Her work shows a curious pattern of deception tracing through her publications from 2013 to 2020 in which a key source for the coronavirus most closely related to COVID-19 was concealed.
In 2002, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus named SARS resulted in the deaths of 774 people worldwide. Investigations quickly established that the virus spread from bats to civets and then on to people.
The SARS outbreak would prove to shape Shi’s career, moving from field research to work in level 2 biosafety labs before culminating in gain-of-function experiments in China’s first and only level-4 lab in Wuhan.
Her search for the originating source of the SARS outbreak began in 2004, when she joined an international team of researchers to collect samples from bats in Southern China.
Shi’s early research and work was captured in a 2005 article in which she reported that “that species of bats are a natural host of coronaviruses closely related to those responsible for the SARS outbreak.”
Shi and her team would continue their search for the source of the 2002 outbreak for years and the samples her team collected were sent back to Wuhan for analysis and further experimentation.
On Dec. 12, 2007, Shi and her team published a paper in the Journal of Virology that showed how viruses could be manipulated to infect and attack human cells using an HIV-based pseudovirus. This experiment, funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was the first indication that Shi’s Wuhan laboratory was acquiring the technologies and skills required to manipulate viruses collected in the wild.
In June 2010, Shi co-authored a paper showing that her team had built on the 2007 experiments by manipulating additional bat virus specimens and testing their interactions with human SARS-CoV spike proteins. They found that “alteration of several key residues either decreased or enhanced bat ACE2 receptor efficiency.” The study was again funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2011 and 2012, Shi and her team conducted a “12-month longitudinal survey” of a colony of horseshoe bats “at a single location in Kunming city, Yunnan province, China.” This single location was Shitou Cave.
While Shi and her team were conducting their survey at Shitou Cave, an unrelated group of six workers began clearing bat excrement from a copper mine shaft in Mojiang, Yunnan—approximately 200 miles away from Shi’s group—according to The Sunday Times.
In April 2012, according to The Wall Street Journal, these six workers became seriously ill from a pneumonia-like disease that resulted in the deaths of three of the men. Notably, all of the public reports state that the mine shaft was abandoned, but none of these same reports explain why the six miners were there to clean the shaft out.
There was no media mention of this strange, isolated outbreak, and as the Sunday Times notes, there “appears to have been a media blackout” surrounding the entire incident.
Shi and her team, fortuitously already in the region during this new outbreak, abruptly shifted both their focus and location and spent the next two years collecting samples from bats located in the mine at the Mojiang location.
A virus allegedly found in one of these samples was later revealed to be the closest known match to the virus that causes COVID-19.
The finding of this particular viral sample appears to have been akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Although the Mojiang location turned up vast amounts of coronaviruses, only one of them resembled SARS and was reportedly found in a single fecal sample. Shi’s team named the virus RaBtCoV/4991.
Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, confirmed the fortuitous finding to The Sunday Times, stating that “It was just one of the 16,000 bats we sampled. It was a faecal sample, we put it in a tube, put it in liquid nitrogen, took it back to the lab. We sequenced a short fragment.”
It is not known with certainty if Daszak, who used funding from the National Institutes of Health to provide the Wuhan Institute of Virology with grants to research bat coronaviruses, was present at the Mojiang Mine site, but he is a co-author of a paper describing the group’s findings.
Shi Zheng-li’s Conflicting Scientific Articles
The more complete tale unfolds in an examination of five articles in Western science journals which Shi and her research collaborators published between 2013 and 2020.
An Oc. 30, 2013, paper written by Shi and Daszak highlighted the first-ever “isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor.”
Their paper noted that their “results provide the strongest evidence to date that Chinese horseshoe bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV, and that intermediate hosts may not be necessary for direct human infection by some bat SL-CoVs.”
In other words, their 2013 paper specifically noted the possibility of direct transmission to humans from bats.
The paper also referred to the “first recorded isolation” of a live SARS-like coronavirus known as WIV1—apparently shorthand for Wuhan Institute of Virology 1. The virus was isolated from fecal samples taken from the horseshoe bats.
By this time, Shi had spent almost two years collecting bat samples from the Mojiang Mine. In her scientific papers, notably, no mention is made of the mine, the 2012 outbreak, nor of the miners or their deaths.
As their 2013 paper notes, the group claimed that all their results came from a “single location in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China”—the location of Shitou Cave.
More specifically, Shi’s 2013 paper, along with a follow-up paper in November 2015, appeared to intentionally conceal her years-long work at the Mojiang Mine along with the crucial fact that the mine—not the bat cave in Kunming—was the true source for what would become known as the closest relative to virus that causes COVID-19.
The 2015 article written by Shi, along with Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina and others, revisited the presence of the virus in horseshoe bats. Notably, the article does not directly specify the location where the virus was sourced, but instead uses a footnote to reference the 2013 article, which claimed that the source came from a “single location in Kunming”—the location of Shitou Cave.
The paper noted that “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.” The researchers observed that some of the viruses they found “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells.”
The researchers stated that their work “suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.”
But again, just like her 2013 article, no reference to the Mojiang Mine as the actual source was made.
However, within less than three months, in a follow-up to the November 2015 paper, Shi and her team acknowledged in a February 2016 article that they had “conducted a surveillance of coronaviruses in bats in an abandoned mineshaft in Mojiang County, Yunnan Province, China, from 2012–2013.”
In this same article, Shi admitted that she obtained a virus called RaBtCoV/4991 from 276 bat fecal probes that “were sampled in a mineshaft in Mojiang.” As we now know, the RaBtCoV/4991 virus has been shown to be the closest known match to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Shi in early February 2020 renamed this same virus as RaTG13—just as the COVID-19 pandemic started.
A database of bat viruses published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences—the parent body of the Wuhan Institute of Virology—confirms that the RaBtCoV/4991 virus was “discovered on July 24, 2013, as part of a collection of coronaviruses that were described in the 2016 paper on the abandoned mine,” The Times reported.
The Chinese database specifically references Shi’s Feb. 18, 2016, paper, which makes note of the mineshaft in Mojiang, along with the discovery of multiple coronaviruses—including the new SARS-like strain—but makes no mention of the 2012 respiratory outbreak, nor of the resulting deaths of the miners.
In 2017, Shi and her team would once again shift focus away from the Mojiang Mine and back to Shitou Cave, claiming that “We have carried out a five-year longitudinal surveillance (April 2011 to October 2015) on SARSr-CoVs in bats from a single habitat in proximity to Kunming city, Yunnan province, China”—the region where Shitou Cave is located.
For reasons yet unknown, any mention of the Mojiang Mine where Shi and her team spent two years collecting bat samples culminating in the discovery of the closest known relative to COVID-19 was once again conspicuously omitted.
One of Shi’s co-authors on the 2017 and 2013 articles, Lin-Fa Wang, has since come to prominence as a vocal proponent of the natural origins theory. Wang, a member of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Response Team for the COVID-19 outbreak, discussed the issue of funding with National Geographic in June 2020, noting that when it comes to infectious diseases, “people never realize there’s a huge return.” Wang continued, stating that “when we have prevented small outbreaks, people don’t care. It doesn’t get media attention.”
Wang, who has been collaborating with Shi since at least 2005, finished by asking a question called to mind the 2012 outbreak at the Mojiang Mine:
“In Wuhan, if three people died and it was controlled, would we know it? No. This is happening all the time, it’s just in remote villages where people die. You bury them and end of the story, right?”
Of the many articles written regarding their multi-year work, only the 2016 piece acknowledges the existence of the Mojiang Mine. And, again, nowhere does Shi or her team make any mention of the actual outbreak and the deaths of three of six infected miners.
Shi’s years-long possession of the virus found in the Mojiang Mine was suddenly highlighted on Feb. 3, 2020, when Shi and her collaborators published a new article, stating that scientists at the Wuhan lab had a close match to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Shi called this virus RaTG13, a name that had not previously appeared in any of her articles. The 2020 article was notably vague about the origins of this new virus, simply stating that it “was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province.” As independent researchers later found out by comparing genome sequences from archived Chinese databases, the virus that Shi referenced in 2020 was actually RaBtCoV/4991, the virus that was taken from the Mojiang Mine back in 2012 and written about in 2016.
In November 2020, as more facts were uncovered in relation to the virus’s origin, Shi suddenly added an addendum to her February 2020 article, finally admitting that COVID-19’s closest known relative had come from the Mojiang Mine. Shi, however, referred to the Mojiang Mine as a “mine-cave” and “cave,” once again blurring the lines between the Mojiang Mine and the Shitou cave located 200 miles away.
In this addendum, Shi acknowledged that she had renamed the virus from RaBtCoV/4991 to RaTG13, supposedly in order to “reflect the bat species.” However, both the previous designation and the new designation carry the letters “RA”, which stand for Rhinolophus affinis, the Latin term for intermediate horseshoe bats.
Notably, Shi’s 2020 article also alleged that the pandemic had “started from a local seafood market.” That false claim, which has been disproven, was not addressed in Shi’s addendum.
Although it is not yet known precisely why Shi obscured the true origins of RaBtCov/4911 and obfuscated her 2013 discovery, it is undeniable that Shi quietly kept the closest known relative to COVID-19 in her Wuhan lab for at least seven years and failed to address her discovery’s true origins.
Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke are co-hosts of the program Truth Over News on EPOCH TV.
News (3) to (11) / Hosts : Qin Peng, Sydney / https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/21/6/28/n13054186.htm / Translation : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA
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News (12)
The U.S. "woke up like a dream" to the CCP, but there are four major differences between Biden and Trump to China
"US-China Relations" has been an important area for our program to discuss news events for a long time. In the later period of Trump's administration, the United States has been tough on the CCP in an all-round way. This is something that has never happened since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Former Secretary of State Pompeo’s Chief China Policy and Planning Adviser Yu Maochun, in a recent interview with Voice of America, emphasized that the Trump administration’s policy towards the CCP is based on a consensus across the United States, and this consensus, It is a "wake up like a dream" of the CCP's various practices.
What is waking up like a dream? Yu Maochun cited some examples. For example, the CCP's cruel suppression of people of faith and ethnic minorities, it is impossible for the United States to change it by talking about "peace" with the CCP. In addition, the United States and the CCP have talked about equal trade and stopped large-scale theft of American industrial and military technology. However, after decades of talking about it, the CCP has not changed it. All this has become a "fantasy" of the United States. Therefore, it is impossible for the United States to be "friendly" to the CCP to change the behavior of the CCP, Yu Maochun thinks so.
As for the current Biden administration, since the United States has changed its attitude towards the CCP, a broad consensus has been formed. So far, Biden has continued Trump’s “most” strategy towards the CCP. However, his attitude towards the CCP Strategic positioning is still quite different from Trump. Ryan Hass, a senior foreign policy researcher at The Brookings Institution, an American think tank, pointed out four differences between Biden and Trump’s strategies for the CCP.
First, Biden no longer discusses the complete decoupling of the U.S. and China economies.
Second, no longer believe that the United States and the CCP are incompatible in the world.
Third, Biden does not regard the CCP as an "enemy," but as a so-called "competitor."
Fourth, Biden has resumed diplomatic cooperation with the CCP in some areas, including climate issues and Afghanistan issues.
News (13)
The key reason for the leftist’s anti-communism, but it will allow the CCP to "exist" Biden looks forward to dialogue
Therefore, judging from the above four points, the Biden administration’s policy foothold towards the CCP has changed a lot compared to Trump, and it is more “fundamental”. And his continuation of "most" Trump policies is just some specific actions on the surface. If we follow Trump’s direction at the time, it is possible for the United States to embark on a path of complete "destroying communism." According to Biden's current strategy, judging from the above four "different" points, it seems that he can still tolerate it. The continued existence of the CCP only requires the CCP to change its practices.
What should be changed? We just mentioned a term called “consensus.” Let’s not talk about the American people. Let’s just talk about the U.S. Democrats and leftists who are now in power. They have a relatively unfavorable “consensus” against the CCP. According to the American media, the CCP is currently What is embarking on is an "authoritarian" model, which poses the most severe challenge and threat to the United States since World War II. And this is what Biden and the American leftist politicians hope to suppress the CCP, and because of this, they have continued most of the “concrete practices” that restrict the CCP during Trump’s period, including CCP companies that continue to participate in unfair competition. Being blacklisted, showing friendship with Taiwan, getting closer, and so on.
But as we mentioned earlier, this continuation is only the superficial strategy of the Trump administration, not the fundamental goal. Essentially, the footing has changed, it has become softer, and in the eyes of many people, it is not thorough enough.
This change is not only being promoted by Biden and his policymakers, but also by some leftist politicians in the United States who are proposing and promoting changes in Trump's strategy towards the CCP. Take the big left in the US Senate, for example, Bernie Sanders, who publicly declared himself a socialist. He recently published a signed article in the "Foreign Affairs" magazine, and his views in the article represent the thinking of a small group of people in Washington, DC.
Bernie Sanders said that since the CCP’s accession to the World Trade Organization in the past 20 years, the U.S.’s view of the CCP has shifted from an optimistic extreme to an “overly hawkish” extreme. Regarding China-China relations as a "zero-sum game" of economic and military struggles, it is disturbing and dangerous. He called on the United States not to try to fight the "new cold war" with the Chinese Communists, but to "focus on itself." I think this Bernie Sanders is either confused, or he is holding a banknote from the CCP when he is talking.
What is meant by "focusing on oneself"? How is this different from the CCP's war wolf scolding the United States, saying that the United States should manage itself and not interfere in the CCP's internal affairs? Over the past few decades, the United States has been appeasing the CCP, in exchange for the CCP’s all-round penetration and knowledge theft. Geopolitical, it has also continuously threatened neighboring countries, regional security, and U.S. interests in the world, as Yu Maochun said just now. , It will not change at all when it is soft to the CCP.
If something like this is not treated hard, but "focused on itself" as this Bernie Sanders said, then there are more countries in the United States, and in the end, it may only be crying.
So just now, this is about the Biden administration’s China policy, which is different from the Trump administration. I have talked so much. And this difference can be a thousand miles away if you miss a little bit. Trump is an all-out confrontation, and Biden's policy does not rule out the illusion of the CCP. This is due to the Biden team, and it may also be related to the fact that some leftists in the United States are waving the flag for the CCP. According to the latest news, after a series of intensive communication with Western allies, the Biden administration is currently promoting the resumption of "high-level dialogue" with the CCP.
Although the upcoming G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, the meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was denied by the U.S. State Department, the Biden administration still plans to send Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to visit China in the near future and also consider Biden. A brief meeting with Xi Jinping in Italy in October this year. The dialogue between the Biden administration, at present, does not look like Kissinger, breaking the ice for the United States and the CCP, because they do not have the conditions of the times.
However, the so-called "three points of love when meeting each other", as the saying goes when used in diplomacy, is also "speaking rough but not rough". As you know, during the Trump era, the CCP did not change, and the United States refused to talk to you and isolated you internationally. Now that there is a dialogue, there may be both "sticks" and "sweet dates." Be careful not to be caught by the CCP again.
On June 25, US Secretary of State Blinken visited France. This was one of his seven-day trips to Europe. The main purpose of this trip to Europe was also the so-called "to prevent the CCP’s totalitarian system from dictating the world order." France said that the CCP’s order is extremely narrow in nature, and that they will step forward once the current democratic, free and open world order is challenged by the CCP. But this is the future tense, right? This is the present progressive tense. The CCP has been challenging the free world order. It has ravaged Hong Kong. Western countries should have "stepped forward" long ago, but what did they do? In fact, it is very limited.
Blinken also said that the goal of the United States is not to contain the CCP, not to establish an anti-CCP policy, but to support the rules and systems established by the free countries after World War II. What Blincoln said is in line with what we just said, that is, compared to Trump, the Biden administration is obviously weaker than the CCP.
And what Brinken said in France can also make a prediction for the possible future high-level dialogue between the United States and China that Biden is promoting. That is, if they want to talk to Beijing, it is very likely that they only want the CCP to "converge" instead of exerting extreme pressure on the CCP. In fact, this kind of "dialogue" is a "common problem" of many politicians in the United States. This is the most useless form of diplomacy.
Just like before, American politicians always promoted talks with North Korea and talked about the North Korean nuclear issue, but in the end it had little effect. Regimes such as North Korea and Iran all agreed on the surface, and they should do what they should do behind the scenes. The dialogue with the CCP, I think that in the end, it will be painless or itchy, and nothing will stop.
This comparison shows that the Trump era's "extreme pressure" and "strength for peace" strategies are more effective. You will be beaten if you are disobedient, but rogue countries are afraid of being beaten, so they will do the last thing." Be good, at least on the surface.
News (14)
Manpower cannot go against the "historical trend" Trump rally confirms an important truth
However, one thing is certain. No matter what, the "US-China relationship" will definitely not be able to go back. This has also been recognized by American think tank scholars. This is caused by the development of the entire historical tide. This "trend" transcends the political situation as well as the arrangement of any political figure. Now is the time when the world is awakening to the CCP, and when the CCP has serious internal and external troubles, no one can save it, and anyone who wants to change this historical tide cannot change it.
Yu Maochun also said a sentence to the effect that what the United States wants to deal with the CCP, whether it is a Cold War, or other forms of confrontation, does not depend on the United States, but on the CCP itself. The CCP itself is madly running naked at the end of the day. The current various practices are also the way it has chosen the outside world to treat it, including the United States.
On June 26, Trump held his first rally after leaving office in Wellington, Ohio. The rally was overwhelming. I'm not just talking about the scene, but also the Internet. For example, at a media broadcast rally, more than 180,000 people were waiting online before Trump appeared. The venue is limited. According to a report by the American media Gateway Pundit, there were at least two thousand people, which exceeded the expected number of people in the venue. In the entire 2020 U.S. election campaign for Biden, the total number of spectators at the previous rallies was less than 2,000. At the rally, Trump continued to tell the truth about the 2020 election and declared that he would retake Congress and the United States.
Compared with Biden's very few viewers at each event, Trump's huge popularity naturally explains the problem. Many people in the United States are still on Trump's side. And one of the mainstream opinions of Trump supporters throughout the United States is to treat the CCP hard. I think everyone has discovered this situation. Their position is similar to that of many people who see the CCP clearly.
And such people exist among the Trump voters who actually occupy the majority in the United States, among you and me, and among more and more people around the world who are awakened to the CCP, including the Chinese. When this state is reached , Isn’t this still a historical trend? This is actually the case.
News (15)
Australia reorganizes special forces, British media reveals the three methods of maintaining CCP's rule
Everyone sees that some allies of the United States are also taking the initiative to defend against the CCP, such as Australia. Now the Australian Department of Defense is reorganizing special forces. Australia is vast and sparsely populated, and its defense capabilities cannot be compared with many Western countries. However, it is now paying more and more attention to national defense construction. Who is the target of defense? Obviously, it is the CCP.
The media in the world now generally reflect on the understanding of the CCP, which was not common a few years ago. For example, on June 26, the British "The Economist" published a front-page article that unceremoniously pointed out: The CCP has always claimed to be Wei Guangzheng. Without the authorization of the people, it has ruled China for 72 years, but it is still better than the former Soviet Union. The Communist Party’s ruling time is short. The article even mentioned: No political party can live forever.
The report of "The Economist" analyzed the three methods used by the CCP to maintain its rule: first, it is cold-blooded and cruel, to make the people surrender and suppress them without mercy; second, to exercise ideological control; and third, to give the people something to do. Don't be sweet, lie to you, but all the party congressmen are super rich. The pitiful thing was that Little Pink was so grateful that she shared a little bit of the leftovers leftover by others.
Just like in the period of Cao Wei, General Cao Shuang was pretended to be sick by Sima Yi, and was taken down by a coup. He was put under house arrest and was put under house arrest. Cao Shuang was still grateful to Sima Yi because he was given "meat" to eat during the house arrest, but what happened? ? Full of copy cuts. In other words, some people are under "house arrest" and are still very grateful to the person who kidnapped him. In fact, it is a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome.
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