bfcjg wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:30 am
One of guys back at work after furlough has brother who works in a hospital in the Midlands, they are retesting stored sputum samples from September as the data is showing a surge in chest infections and pneumonia in September.
The US Newsweek magazine have published an investigation into some 'gain-of-function research' that was being conducted at the 'Wuhan Institute of Virology' towards the latter end of 2019. It is thought that a possible cause of the virus is a 'lab accident' in which one of the lab workers became infected and then started the spread in the Wuhan community.
https://www.newsweek.com/controversial- ... ic-1500503
Highlights
"The Controversial Experiments and Wuhan Lab Suspected of Starting the Coronavirus Pandemic"
"The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency updated its assessment of the origin of the novel coronavirus to reflect that it may have been accidentally released from an infectious diseases lab, Newsweek has learned...U.S. intelligence revised its January assessment in which it "judged that the outbreak probably occurred naturally" to now include the possibility that the new coronavirus emerged "accidentally" due to "unsafe laboratory practices" in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pathogen was first observed
late last year".
"We have no credible evidence to indicate SARS-CoV-2 was released intentionally or was created as a biological weapon," the report found"
"Back in 2002, when SARS emerged in China's Guandong province, it served as a wake-up call. Over the next few decades, the U.S., China and other nations poured money into efforts to hunt down and catalogue strange new pathogens that live in wild animals and figure out how much of a threat they pose to humans, with the goal of preventing the next devastating pandemic".
"Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists have for the past five years been engaged in so-called "gain of function" (GOF) research, which is designed to enhance certain properties of viruses for the purpose of anticipating future pandemics. Gain-of-function techniques have been used to turn viruses into human pathogens capable of causing a global pandemic".
"This is no nefarious secret program in an underground military bunker. The Wuhan lab received funding, mostly for virus discovery, in part from a ten-year, $200 million international program called PREDICT, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other countries. Similar work, funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has been carried out in dozens of labs throughout the world. Some of this research involves taking deadly viruses and enhancing their ability to spread quickly through a population".
"In the years since the SARS outbreak, many instances of mishaps involving the accidental release of pathogens have taken place in labs throughout the world. Hundreds of breaches have occurred in the U.S., including a 2014 release of anthrax from a U.S. government lab that exposed 84 people. The SARS virus escaped from a Beijing lab in 2004, causing four infections and one death. An accidental release is not complicated and doesn't require malicious intent. All it takes is for a lab worker to get sick, go home for the night, and unwittingly spread the virus to others".
"To be sure, there's no evidence that SARS-Cov-2 came from the Wuhan lab, nor that the virus is the product of engineering. Most scientists believe, based on the evidence available, that a natural origin is the most likely explanation. But neither have they ruled out these possibilities".