C-19. Part One: The Chimera Protocol.
TL;DR:
Read this if you want to know about what was being done under NIH and Dr. Fauci (and China) for “pandemic preparedness” and how those guys knew about imminent COVID-19 event but did nothing to stop it.
Questions:
a. How the hell was this even possible?
b. Do we want this to happen again?
There’s a “brief” tweetstorm version of this post that somehow developed into a supertweetstorm about blatant lie of NIH on gain-of-function grants (and hair-raising things going on at UNC), brief analysis of Tony Fauci’s brand new Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight framework and more.
I strongly recommend you to follow the famous DRASTIC investigation here and on Twitter. If you haven’t heard about it yet — well, it’s about time you did. Real serious, world-renowned, real heavy stuff on COVID-19 origin, one-of-a-kind situation where a decentralised team kicked everybody’s ass in a highly spectacular fashion.
Regardless of whether COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 is an artificially engineered chimera escapee, a couple of world superpowers have just epically screwed up on pandemic prevention after years of warnings. It will happen again.
I have to admit I was being slow in reacting to the virus news. First it was all about China, then Europe and US got hit, everything was played down, until the markets crashed and it all became very real all of a sudden. The feeling of confusion and growing uncertainty and that visceral fear when you panic for your family — well, I don’t have to tell you about it.
Information coming from all kinds of news sources was somewhat confusing, so eventually I decided to do a little dig-around myself regarding the virus origins, damage factors and possible ways to react. Among other things, I saw someone mentioning a Nature Medicine publication about artificial modification of a bat coronavirus that made it more contagious for humans, the one that is at the core of a popular “conspiracy theory” now. Eventually I followed that lead and it sucked me into a rabbit hole full of alarming discoveries.
Now, those who know me would say that am the kind of man who enjoys reading food labels and small print — and that, while I do possess a sizable amount of ego, I am never about publicity or jumping onto a hype bandwagon. I also don’t have much for conspiracy theories. There are conspiracies, of course — it would be extremely naive to assume that powers and powers-to-be do not conspire — but I feel that a lot of things can be explained by common greed, carelessness and sheer absence of professional due diligence.
The reason I am writing all this now, when there’s an overwhelming amount of news and plenty of advice in the middle of the pandemic, is quite simple: I want to share my concern about the things that may (will) lead to an even worse catastrophe than the one we are experiencing at this particular moment in time. It’s not a (conspiracy) theory at all, more like a number of quiet and very, very panicky questions I’ve been asking myself over and over again.
I strongly encourage those of you who see these points as valid to share and keep sharing them until there is enough momentum for this to become a widely discussed public issue. I have a family and, regardless of my non-scientific background and unwillingness to face a storm of criticism that is bound to follow, as a parent I cannot quite let it go and leave it be until I am completely satisfied with the outcome.
Why? Because if the world as we know it is not ending right now, we might just not get as “lucky” next time. Massive loss of life resulting in economic collapse, lingering fear and permanent social isolation is not the kind of future I’d choose for my kids, to be honest.
21st Century Pandemic Drill
It’s probably a good idea to start with the first 21st century pandemic event in order to understand how utterly careless we all were regarding pandemic threats recently. Just a quick recap of the lesson we all ought to have learned before facing COVID-19.
2009: H1N1 Pandemic
Remember the swine flu that was so much in vogue a decade ago? Vaguely? Well, according to WHO’s “Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 — update 112”:
6 AUGUST 2010 — As of 1 August 2010, worldwide more than 214 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including over 18449 deaths.
This was a rough estimate and the numbers continued to climb after that. A 2011 CDC report had the estimated range of deaths “from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.”
Just like its ancestor a century before, it affected younger, healthier people, who died at the hands of their own immune systems due to the effect called “cytokine storm”. This is how badly it hit the US:
2011: “Have not been updated”
It was a global scare at the time. There were several more outbreaks. The H1N1 virus came back later and keeps coming back again — but nobody really cares much anymore.
There is this 77- slide presentation by the CDC, “2009 H1N1. Overview of a Pandemic April 2009 — August 2010”.
There is something utterly wrong about what happened ten years later.
The Chimeric Threat
The world was being saved from SARS coronavirus v.1 ever since it first emerged in 2003. So much so that there a whole collection of bat coronaviruses in China plus (what’s more important) a number of carefully constructed chimeric viruses (including the ones that were made more lethal or contagious) — all in the name of saving the world from a global SARS-CoV pandemic event. Just pause for a moment and reflect.
Before we proceed, I want you to know that SARS has a history of escaping BioSec L3 labs, to which it it (and its modified, chimeric, pandemic-ready and much more human-friendly versions) is normally assigned, even in such perfectly disciplined places as Singapore. Now, if you’re thinking that a BSL-3 is an awesomely protected place like the one you see in this picture, you’re wrong.
What you see here (pressurized suits etc) is Shi Zhengli (the infamous Bat Lady), looking all smug (and out of place) in a BSL-4. Actually, some gain-of-function SARS/MERS research is being done in BSL-2, which someone aptly described as being “as secure as your dentist’s office”. Here’s a brief description of how biosec levels work, I suggest you check it out so that you start getting all worked up before we continue.
Now, let’s have a look at some of the preparations for the COVID-19 party, shall we? Just remember that you’re officially not allowed to facepalm anymore.
2002/3: SARS epidemic
The threat was very real.
2005: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16007097
2008: Artificial bat coronavirus
Experiments dealing with creation of artificial strains of bat coronaviruses date back to at least 2008.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258724/
2013: Bat-to-human, confirmed
There’s a publication called “Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor” dated 30 October 2013. It highlights the possibility of transmission from bats to humans.
Let’s just remember “SHC014” and “WIV1”for now. The publication ends with this unambiguous message:
What, sneaky bats got themselves a SARS-like coronavirus that is able to use human ACE2 and is directly transmissible to humans?! It’s 2013, just ten years after the SARS-CoV-1 scare. Call the Chinese government and make them maybe stop people from eating bats (official COVID-19 explanation before the snakes and the pangolins) as in “right the fuck now” ? And maybe test people for SARS strains from now on? And follow the CDC guidance? Actually why bother, with six more years before SARS-CoV-2 there are so many other things to do. As if the threat was entirely chimeric.
Protocol Malfunction
2015: The chimera in question
So, there’s this work titled “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence”, the one that was the starting point of my journey down the rabbit hole of previous pandemics, research papers and policies — and that is currently fueling some of the COVID-19 “conspiracy theories” (well, hello from 2021 — thanks to DRASTIC investigation a lab leak of modified SARS as source of the current pandemic is now no longer categorically off the table).
Part of my work entails noticing irregularities about things and, while a lot of people mention this very publication as direct proof of COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 being an artificially engineered strain (there is a very interesting yet carefully inaccurate rebuttal of this theory), my habitual routine was to look past immediate knee-jerk conclusions and dive into the “small print”.
Instead of being concerned with whether or not this paper heralded the creation of yet another doomsday bioweapon I tried to understand how the world was caught with its collective pants down after all those previous incidents and all the research and warnings about possible SARS virus pandemic. Probably coming from bats in China, as predicted. Definitely using the very same infection mechanism(s).
Let’s have a look at the abstract first.
Chinese horseshoe bat populations has SHC014 virus (the one that was discovered and described in 2013) that has a spike that makes it possible to use multiple hosts and infect humans, so what the guys in the research paper did, they took this infecting part, attached that to a SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus and created a chimera virus that was actually really scary but this proved that there was a bat SARS coronavirus catastrophe waiting to happen.
Then the research institutions:
Scientists contributing to the research were from USA (University of North Carolina, Food and Drug Administration, Harvard Medical School), Switzerland (Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology)— and China, namely Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety of Wuhan Institute of Virology that belongs to Chinese Academy of Sciences and is situated in, well, Wuhan.
As to nature and intention of the research - this is just beyond brilliant:
During the SARS-CoV epidemic, links were quickly established
between palm civets and the CoV strains that were detected in
humans. Building on this finding, the common emergence paradigm
argues that epidemic SARS-CoV originated as a bat virus, jumped to
civets and incorporated changes within the receptor-binding domain
(RBD) to improve binding to civet Ace2. Subsequent expo-
sure to people in live-animal markets permitted human infection with the civet strain, which, in turn, adapted to become the epidemic strain. However, phylogenetic analysis suggests that early human
SARS strains appear more closely related to bat strains than to civet
strains. Therefore, a second paradigm argues that direct bat-human
transmission initiated SARS-CoV emergence and that palm civets
served as a secondary host and reservoir for continued infection. For both paradigms, spike adaptation in a secondary host
is seen as a necessity, with most mutations expected to occur within
the RBD, thereby facilitating improved infection. Both theories imply
that pools of bat CoVs are limited and that host-range mutations are both random and rare, reducing the likelihood of future emergence
events in humans.
Okay, consider the two paradigms:
1. SARS-CoV-1 epidemic had to use civets as a host between bats and humans and humans got infected by contacting or consuming those animals.
2. There was direct bat-to-human transmission (remember the 2013 paper?) with civets acting as sort of “bystanders” who harbored the virus that was originally transmitted from bats.
Wait for it…
Although our study does not invalidate the other emergence routes,
it does argue for a third paradigm in which circulating bat CoV
pools maintain ‘poised’ spike proteins that are capable of infecting
humans without mutation or adaptation. This hypothesis is
illustrated by the ability of a chimeric virus containing the SHC014
spike in a SARS-CoV backbone to cause robust infection in both
human airway cultures and in mice without RBD adaptation. Coupled
with the observation of previously identified pathogenic CoV back-
bones, our results suggest that the starting materials required
for SARS-like emergent strains are currently circulating in animal
reservoirs. Notably, although full-length SHC014-CoV probably
requires additional backbone adaption to mediate human disease, the
documented high-frequency recombination events in CoV families
underscores the possibility of future emergence and the need for
further preparation.
Yes, you heard it right. Paradigm #3, confirmed by this research: “Bat coronavirus pools are a ticking time bomb with direct bat-to-human transmission capabilities dating virulent SARS backbones.”
I.e. SARS will be back with a vengeance some day. But wait for it some more.
However, further testing in nonhuman primates is required to translate these finding into pathogenic potential in humans. Importantly, the failure of available therapeutics defines a critical need for further study and for the development of treatments. With this knowledge, surveillance programs, diagnostic reagents and effective treatments can be produced that are protective against the emergence of group 2b–specific CoVs, such as SHC014, and these can be applied to other CoV branches that maintain similarly heterogeneous pools.
There! This publication says: “we have just created a chimera virus that proves that we got to prepare for a SARS-CoV-2 event and the world is not ready for this at all”.
Still not enough? Maybe all those researches were just not being taken seriously enough?
In addition to offering preparation against future emerging
viruses, this approach must be considered in the context of the
US government–mandated pause on gain-of-function (GOF)
studies. … On the basis of these findings, scientific review panels may
deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating
strains too risky to pursue, as increased pathogenicity in mammalian
models cannot be excluded. Coupled with restrictions on mouse-
adapted strains and the development of monoclonal antibodies using
escape mutants, research into CoV emergence and therapeutic effi-
cacy may be severely limited moving forward. Together, these data
and restrictions represent a crossroads of GOF research concerns;
the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be
weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens. … Synthetic construction of chimeric mutant and full-length SHC014-
CoV was approved by the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Dual Use Research of Concern committee.
Oh, wait a second. Dual Use Research of Concern Committee? What is that?
Okay, so when this research was labelled Dual Use Research of Concern, a number of “senior scientists from a variety of research disciplines” from the US had a look at a research that unambiguously pointed at oncoming pandemic and the need to get prepared referencing other researches that also screamed “PANDEMIC!!!”.
There are some differences between the between the PDF and the online versions, among them the absence of the following paragraph in the PDF, where the gain-of-function pause is being mentioned again.
…and yet again, in the Acknowledgments section.
Research in this manuscript was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under awards U19AI109761 (RSB), U19AI107810 (RSB), AI1085524 (WM), F32AI102561 (VDM), K99AG049092 (VDM); and National Natural Science Foundation of China Award 81290341 (ZLS) and 31470260 (XYG). Human airway epithelial cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease under award NIH DK065988 (SHR). … Experiments with the full length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed prior to the gain of function research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by NIH. …
Approved for continued study by NIH notwithstanding the gain-of-function research moratorium? In fact, this issue was so important, it deserved a special Nature article called “Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research. Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.”, which is now bearing a special editor’s note saying
The article stresses once again that the NIH approved the continuation of the research which somehow believed to be falling under the gain-of-function research suspension umbrella.
Okay, so this chimera virus was so benign that the researchers could be safely exempt from the gain-of-function moratorium. And continue to be exempt even when it was clearly seen as something dangerous by peer scientists:
Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”
In fact,
Okay, let’s just remember that there was this synthetic SARS coronavirus that was supposed to affect only mice but somehow proved to be infectious to human cells as well. But it was totally benign so continuation of the studies was approved by the NIH. Nothing to see here, move along — right?
2014: Gain of Function
If you think that was weird, check out what happens now. There’s this document called “U.S. Government Gain-of-Function Deliberative Process and Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses” and it’s only two mercifully short pages.
Right off the bat (yes, a pun), something interesting. “In the context of recent U.S. biosafety incidents”. VERY interesting. Take a peek.
Mice? ESCAPED SARS LAB MICE??? From that very same place where they were researching artificially engineered infectious chimeric SARS coronaviruses, adapted to humans? Are you fucking kidding me?!
2016: The Chimera Nobody Talked About Yet
I’ve found another SARS coronavirus chimera created by the same people in the name of stopping yet another coronavirus pandemic in the same labs and it’s not on all over the social media yet. I haven’t slept for a couple of days and I am a little tired of the sheer volume of research now, but it was worth it.
I guess it proves they just sort of like making pandemic-level SARS coronaviruses just to save the world some day and the NIH just likes approving their research over and over again.
Can this be any more urgent?
Same old, same old. Remember the other 2013 virus name, the one that had a better ACE2 spike candidate? This is it.
Three years till the rise of the global #staythefuckhome movement. Have people in Wuhan stopped eating bats yet?
2017: Strange things
Now there’s this publication that recaps all the advances in the fight against the impending coronavirus pandemic, “Jumping species — a mechanism for coronavirus persistence and survival”. Among references it mentions this:
I was not entirely sure why the dengue virus was mentioned at all, except it can also be transmitted by bats. The referenced publication contained no mentions of SARS or MERS or coronaviruses or even bats. But the context…
I wasn’t sure what it meant until I had a heated discussion on Facebook, where I mentioned how I found the dengue reference that was not supposed to be there and how what happened when people seemingly recovered and then suddenly got sick again, worse, to a layman like me looked like this:
And that there was this “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication, that in order to prove that the virus evolved completely naturally beside the virus featuring an ACE2 spike mentioned this:
I am not a virologist, okay? So I looked it up and I remembered how there were also gastrointestinal symptoms and asymptomatic carry that to . Anyway, I could be 100% wrong as I became a wannabe virologist a week ago.
So, long story cut short, a friend found this:
2019: Stranger things
A paper called “Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry” was submitted for publication 27 November 2019.
And maybe that explains multiple strains and seemingly recovered people falling sick again?
2019: Final warning
John Hopkins exercise
2020: Awkward questions
At this point I was like “OMG, my head is spinning. The world was on the brink of a SARS coronavirus pandemic all this time and, like, so many people knew about that and made those researches but somehow it looks like the world just got its ass kicked with no cures and sloppy response. What’s the point of being so technologically advanced when we’re so easy?”
Having been repeatedly warned well in advance, going through a global pandemic event a decade earlier and having the exact cause and source of a new pandemic practically dangled in front of the collective face of the world four years prior to the breakout was apparently not enough, as we see now.
Ready? Here they come.
About how it was possible at all:
- There were scientists from Wohan that, incidentally, holds the only level 4 Biolab in China (recently upgraded from level 3) who knew all the new parameters of a highly probable SARS coronavirus pandemic event. For twelve years. How come China failed to take preventive measures?
- There were all those “senior scientists” from the Dual Use Research of Concern Committee who approved works on chimeric SARS coronaviruses under the banner of imminent pandemic, but actually failed to sit up and take notice of the pandemic itself after supposedly having carefully reviewed everything.
- Even after all those incidents with escaped coronavirus lab mice?
About the virus (just playing a weekend virologist):
Keeping all of the above in mind:
- Will the virus come back again and again and again, just like H1N1 or SARS-CoV-1?
- If it does, will it mutate toward being more deadly or contagious?
- Is it something like dengue fever, when you get immune after recovery but immune system betrays you when you meet a different strain and makes the next incident actually worse?
Sorry, I’m not a virologist. I just presumed that all those works directed against the imminent coronavirus pandemic actually meant something. You are very welcome to tell me it’s not a mutating combination of a SARS bat coronavirus with an ACE2 spike and denge-like behaviour — all of that acting in concert, making exposure to a different strain being potentially deadly. Seriously, I would like to be totally wrong on that one because I’m MiB-level paranoid now after going through all those (open access) research papers (I can’t even imagine the stuff that was censored out).
I’ve been on it for about a week or maybe more — I lost count — and I’m not a virologist or a healthcare professional or even a scientist, so I’m bound to make mistakes in my research. I am not even a US or China citizen. However, while I might lose on a technicality here and there, I see this as a great opportunity for a globally recognized virologist or a health organisation representative to provide a perfectly legitimate explanation for everything mentioned above. Because it’d be nice to know that all pandemic threats are being thoroughly monitored and equipped with contingency plans, all those gain-of-function-related experiments are actually leading to vaccines and cures and are not going to leave the world clueless and unprepared after twelve years of robust international research again, thank you.
I am not claiming SARS-CoV-2 is an artificially engineered virus that escaped from a lab (not even hinting on that, not even a little). Not saying all the problems above are exclusively limited to the US or some other country. This is neither political opportunism nor a blame game. Not a witch hunt. Not a conspiracy theory with some photoshopped documents or blurry UFO shots. This is a global biosecurity issue that has to be addressed equally globally political, business, medical and intelligence circles (not mentioning scientists because they totally fucked up on this one) — and us, social distancing gurus from all over the globe. Preferably a lot of us. It’s probably urgent because if we do not learn this lesson PDQ on a global level — and do not teach it back — we might just as well meet our end as a species next time. Or time after that. Or some other time.
There are a lot of people who would want to forget and move on, because of their business interests or scientific careers being at risk — but if you and I let this happen, then we or our children sooner or later will have to deal with the results of our complacency.
Apparently we all got a gigantic, immediate and very scary problem and this is about control and accountability. Because there will always be a threat of another pandemic. So those who would like to practice social distancing at some point of their life again (provided we all emerge out of this one relatively unscathed) and enjoy hoarding toilet paper with their kids — just relax, pour a cup of coffee and watch a cute video with cats or whatever. I can’t, guys.
To those of you who share my concern now: do not let sweep this under the carpet under “false news” label. If only because a. It’s not news, b. It’s not false. I quoted the sources word for word, they are perfectly legitimate and anyone can follow the same path and come up with additional information and details that I have missed.
As for all this burning biosecurity issues — it will require a separate post or three. Or a book. Suffice to say that I learned about only a tiny fraction of incidents and that, combined with my newfound knowledge of what can be designed in a (not-so-secure) lab and considered “not so risky” or how a pandemic threat can be ignored was enough for me to lose my sleep for good. I will eventually regain my balance (probably), but hey, we got to seriously do something about that.
Still a work in progress, okay? I’m really tired but the situation is so fast-paced I just can’t be bothered to keep it all tidy anymore. Too frustrating. Your’re welcome to criticize the hell out of this. I want to be correct. Just one rule: no pangolins.
The story was (slightly) updated on 13 June 2021.
