Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

Summary: The Case for a Lab Leak, from a Sunday Times investigation (C):

(1) The institute sought funding to research something (A), which Covid could result from. (Said later they didn't do the planned research), but funding from the military appears to have been given.

(1.1) They planned to do the research at the time and approximate place where Covid later emerged.

(2) Protections at the lab were not what they should have been.

(2.2) Lab scientists had previously created a highly infectious super-coronavirus (not Covid-19) with a very high kill-rate that in all probability would never have emerged in nature. Their tests showed no known (at that time) way to effectively limit its spread were it to leak.

(3) NO animal testing was reported in a wide vicinity around the the Hunan market. Samples of Covid found in the market were NOT from animals (B).

(3.1) The market is a busy place in the center of the city where the virus would almost certainly be once it's spreading between people.

(3.2) There is some evidence that researchers from the lab were hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019, and one of their relatives died.

(4) The biggest hotspot of people reporting illness via social media (in the month before the province was locked down on January 23) was at the institute, though this was partly hidden in initial reports. The first case in Britain was recorded a week later.

(A) The Wuhan Institute of Virology sought funding for inserting a furin cleavage site. The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan Seafood market.

(B) In January 2020, Chinese officials cleared the market without testing live animals. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 was from environmental samples (animal cage, hair-and-feather–removal machine, etc). Covid-susceptible animals were present but NOT tested. The study of those samples was criticized for not having any animal samples.

(C) Information above drawn from archive.ph/L2BSO and comments and links here in this HN thread.

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"The Sunday Times has reviewed hundreds of documents, including previously confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence that has been obtained through sources or by freedom of information campaigners in the three years since the pandemic started. We also interviewed the US State Department investigators — including experts on China, emerging pandemic threats, and biowarfare — who conducted the first significant US inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 outbreak. The closest relatives to Covid known were too far from Covid to have developed into Covid on their own in a short time. So bringing in dangerous viruses and accidentally leaking them is an unlikely cause." Earlier reporting by the Times: archive.ph/Mkqox

Genome statistical estimates indicate the "relatives" are decades away from Covid. In February 2020, RaTG13 was identified as the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, sharing 96.1% nucleotide identity. It was found near the town of Tongguan in Mojiang county in Yunnan, China. However, in 2022, scientists found three closer matches 530 km south, in Feuang, Laos, designated as BANAL-52 (96.8% identity), BANAL-103 and BANAL-236. However, it is alleged that one virus at the Wuhan institute was an even closer match to Covid-19 than RaTG13. Note that bat viruses had never been known to harm humans. Intermediate animals apparently catching a virus from bats and passing it to humans had been known to happen.

In the lead-up to the pandemic, the Wuhan institute frequently experimented on coronaviruses alongside the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a research arm of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In published papers, military scientists are listed as working for the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, which is the military academy’s base.

Overly-speculative information supporting a lab leak:

"Scientists with close relationships with the Wuhan Institute of Virology said it was their belief that there was vaccine research going on in the fall of 2019, pertinent to Covid-19 vaccination"

"Investigators believe the Chinese military had taken an interest in developing a vaccine for the viruses so they could be used as potential bioweapons. If a country could inoculate its population against its own secret virus, it might have a weapon to shift the balance of world power."

In May 2020, one of the key researchers died from unconfirmed causes at age 54.

"On November 19, the safety director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made a visit, according to the institute’s website. He addressed a meeting of the institute’s leadership with important 'oral and written' instructions from China’s president, Xi Jinping, regarding 'a complex and grave situation'. "

"In the first months of the pandemic, many Chinese scientists visited bat caves in Yunnan to see whether they could find a place where Covid may have originated.... 7 scientists attempting to visit were told the Moijang mine (known source of at least one Covid-like coronavirus) was closed, so they sampled bats in another abandoned copper mine nearby. On the first day of their work, police arrived, seized the samples and took them to their station, where they were interrogated and detained for 48 hours. Officers also went to their hotel and seized the samples they had collected from elsewhere. Even though the team had approval to test in the area, they were ordered to leave. Searching for bat viruses was banned in Yunnan in early 2021"

If I reversed it and said “this can’t be a lab leak because lab leaks never happen,” would that be okay? They’re certainly rarer than serious cases of flu among adults in the age range.

It’s a contentious, difficult debate. I do actually think it’s bad to dismiss arguments you disagree with with casual rhetoric.

They may cover up something completely orthogonal to Covid. For example, they may cover up a corruption scheme, to steal money granted for research, or they acted as proxy for Russians, to spy at USA, or they mismanaged facility and leaked virus from the lab in Wuhan second time, AFTER the initial outbreak (1.5-2.5 month of delay between projected start of epidemic in mid-September-mid-October and start of epidemic in Wuhan in December must be explained somehow), etc.

If that rhetorical device led me to research and discover reputable data suggesting the frequency of such occurrences was indeed so minuscule as to be disregarded entirely, I’d welcome it upsetting my preconceived notions.