Suspicious Chinese experiences may be behind the outbreak of corona ... and a new animal in the dock

A report in the American magazine Newsweek put forward the possibility of the emerging corona virus and the disease caused by Covid-19 as a result of unsafe laboratory practices in Wuhan, China, while a German scientist presents a new theory of the origin of the virus, claiming that it originated in a raccoon dog.

In the report published by the magazine, writers Fred Gutierl, Navid Jamali and Tom O'Connor said that the US Defense Intelligence Agency updated its assessment of the origin of the new corona virus, and hinted that it could be accidentally released from an infectious disease laboratory.

According to the report, US intelligence reviewed its assessment last January in which it considered that the outbreak may have occurred naturally, to now include the possibility of the emergence of a new Corona virus by mistake due to "unsafe laboratory practices" in Wuhan, central China.

The report, titled "China ... Origins of the Covid-19 Outbreak, remains unknown," ruled out that the disease had been genetically engineered or intentionally launched as a biological weapon.

"It is unlikely that researchers or the Chinese government willfully launch such a dangerous virus - especially within China - without having a known and effective vaccine," the report said.

Citing academic literature, the Defense Intelligence Agency document states that the final answer on how the disease first appeared "may not be known at all."

A US intelligence spokesperson told Newsweek, "The intelligence community has not agreed collectively on a single theory."

Unconfirmed source The report's authors stated that tracing the origin of a new virus is not an easy matter, so it is not surprising that the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences concluded in early February that "it was impossible for them to scientifically determine whether the outbreak of the Covid virus - 19 was the result of a natural or accidental laboratory accident, "according to the Defense Intelligence Agency document.

Initial evaluations by the Chinese government indicated that a city's seafood market is the possible cause of the natural outbreak of Covid-19 disease.

For its part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry told reporters on April 23 that the WHO had found "no evidence" that the outbreak had started from the Wuhan laboratory.

Yuan Zhiming, vice-president of the Wuhan Virus Institute and head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Wuhan Branch, criticized the inference for misuse or intentional creation of the virus as "malicious" and "impossible", adding that "they have no evidence or logic to support their accusations, they build it entirely on their speculation." Own. "

However, the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that government and Chinese researchers in the United States have found that "about 33% of the 41 identified original cases had no direct contact" with the market.

This, along with what is known about the laboratory’s work in the past few years, has raised reasonable suspicion that the epidemic may have been caused by a laboratory error, not in the market.

With the onset of the emergence of the new Corona virus, Chinese officials insisted that the virus can only be infected through direct contact with animals, but many of the first patients in Wuhan had no connection with the wild animal market, which means that the virus was already spreading from one person to another.

In the early days, the prevailing theory about the origins of the virus was that it originated in bats, moved to some other mammals such as the scaly anteater, and eventually spread to the population through wildlife markets.

By last March, the wild virus theory was still the most likely explanation for the origin of the emerging corona virus, but this interpretation was beginning to become flawed. 

Indeed, the Wuhan Virus Institute - which is not far from the animal markets in downtown Wuhan - houses the world's largest collection of coronaviruses that have been extracted from wild bats, including at least one virus that resembles the emerging corona virus.

What's more, scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been involved over the past five years in so-called "gain of function" research, which is designed to enhance certain characteristics of viruses for the purpose of predicting future epidemics.

The authors of the report stated that the Wuhan Laboratory received funding to do this work from a ten-year, $ 200 million international program called Predict, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and other countries, and part of which includes taking deadly viruses and enhancing their ability to rapidly spread among the population. .

On the other hand, hundreds of scientists opposed this research, and warned for years that the program could cause a pandemic.

In fact, the Wuhan Institute has a record of questionable practices that could lead to accidental release of a virus, according to the warning from officials at the US embassy in Beijing in a telegram on January 19, 2018. 

The three authors emphasized that circumstantial evidence is strong Enough to justify placing laboratory programs and practices at the center of the investigation, it must be re-examined whether scientists have exceeded the limit in their efforts to protect people from the threat of natural pathogens.

Tracking the origin
The report's authors pointed out that Jonathan Essen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis, says that the wealth of evidence - although not final - indicates that the virus came from nature, not from the laboratory.

"There is no suggestion that there is something abnormal, that is, a genetically engineered person, but there is scope to look at" the results, which recognize the potential for virus creation in the laboratory through animal transmission.

"It is difficult to take tests to determine if a virus has spread from the laboratory, and if Wuhan researchers collected something from outside and were doing some experiments on it in the laboratory and someone got sick and then the infection spread from there, it would be difficult to distinguish it from spreading directly in the outside medium," Essen said. .

Raccoon dog
On the other hand, German virologist Christian Drusten sparked controversy after contradicting the common opinion that the Coruna virus arose in one of the wild animal trade markets in Wuhan, proposing a new theory.

Drosten, the chief virologist at Charette Hospital in Berlin, disagrees with the popular belief that the Coronavirus has spread to humans from one of the wild animal trade markets in Wuhan, and believes that further studies are needed.

In an interview with the British Guardian newspaper, the German scientist agreed on the validity of the hypothesis that the virus originated in China, but he sees the epidemic starting in the place where the intermediate animal that transmitted the disease to humans is being raised.

According to Drusten, something important was ignored in media coverage of the Corona virus, that is, the conditions of the origin of the SARS virus in southern China in 2003. According to Drusten, studies have found that the SARS virus was found in the raccoon dog, which is a lucrative business in China because of its fur.

"If someone gives me a few thousand dollars and the possibility to search in China, I will search in places where raccoon dogs are raised," said Drewsten.

And the German "Focus" website quoted Drusen as guessing that "some of those who went to the wild animal trade markets work mainly in the places of raising a raccoon dog, which may explain the transmission of the virus to the Wuhan market."

The exclusion of the scaly anteater
and the widespread belief in the scientific community that the Coronavirus has moved from bats to intermediate animals and from there to humans, and scientific discussions have taken place regarding the nature of the intermediate animal, where some have studied the possibility that the intermediary is the ant scalping ant, which is considered a meal considered in Chinese culture The price is high in illegal markets for those who think that it has medicinal properties.

The scaly anteater fell under suspicion after scientists found a virus similar to the emerging corona virus (90%) in blood samples, according to NTV.

But Christian Drosten disagrees with this result, and sees the raccoon as the animal responsible for the transmission of corona to humans.

"I do not understand why there are no studies on this matter," Drusten said in an interview with the German newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung".

The current most famous virus scientist in Germany - one of the most important advisors to German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the current Corona crisis - has ruled out the theory of virus origination in scientific laboratories, and said that the corona bat viruses, which closely resemble the newly created Corona virus, "are found only in the bat of a horseshoe, No one will take her to live in laboratories as simple as that. "

He pointed out that there is a natural barrier that prevents the transmission of the virus directly to humans, which makes it "illogical" - according to him - that the virus be transmitted to humans in a laboratory from bats directly by mistake.