A thread on the origins of COVID-19, and a possible bio-containment failure at one of the Wuhan labs.

I feel there are facts not enough people know about, so I decided to summarise the important & interesting ones in this post.
Like every stellar suspence thriller, it starts with mysterious deaths that needs to be solved.

To solve this puzzle, we must go back to April 2012, in Mojiang county, where six miners contracted a SARS-like pneumonia, and three of them died. https://twitter.com/luigi_warren/status/1262638222879801349?s=20
In the same month & year of the outbreak, there was an USAID/PREDICT bat sampling project in Mojiang. (I strongly suspect they were the one's who hired the miners to clean the mineshaft for one of their project.) https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1295415200707796992?s=20
In July 2012, a few months after the mineshaft pneumonia outbreak, their was a 6-month disease control work in Mojiang county.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200608104308/http://yncdc.cn/newsView.aspx?id=97837
More high profile visits to Mojiang by China CDC officials were made later on:
http://web.archive.org/web/20200608104031/http://yncdc.cn/inInfoNewsView.aspx?varCatyID=020804&newsid=102017
http://web.archive.org/web/20200608104133/http://yncdc.cn/inInfoNewsView.aspx?varCatyID=020804&newsid=100940
(Was there a bigger outbreak that they were trying to control?)
Oddly enough, the atypical pneumonia cases among the miners didn't make it to the official CDC statistics for 2012, which definitely suggests a cover-up to me. https://twitter.com/AntGDuarte/status/1280132277410893824?s=20
In another case, a Thai tourist in Yunnan died of multiple organ failure caused by "unexplained pneumonia" in 2013. The symptoms were similar, and he was admitted to the same hospital for treatment as the miners. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1269303586527248384?s=20
Even this case wasn't included in the official China CDC statistics. https://archive.is/8YUge 
2013年4月全国法定传染病疫情概况

archived 20 Jul 2020 04:12:06 UTC

https://archive.is/8YUge
Around the same time, China's Ministry of Science & Technology initiated a project (2013FY113500) to identify and investigate viral pathogens and its relation with major infectious diseases. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1280136611091460096?s=20
A multi-year bat surveillance project was carried out in that exact mine by multiple labs across China (including WIV & China CDC).

You can read this in significant more detail, here:

The medical thesis (2013): https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1262459039297961989
PhD thesis (2016): https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1270359698898923529
The 2013 medical thesis, from a Kunming Medical University doctor who treated the miners, concluded that the pneumonia was caused by SARS-like coronavirus from Rhinolophus sinicus. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1270710712311021568?s=20
The miners' pneumonia cases were clinically virtually identical to COVID-19. https://twitter.com/MonaRahalkar/status/1312427856207572994?s=20
Other essential parts of the mystery, like when was the last trip to the mineshaft, how many samples were collected, and how many were cultured/isolated, remain elusive.

WIV was asked to provide the samples for RaTG13, but they declared that they no longer have it.
To add to this mystery, the viral database for Project 2013FY113500 has been taken down, exactly what I would hope if they had something to hide.

https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1271276629004713984?s=20

(Archived version of the database: http://web.archive.org/web/20200420215618/http://viruses.nsdc.cn/chinavpi/)
Next clue in the mystery, Project 2013FY113500 was under review by China's MoST before a 30 September deadline, last year. Part of it was *state secret* https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1300126844671279105?s=20
A detailed summary of a proposed spillover event during this review of samples, can be read here: https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1312461375084523520?s=20
As per another MoST tender over 11 July-13 Sept 2019, winners were required to identify 5 major novel viral pathogens from wild animals and carry out a biosecurity risk assessment by testing them on small animals. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1274803124394319872?s=20
Access to WIV pathogen database was restricted on Sep 12, coinciding with the last day of the tender. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1304520665010073600?s=20
WIV still hasn't explained why did they restrict access to their pathogen databases.
All of these leads me to suspect that there was a possible bio-containment failure at one of their labs around Sept-Oct 2019. Factor these:

Mysterious blips in Google search for the terms Coronavirus and SARS, in Hubei province in September 2019 https://psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/202005/mysterious-blips-raise-questions-about-covid-19-timeline
Mysterious Blips Raise Questions About COVID-19 Timeline

What was known and when was it known?

https://psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/202005/mysterious-blips-raise-questions-about-covid-19-timeline
There was a tender for an "Emergency" purchase of virus detection kits in September last year. It contains orders for 40,500 PCR kits (including for Coronaviruses). https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1260645212239454209?s=20
Two tenders by Wuhan CDC for disposing 2.5 Tons (2 + 0.5) of hazardous bio-chemical waste from their labs (it's a lot!!)

https://whcdc.org/index.php/view/11147.html

https://whcdc.org/view/11192.html 
They mention that the warehouses of the two companies which had relevant disposal qualifications had a fire in 2019, and had their license suspended.

(Where was the waste disposed off? Did they dispose it safely?)
On September 6, the Zhifang STP in Wuhan was officially shut down, & the sewage from the plant was directly transferred to the Jiangxia STP for advanced treatment. The Jiangxia STP is in very close proximity to the WIV lab complex. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1286695683605454849?s=20
There were multiple on-site lab safety inspections at Wuhan, during September last year.

http://archive.is/Ppwqs 

http://archive.is/bxbRW 

http://archive.vn/sp7WR#selection-417.32-425.1 http://archive.vn/D1SR7#selection-935.3-939.138
关于开展2019年实验室安全检查工作的通知-武汉大学图书情报国家级实验教学示范中心

archived 3 Jun 2020 12:01:25 UTC

http://archive.is/Ppwqs
On Oct 2019 Hubei Health Commission gave license approval to numerous companies in Wuhan for making/procuring disinfectants, Sodium Hypochlorite, Pipelines, and Pipe fittings https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1291119676588617728?s=20
They also released a new biosafety law in October last year. https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/China-knew-of-lab-safety-concerns-from-last-year
China knew of lab safety concerns from last year

Beijing had been preparing biosecurity law, but not fast enough

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/China-knew-of-lab-safety-concerns-from-last-year
On Nov 2019, there was a tender for (among other things) Waste liquid sensing system with high sealing performance and automatic alarm https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1280237375545733120?s=20
In Dec 2019, China's new "vaccine management law" was officially implemented in all BSL-3 & above labs https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1265532878307409920?s=20
(Were the new biosafety laws, regulations, and on-site lab inspections a reaction to a probable spillover event?)
Phylogenetic studies also point towards the COVID-19 outbreak starting around Sept-Oct last year.

https://cam.ac.uk/research/news/covid-19-genetic-network-analysis-provides-snapshot-of-pandemic-origins

https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.058933v3 https://preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0332/v2
Witnessing Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 through Comparative Phylogenomics: The Proximate Origin is...

A new form of coronavirus called severe acute respiratory disease coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is currently causing a pandemic. A six-month evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2 is witnessed by...

https://cam.ac.uk/research/news/covid-19-genetic-network-analysis-provides-snapshot-of-pandemic-origins
There are serious doubts about RaTG13 and Pangolin CoVs, and the shady process by which they suddenly appeared.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1305188512942227456?s=20

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1304022365530140677?s=20 https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1306993216584142848?s=20
And we have a virus extremely adapted to humans without any close intermediate version, neither in humans, nor in the animals. https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1258761756790460419?s=20
Today, we have no plausible hypothesis to explain how the virus could have appeared in Wuhan in a natural way. But the fact that the epicenter was Wuhan, in close proximity to several virology labs specializing in CoVs, it is conceivable that the virus spilled from a laboratory.
There is no proof of a lab spillover, but the hypothesis is supported by robust circumstantial evidences and a long pattern of scientific misconduct by China-based researchers.
Scientific, media and forensic community needs to verify the possibility of a laboratory spillover.

Whichever side of the debate you stand on, I hope it mas more to do with fact-based science than your political beliefs. /End
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