US Senate, full lab leak report

Lab leak, US senate report

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/18/coronavirus-covid-origin-wuhan-lab-us-senate-report/

The 300-page report, released to Axios

Pandemic, most likely "research-related incident" in Wuhan

WIV may have begun developing two Covid vaccines in November 2019

"means SARS-CoV-2 would have been present at the WIV before the known outbreak of the pandemic."

Theory that Covid-19 jumped from animals to humans in a market, no longer deserved "presumption of accuracy"

Advocates of natural transmission theory, "must provide clear and convincing evidence" for their argument.

"The preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident, that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research."

Only one place, only one time

“In short, human errors, mechanical failure, animal bites, animal escapes, inadequate training, insufficient funding, and pressure for results can lead to an escape of virulent pathogens, which could, in turn, infect animals and humans and lead to a release of a virus from a lab."

Richard Burr report from last October

https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/report_an_analysis_of_the_origins_of_covid-19_102722.pdf

FBI Director Christopher Wray (Feb 2023)

"most likely" resulted from a potential lab leak in Wuhan

Department of Energy

Full 300 page document

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23780776-mwg-fdr-document-04-16-23

MWG executive summary, April 16 2023

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23780771-mwg-executive-summary-april-16-2023

Epidemiology Favors (Early) Mid October-Early November Emergence

China’s official position is that the COVID-19 outbreak began no earlier than December 8, 2019.
An increase in adult Influenza-Like-Illness (ILI) accompanied by negative results,

statistically significantly higher than reported in the previous 5 years

Eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and additional academic studies, car parking, internet searches

October to November 2019

“By mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season.

The disease worsened in November.”

Several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, loss of smell and ground-glass opacities in his lungs

Precedent of Zoonotic Spillovers & Likelihood of an Animal Origin

Failed animal-to-human transmissions, or “dead-end” spillovers,

typically leave behind serological evidence.

It would be expected that environmental samples collected from wet markets that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 would likely show evidence of animal genetic adaptation.

China CDC

Analyzed 1,380 samples, environment (923) animals (457)

73 SARS-CoV-2 positive environmental samples.

None of the samples taken from the 18 animal species found in the market were positive for SARS- CoV-2.

The three live viruses were sequenced, 99.980% to 99.993% similarity with human isolates

Unlike the 2003 SARS outbreak, H7N9 influenza, (China March 2013)

Multiple independent viral introductions, time and place

China, no infection or positive serological sample(s) of any susceptible animal prior to the recognized outbreak.

Plausibility of a Research-related Incident & Laboratory-acquired infections
Professor Yusen Zhou of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) filed a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020

“uncertainties” surrounding the death of Prof Zhou, (died spring 2020)

Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) might have been selling laboratory animals for human consumption

WIV, experimenting on palm civets

(29 per month were sold at the 17 wet markets in Wuhan)

(January 3, 2020, a professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing was sentenced for corruption, and for selling animals and animal products after laboratory experiments)
Summation of Events Leading to the Pandemic

EcoHealth Alliance with the WIV, Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses

These experiments could create chimeric SARS-related viruses with Furin cleavage sites unknown in nature

Wuhan scientists filed 13 patents to improve biosecurity in the six months before the pandemic

E.g maintaining airtight seals on doors, ways of improving sterilisers and air filters

Scientists were working with centrifuges that could have sprayed the virus into the air

On November 19, 2019, Wuhan scientists were to attend mandatory biosecurity training

Taught by official from the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Session followed by remedial biosafety training course for WIV researchers

Wuhan officials carried out an emergency airport drill on Sept 18, 2019, to identify passengers infected with novel coronavirus

China’s National People’s Congress drafted legislation to strengthen the management of laboratories

Pandemic may have been started by two spillover events, two weeks apart,

minor genetic differences in early circulating strains, suggesting two lineages

Mid-October to mid-November 2019

WIV collected 20,000 bat and animal samples by 2019, but did not disclose all of the viruses

Before 2019, the WIV published sequences in a public database, taken offline in September 2019