The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) lab appears to be Ground Zero for infection for SARS-CoV-2, according to a paper trail left by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself and explored in the above video. Its author, who lived in China for 10 years and speaks fluent Chinese, said this is not so much a theory as a revelation of publicly available information that he came across.
One of his earliest suspicions arose from a November 18, 2019, job opening posted by WIV, looking for someone to research the relationship between coronavirus and bats and, specifically, how bats can carry coronavirus but still be long lived. Another job opening at WIV, posted December 24, 2019, suggested that they’d discovered a “new and terrible virus” and were recruiting people to come and deal with it.
‘Bat Woman’ Researcher May Have Been Patient Zero
Upon digging into the staff at WIV, the author highlights Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., the director of WIV’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, also known as “bat woman.” She has been studying bat-borne viruses since 2004, including SARS-like coronaviruses.
According to the World Society for Virology, “One of her great contributions is to uncover genetically diverse SARS-like coronaviruses in bats with her international collaborators and provide unequivocal evidence that bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV.”1
In his book “China COVID-19: The Chimera That Changed the World,”2 professor Giuseppe Tritto — president of the World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technology, founded under UNESCO, and an internationally recognized expert in bio and nanotechnology — accuses Shi of producing a SARS-like virus with increased pathogenicity by inserting a segment of the HIV virus into a horseshoe bat coronavirus.3
Chinese officials also recently deleted some 300 coronavirus studies, including all of the papers published by Shi. A fact sheet released January 15, 2021, by the U.S. Department of State, but which has since been archived, further questions WIV’s research on bat and other coronaviruses prior to the COVID-19 outbreak:4
“The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.
This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”
The previously undisclosed information in the fact sheet notes that accidental laboratory infections have caused several previous virus outbreaks and the Chinese government has prevented investigators and journalists from interviewing WIV researchers.
What’s more, WIV researchers have been conducting experiments involving the bat coronavirus RaTG13 — the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, with 96.2% similarity — since at least 2016.
2018: Coronaviruses From Bats Likely to Infect People
In October 2015, Shi and her team conducted serological surveillance on people who live in close proximity to caves where bats that carry diverse SARSr-CoVs [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses] roost.5 They took blood samples from 218 villagers in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China, which revealed that six people were infected.
“Our study provides the first serological evidence of likely human infection by bat SARSr-CoVs or, potentially, related viruses,” they wrote, and, “These results indicate that some SARSr-CoVs may have high potential to infect human cells.”6
Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance president, was also a part of the study, which is notable since he is also part of the World Health Organization team that is investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Daszak works closely with WIV and dozens of others on controversial gain-of-function research, which involves manipulating pathogens, including coronaviruses, to make them more infectious or lethal. He has openly and repeatedly dismissed the possibility of the pandemic being the result of a lab leak,7 and also has close ties to Shi.
If there were any doubt, The Sun,8 a tabloid paper in the U.K., featured a Twitter conversation in which Daszak “appears to say he is looking forward to an alcohol-fueled karaoke party in a bat cave with Shi Zhengli,” GM watch noted.9
Daszak tweets, “Looking forward to that special moment when we hit the baiju and the karaoke with Zhengli & Linfa [likely referring to Wang Linfa, aka ‘batman,’ another bat researcher and WIV’s chairman of scientific advisory10].” He adds, “Right now a party in a bat cave sounds just right to me!!”11
Report: Wuhan Lab Researchers Had Symptoms, Self-Quarantined
The video also mentions Botao Xiao, Ph.D., a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, who trained at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School. In February 2020, he posted a thesis about details he knew but wasn’t supposed to talk about.
He knew, for instance, that researchers at WIV were infected and had already begun to self-quarantine after showing symptoms. He said the majority of the researchers at the lab were suspicious that the virus was from bats, that it’s not a natural infection and that the main source of the virus is from the Wuhan lab, which, by the way, is only 280 meters (306.2 yards) from the seafood market where the virus was “officially” said to have originated.
According to the video, he also indicated that researchers were splashed with urine and blood samples from collected bats, along with a timeline of these events, and he knew how many bats were collected. In an October 19, 2020, report, however, Dr. Peter Breggin revealed the CCP forced them to recant and the paper was withdrawn, “perhaps because it was so cogently written and spot on.”12
Patient Zero Is Missing
Huang Yan Ling was a researcher at WIV who worked closely with Shi. According to the video, many believe Ling is Patient Zero for the COVID-19 pandemic, but she’s now missing. Her profile and biography are missing from WIV’s website, but, after rumors surfaced that she was presumed dead, the Chinese government posted a notice on WIV’s site saying she’s alive and well.
No proof was offered, however, and the author suggests that if CCP wanted to stop the rumors, the first thing they would have done was have her schedule a public appearance. But “no one has seen her.”
A message reportedly appeared on China’s WeChat messaging service claiming to be from Ling and stating, “To my teachers and fellow students, how long no speak. I am Huang Yanling, still alive. If you receive any email [regarding the Covid rumor], please say it’s not true,” but she has since vanished from social media.13 The U.K.’s Mirror further reported in January 2021:14
“The year-long hunt for Huan Yan Ling pushes on amid a suspected ‘state cover-up’ after the scientist disappeared when reports surfaced online last February naming her as ‘Patient Zero’ … State officials and lab agents were quick to rubbish the reports at the time and remove them from the internet.
They claimed Huang was safe and had simply moved jobs, with a Chinese news agency even claiming to have spoken her new employer. But China is yet to produce the scientist physically despite numerous requests from the U.S. State Department to stop hiding information. Their reluctance has fueled the theory she is either dead or being held by the state to cover up the institute’s role in the pandemic …”
SARS-CoV-2 Uniquely Well-Adapted for Human Infection
Daszak told The Associated Press in November 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 could have passed from a wildlife poacher to a trader who brought it to Wuhan,15 and others have also pushed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 arose and evolved naturally, skipping from one animal species to another before ultimately developing the capability of infecting humans.
There’s no direct evidence that the virus arose zoonotically,16 however, while Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., a former researcher with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, has detailed several unique features that make SARS-CoV-2 exceptionally well-adapted for human infection:17
- A very high infection rate, thanks to it being more selective for the human ACE2 receptor than SARS-Cov-1 (the virus responsible for the 2003 SARS pandemic)18
- A unique furin cleavage site not found in any closely related bat coronaviruses, which allows the virus to fuse to human cells, thereby enhancing its pathogenicity and transmissibility19,20
- Certain spike protein structures that are similar to those found in the MERS-CoV virus, which allow the virus to attach using not only the ACE2 receptor but also the DPP4 receptor, like MERS-CoV. This dual receptor strategy might be responsible for its ability to infect a wide range of human tissues21
Jean-Claude Perez, Ph.D., a retired interdisciplinary researcher with the IBM European Research Center on Artificial Intelligence, also claims to provide “formal proof that 2019-nCoV coronavirus is partially a synthetic genome” due to the presence of HIV1 retrovirus fragments.22
Will WHO Team Investigate a Possible Lab Leak?
In an editorial published in the Journal of Human Security, Colin Butler of Australian National University, a former WHO adviser who not only worked in China but also previously worked with Daszak, argued there is “striking” evidence that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab.23,24
The AP noted, however, “According to WHO’s published agenda25 for its origins research, there are no plans to assess whether there might have been an accidental release of the coronavirus at the Wuhan lab.”26 Taking it a step further, GM Watch reported that Daszak “has already poured cold water on calls for a forensic investigation”:27
“An article in Science28 quotes him as saying, ‘Some of the more anti-China rhetoric that’s out there, about, we need to go into the lab and look at the video cameras, this sort of thing, that’s not realistic, that’s not what happens.’
This prompted Richard Ebright of Rutgers to comment,29 ‘Daszak’s claim that calls for a thorough and credible investigation, as opposed to a cursory and conflict-ridden investigation, are ‘anti-China rhetoric’ is self-serving nonsense.’”
In February 2021, it was reported that the WHO team spent 3.5 hours at WIV, with little actual information released afterward. Daszak vaguely stated on Twitter, “Extremely important meeting today with staff at WIV including Dr. Shi Zhengli. Frank, open discussion. Key questions asked & answered.”30
Yet, given the glaring need for a thorough and independent investigation into a possible laboratory leak, many have called for Daszak to step down from the WHO investigatory team,31 as evidence ramps up that a laboratory leak cannot be ruled out.
