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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis: 1) Pandemic caused by bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--city 1,000 km from nearest wild bats with SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
4:31 PM · Jan 17, 2023·
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
·
Jan 17
Replying to
@R_H_Ebright
2) In 2015-2017, scientists and science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was conducting and contemplating research that posed an unacceptable risk of lab accident and pandemic (https://nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487…; https://nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787…).
nature.com
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Nature - Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
3) In 2017-2018, WIV constructed a novel chimeric SARS-like coronavirus that was able to infect and replicate in human airway cells and that had 10,000x enhanced viral growth and 4x enhanced lethality in mice engineered to display human receptors on cells.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
4) In 2018, in an NIH grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct more novel chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses, targeting chimeras that replace natural spike gene with novel spike genes encoding spikes that have higher binding affinities to human cells.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
5) Also in 2018, in a DARPA grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct novel "consensus" bat SARS-like coronaviruses, and to insert furin cleavage site (FCS) sequences at the spike gene S1-S2 border of bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
6) In 2017-2019, WIV constructed and characterized novel SARS-like coronaviruses at biosafety level 2, a biosafety level patently inadequate for work with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and patently inadequate to contain a virus having transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
7) In 2019 a novel SARS-like coronavirus having a spike with high binding affinity for human cells, and having an FCS at the spike S1-S2 border--a virus having the properties set forth in the 2018 WIV NIH and DARPA grant proposals--emerges on the doorstep of WIV.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
8) SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of more than 100 known SARS-like coronaviruses that contains an FCS. This is a feature that does not rule out a natural origin, but that is more easily explained by a lab origin. Especially since insertion of FCS had been explicitly proposed in 2018.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
9) The FCS of SARS-CoV-2 has codon usage unusual for bat SARS-related coronaviruses and has an 8-of-8 amino-acid-sequence identity to the FCS of human ENaCa. These are features that do not rule out a natural origin, but that are more--much more--easily explained by a lab origin.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
10) In 2020-present, WIV and its funders/collaborators at EcoHealth Alliance have withheld information, misrepresented facts, and obstructed investigation...even though, if not connected to origin, they most easily could clear their name though cooperation with investigation.
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
All statements in all posts are demonstrable facts. Sources for posts 1-2 include the following: 1) Shi Zhengli interview at https://science.org/pb-assets/PDF/News%20PDFs/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q&A-1630433861.pdf… 2) https://nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487…; https://nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787… 3) NIH documents at https://theintercept.com/document/2021/09/08/understanding-the-risk-of-bat-coronavirus-emergence/… and https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Year-5-EHAv.pdf…
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
·
Jan 17
Sources for posts 4-7 include the following: 4) NIH documents at https://theintercept.com/document/2021/09/08/understanding-the-risk-of-bat-coronavirus-emergence/… 5) DARPA documents at https://documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal… 6) Shi Zhengli interview at https://science.org/pb-assets/PDF/News%20PDFs/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q&A-1630433861.pdf… 7) https://nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7…
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
Sources for posts 8-10 include the following: 8-9) https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119… 10) NIH documents at https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/January-2022-EHA-SAC-CAP-letter-final1.pdf…; https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NIH-EHA-Production-8.19.22.pdf…
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
More complete information, and more sources, are provide in Appendix 1 of US Senate testimony at https://hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ebright%20Testimony%20Updated.pdfLinks…
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Richard H. Ebright
@R_H_Ebright
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Jan 17
(Re-upping a September 7, 2022 thread for the post-shadowbanning era.)
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