Is Beijing preparing another pandemic? Corona research continues

Chinese virologists are trying their luck again with research known as "gain-of-function". Last month, they succeeded in creating a potentially lethal virus that, according to their study, "shows potential for interspecies infection".

Gain-of-function experiments involve scientists artificially boosting certain properties of a virus, such as its contagiousness or the rate at which cultures multiply, and then studying these boosted effects.

Although this type of research is ostentatiously presented as preparation for possible future mutations, its danger to humans has been assessed as too high by former US President Barack Obama, who in October 2014 stopped federal funding for all laboratories that study viruses in this way.

On 19 November this year, researchers at the Guangzhou lab published a study in which they essentially admitted to continuing their controversial "bat coronavirus" research, which is similar to that known from the Wuhan Virological Institute.

Although this thesis was never definitively proven, the institute in the eponymous city became a suspected site in late 2019 from which the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus likely escaped and caused a pandemic - i.e., a disease of global proportions.

The coronavirus is not just one

The COVID-19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is not the only representative of the coronavirus family. However, it is most commonly transmitted among animals, particularly bats. Therefore, the so-called wet market in Wuhan was initially considered as the first outbreak of bat-to-human transmission of covid.

For a long time, Beijing concealed the data from the institute and continuously led the attention of the World Health Organization (WHO) to the wet market. For several years, the Lab Leak theory was considered "conspiratorial," and social media blocked users who spread it.

As early as June 2022, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reportedly admitted that Lab Leak is a theory that has a logical basis and he personally believes it, although he has come out in public as a proponent of covid transmission to humans from bats or scavengers (pangolin).

In addition to the virus that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic between 2002 and 2004, there is at least one other form that threatens humans. This is the form of MERS-CoV that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome. The first outbreaks occurred in Saudi Arabia or Jordan, but the most cases were reported in South Korea in 2015.

In November this year, the Chinese bred a new strain, which they named SADS-CoV. Its manifestation is said to be 'Swine Acute Diarrhoea Syndrome' (SADS). However, the research team led by Yun Lu integrated the bat coronavirus gene into the genome of this virus.

This resulted in a ten-thousand-fold increase in virulence [the ability to transmit and multiply in an infected person, ed.], noted the Berliner Zeitung, which quoted from the study.

Diarrhoea in animals is no exception, with some coronaviruses causing digestive and intestinal problems in dogs, cats, pigs, cattle and poultry.

The German newspaper recalled that the study was conducted under safety conditions "comparable to those in a dental office", which is type-approved BSL-2. It therefore offers the possibility of a repeat of the December 2019 scenario, when the virus causing COVID-19 was apparently leaked.

The role of the US NGO

As an investigative report by the Daily Wire pointed out three years ago, the Wuhan Virological Institute has received approximately six million dollars from the NGO EcoHealth Alliance (ECA).

The NGO falls into the "quango" category. This is the term used by Anglo-Saxon countries to describe a 'quasi-NGO', a quasi-non-governmental organisation that is linked both personally and financially to a government agency.

The ECA was linked to the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which since Ronald Reagan has been headed by the now infamous Anthony Fauci. He became the main coordinator of pandemic management during Donald Trump's first administration.

The result was therefore a situation in which a US government office directly under the Department of Health used a 'quasi-governmental' agency to fund banned research abroad. This was one of the reasons why Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, became the target of massive criticism for 'preventive amnesties'.

Fauci's amnesty involved a man believed to have controlled the financial flows that resulted in a worldwide contagion with seven million deaths in two years.

Now the Chinese are once again trying to get results in the research that apparently caused this pandemic. Yun Luo and his team have even taken the liberty of appointing a former scientist from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"In the acknowledgements of the study, Zheng-li Shi is mentioned and is recognized for her contribution to research and experimental results. As the former head of the Wuhan Virological Institute's laboratory, she played a key role in virus research and was nicknamed 'Batwoman' by the media," the Berliner Zeitung newspaper recalled, noting that the virologist is now based at a laboratory in Guangzhou.

According to the Berlin newspaper, it was Zheng-li Shi who led the original SARS-CoV-2 research. She is still working in her controversial and dangerous for humanity job under unsafe conditions.

"This research has no civilian use," warned the American microbiologist Richard H. Ebright on the X network. "The only potential products of this research are weapons of mass destruction."