the virus, violating the Biological Weapons Convention, per expert presentation to a US Senate subcommittee hearing August 3. The study is another sign that WIV was doing gain-of-function work, and CEO of Atossa Therapeutics Steven Quay argues that this de facto weapons program was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, by 2018, the U.S. CDC had outsourced Nipah virus research improperly to an Indian lab that lacked the appropriate certification, drawing actions from the Indian government. However, this effort seemed to be intertwined with more general research and not gain-of-function.
60 Times More Deadly Than COVID-19?
Per Quay, he and others looked at COVID patient sample specimens and data provided by the WIV. Their work is still in preprint. Quay found, “20 unexpected contaminants that they believe are evidence of other research conducted at the lab.” In written testimony, he says, “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.” One contaminant not accounted for by WIV, “was cloning vectors of the Nipah virus,” according to Quay. He noted in written testimony, “This is the most dangerous research I have ever encountered….” Experts at the hearing said that it is less transmissible than Ebola “since it isn’t airborne.” “If we posit a 60% mortality rate, Nipah is 60 times more deadly than COVID-19. [A] laboratory-acquired infection with a modified Nipah virus would make the COVID-19 pandemic look like a walk in the park,” one expert said.
And this particular type of synthetic biology is against international law, arguably. “It’s actually against the biological weapons treaty to take the Nipah virus apart and then put it back together again,” Quay said.
Data Memory-Holed
At the hearing, Quay listed evidence which pointed to a lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19. WIV’s open database of, “22,00 samples and viral sequences” was removed from the internet on September 19, 2019, prior to COVID-19. WIV said the removal was due to cyber-attacks, but Quay maintains that the deletions are suspicious and that, “the database was taken offline to remove evidence of close precursors to COVID-19, which would have been a ‘smoking gun’ showing that the virus leaked from the lab.”
He pointed out that WIV was the world center of coronavirus research, and that prior to 2019, it was home to 65% of published materials on this topic. “For almost a decade, they were going into bat caves throughout China and … back into Africa as well, 20 visits a year in bringing these samples back to the laboratory.”
TrialSite has chronicled a timeline of events, milestones and other goings on at WIV that raises the specter of at least a significant probability pointing to the lab leak theory. But the evidence isn’t sufficiently conclusive for any final declarations. There is no doubt that the U.S. began outsourcing research to WIV via the EcoHealth Alliance partnership.
Research on SARS-C0V-2 Cousin in 2016
Quay offered, “They had the largest collection of raw material backbones from nature to then do gain-of-function research on--I believe it’s the confluence of those two activities … bringing things back from bat caves and gain-of-function research that led to the pandemic.” WIV has long denied being the source of COVID-19, but their government has also long refused efforts to open the lab and records to independent analysts, “making an independent investigation of the hypothesis nearly impossible.” Per a 2021 State Department fact sheet, experiments on RaG13, a SARS-CoV-2 cousin, were ongoing at WIV as far back as 2016. Again, as far as SARS-CoV-2, the activities with U.S. contractor EcoHealth Alliance and the National Institutes of Health involvement with coronavirus research should also be investigated further.
CDC Outsourcing Research to Indian Labs?
It would appear the U.S. had its own Nipah virus research program occurring in India. In February 2020, The Hindu reported that the U.S. CDC was collaborating with Indian labs for Nipah virus research potentially considered a bioweapon. This news was covered by multiple media in India.
Apparently, interest in Nipah virus research intensified during an outbreak in Kerala, India in 2018. The CDC initially got involved to train partners at the Manipal Centre for Virus Research (MCVR), but the latter apparently lacked the certifications as well as approval from the National Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)/Health Ministry Screening Committee (HMSC) for permissions.
According to this account from India, their government “sharply censured the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for funding an ‘unapproved’ Indian laboratory in Manipal, and not securing the necessary permissions for undertaking in India for work on Nipah virus, considered a potential bioweapon.”
What? This snippet of news didn’t get much attention given the emerging pandemic at the time. But why would the CDC be outsourcing Nipah virus research to an Indian lab that lacked BSL4 credentials?
The CDC responded to the Hindu’s outreach, acknowledging the program didn’t have the proper authorizations “due to some confusion about clearance for private institutions,” and that it didn’t commission the research directly.
Months earlier, the India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare communicated in a written letter to both the CDC and the MCVR, “ordering them to shut down the study.” An immediate demand: “Transfer the Nipah virus samples to the certified ICMR-National Institute of Virology in Pune,” as well as insisting that the American public health agency cease all unauthorized sponsorship for Nipah virus research
