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#Covid19 #Pandemic
#US Intel agencies scour reams of genetic data from #Wuhan lab in Covid origins hunt

Source: CNN #Aug5

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https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/30728
#Covid19 #Pandemic
#US Intel agencies scour reams of genetic data from #Wuhan lab in Covid origins hunt

//US intelligence agencies are digging through a treasure trove of genetic data that could be key to uncovering the origins of the coronavirus -- as soon as they can decipher it.

This giant catalog of information contains genetic blueprints drawn from virus samples studied at the lab in Wuhan, China which some officials believe may have been the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, multiple people familiar with the matter tell CNN...

Officials conducting the 90-day review hope this information will help answer the question of how the virus jumped from animals to humans. Unlocking that mystery is essential to ultimately determining whether Covid-19 leaked from the lab or was transmitted to humans from animals in the wild...

Investigators both inside and outside the government have long sought genetic data from 22,000 virus samples that were being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That data was removed from the internet by Chinese officials in September 2019, and China has since refused to turn over this and other raw data on early coronavirus cases to the World Health Organization and the US.

The question for investigators is whether the WIV or other labs in China possessed virus samples or other contextual information that could help them trace the coronavirus' evolutionary history.

For now, senior intelligence officials still say that they are genuinely split between the two prevailing theories on the pandemic's origins, or some combination of both scenarios. CNN reported last month that senior Biden administration officials overseeing the 90-day review now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory.//

Source: CNN #Aug5

Read full article:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/05/politics/covid-origins-genetic-data-wuhan-lab/index.html

#CovidOrigin #MadeinChina #Investigation #WuhanPneumonia #WuhanLab
China should provide raw data on pandemic's origins - WHO's Tedros

The head of the World Health Organisation said on Thursday that investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China were being hampered by the lack of raw data on the first days of spread there and urged it to be more transparent.

A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers and said in a joint report in March that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal.

It said that "introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway", but countries including the United States and some scientists were not satisfied.

Source: Reuters #Jul16

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-china-idUSKBN2EL1HY

#China #WHO #Covid19 #Pandemic #Wuhan
Lack of COVID-19 Raw Data in China Hinders the Investigation,
Tedros Adhanom: Virus Leakage From a Laboratory Has Not Yet Excluded


The pandemic has spread for over one and a half years. The WHO specialist team published a report in March indicating that the Covid-19 virus was “extremely unlikely” leaked from the laboratory. Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the WHO, said on 15 July that the lack of raw data of the early epidemic situation in China affected the origin investigation. The claim of the virus outbreak due to the laboratory leak was excluded too early. He pointed out that he was an immunologist, and it is common to have accidents in the laboratory. The investigation of the source of the pandemic is important. In addition to preventing the next pandemic, it is also necessary to be responsible for millions of people who died in the pandemic.

Tedros Adhanom pointed out that the conclusion came too fast after publishing the report in March as China has not provided any original data to the specialist group yet. He then called for a continuous deep investigation. He reiterated a similar point of view at the press conference yesterday and hoped that China would cooperate to provide comprehensive information. It is too early to exclude the probability of the virus leakage from the Wuhan laboratory without sufficient information.

Source: Stand News #Jul16

https://bit.ly/2WTX7bn

#China #WHO #Wuhan #TedrosAdhanom #COVID19 #leakage #WHO
Fauci says it's 'negligent' not to fund research at Wuhan lab, suggests collaboration with China continue

Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested that it would’ve been “negligent” for the National Institutes of Health not to fund bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and declined to commit not to collaborate with Chinese government scientists in the future, insisting that “we have always been careful.”

Last week, Sen. Rand Paul requested Attorney General Merrick Garland criminally investigate Fauci over his Senate testimony, during which he said the NIH never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, which the Kentucky Republican says is a lie. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, insists the NIH grants did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

Source: Washington examiner #Jul25

https://washex.am/3jnU3wP

#China #Wuhan #Lab #Covid19 #AnthonyFauci
#Pandemic #CCPLies
Spending on #PCR tests in China soared months before first #COVID19 cases revealed: Report

//Spending on tests used to detect coronavirus in China’s Hubei Province soared in the months before official reports of COVID-19 first emerged, suggesting the virus was spreading in the northern summer of 2019, well before it was publicly acknowledged by the Chinese government.

The data, compiled by Australian cyber security outfit #Internet2.0, showed that the sale of polymerase chain reaction tests – used to detect the presence of specific viruses – jumped to 67.4 million yuan ($14.3 million) in 2019, from 36.7 million yuan in 2018, and 29.1 million in 2017.

“We have come to the conclusion that based on the data analysed it suggests the virus was highly likely to be spreading virulently in Wuhan, China as early as the summer of 2019 and definitely by the early autumn,” the report states.//

Read full article:
https://www.theage.com.au/world/asia/spending-on-pcr-tests-in-china-soared-months-before-covid-19-revealed-20211005-p58x89.html

Source: The Age #Oct5
#Regime #GreatFireWall #Wuhan WuhanPneumonia
Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan Jailed over Covid-19 Report, Weighing Less Than 40kg on Hunger Strike
Her Family: She may not live long


China citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" after exposing the epidemic in Wuhan last year. She has been on a hunger strike in prison, and her health is deteriorating.

Her brother, Zhang Ju, recently posted on Twitter that his sister appears to be terminally ill and is worried that she will not be able to survive the winter. The British Embassy in China urges the Chinese authorities to release Zhang Zhan and other detained journalists immediately.

In a series of posts on Twitter on Saturday and Sunday, Zhang Ju revealed his sister Zhang Zhan's latest condition and posted her old photos. "I don't think she can live much longer," he said, adding that Zhang is 177cm tall but weighs less than 40kg now, "if she doesn't make it through the coming cold winter, I hope the world will remember her".

Editor note: "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is a charge routinely used to suppress dissent, levelling against citizen journalists, human rights lawyers and activists.

#China #Wuhan #ZhangZhan #Prison #HungerStrike #Journalist #PressFreedom #Covid19 #Pandemic #ZhangJu #Twitter #BritishEmbassy

Source: The Stand News #Nov02

https://bit.ly/30529DQ
WHO unveils new 26-member panel to restart study of the pandemic’s origins

The World Health Organization (WHO) today unveiled a new team to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) will also be tasked with studying the origins of future outbreaks and epidemics and guiding studies of emerging pathogens more generally.

WHO’s proposed list of SAGO members contains 26 researchers from 26 countries, 11 of whom are women. Six members were also part of the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to study the pandemic’s origins with Chinese colleagues. That earlier team’s report had favored a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, calling a possible leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, “extremely unlikely.” WHO’s director-general later said, however, that it was too early to rule out this hypothesis.

Source: Science #Oct13

https://bit.ly/3gVtkWc

#WHO #COVID19 #SAGO #Wuhan
Canadian military officer calls for a probe into a ground zero 'Covid' outbreak at Wuhan forces games TWO MONTHS before world was alerted to the 'mysterious new illness'

A Canadian military officer who fears he was at the 'Ground Zero' of Covid two months before China officially acknowledged the virus has demanded an investigation into the suspicious outbreak of illness there.

The long-serving officer, who cannot be named as he is still in the forces, was among the scores of athletes who fell sick with a debilitating illness after attending the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.

He said foreign competitors found the city of 11 million people 'like a ghost town', and so many cases of a mysterious virus afflicted the Canadian team that a quarantine section was set up on their military flight back home.

Source: Mail Online #Jan09

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10382127/Canadian-military-officer-calls-probe-ground-zero-Covid-outbreak-Wuhan-games.html

#Canadian #Covid #Wuhan
#CCPcontrol #Censorship #Silencing
Furious Chinese Netizens over City Lockdown posts National Anthem "Rise Up" to Protest, and are Promptly Blocked on Weibo

With the widespread of #Omicron in Shanghai, the Chinese government is responding with a tougher stain on the lockdown of the city, leading to public discontent and resistance.

Many Chinese netizens used the first line of the national anthem, "Rise up! Those refuse to be slaves", as a hashtag and posted it on #Weibo to express their anger. This was blocked by Weibo later on, which is ridiculously tantamount to making the national anthem a forbidden word.

It was found later, after searching on Weibo, that the national anthem is still searchable, but the search results would be blanked if the keyword is a hashtag of the national anthem.

This is not the first time China has banned its national anthem. Back in the early days of the #COVID19 outbreak in #Wuhan, when 'whistle blower' Dr. Li Wenliang died, Douban.com banned the lyrics of the same song for "containing radical current affairs or ideology".

Source: Whats News Media; #Apr21
https://www.whatsnewsmedia.com/8796/16/08/45/

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Related article
National Flag Guard – Doctor LI Wenliang was died due to the systematic speech controls, which he believed in and supported
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/16978?single
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Studies point to China's #HuananMarket as #epicenter of #Covid19, wildlife trade associated

The following is excerpted from a statement released by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (#AAAS), which is the publisher of the peer-reviewed journal "Science", on July 26, 2022:

//Two studies published in #Science by #MichaelWorobey et al. and #JonathanPekar et al. use complementary approaches – involving spatial and environmental analyses, as well as molecular analyses – to provide evidence that the Huanan market in #Wuhan, China, was the early epicenter for the COVID-19 #pandemic.

The scientists concluded that SARS-CoV-2 was very likely present in live mammals sold at this market in late 2019 and suggest the virus spilled over into people working or shopping there ... //

Read more:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959879

Source: AAAS; Canada TV #Jul27

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/studies-suggest-covid-19-likely-emerged-from-wuhan-market-1.6003139

#WuhanPneumonia
Shanghai protesters, police jostle as anger over China's COVID curbs mounts

Source: Reuters #Nov27

#ChinaProtests #Shanghai #Urumqi #Beijing #Wuhan #A4Revolution

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Shanghai protesters, police jostle as anger over China's COVID curbs mounts

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Hundreds of demonstrators in Shanghai shouted and jostled with police on Sunday evening as protests over China's stringent COVID restrictions flared for a third day following a deadly apartment fire in the country's far west.

The wave of civil disobedience, which has spread to other cities including Beijing, is unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago and comes amid mounting frustration over his signature zero-COVID policy.

The fire at a residential high-rise building in the city of Urumqi triggered protests after videos of the incident posted on social media led to accusations that lockdown were a factor in the death toll.

Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue. Many of Urumqi's 4 million residents have been under some of the country's longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.

On Sunday in Shanghai, police kept a heavy presence on Wulumuqi Road, which is named after Urumqi, and where a candlelight vigil the day before turned into protests.
By evening hundreds of people gathered in the area.

Some jostled with police trying to disperse them. People held up blank sheets of paper as an expression of protest.

One Reuters witness saw at least seven people taken away by police.

URUMQI, BEIJING, WUHAN

On Sunday at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, dozens of people held a peaceful protest against COVID restrictions during which they sang the national anthem, according to images and videos posted on social media.

One student who saw the Tsinghua protest described to Reuters feeling taken aback by the protest at one China's most elite universities, and Xi's alma mater.

"People there were very passionate, the sight of it was impressive," the student said, declining to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.

In the central city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, hundreds of residents took to the streets on Sunday, smashing through metal barricades, overturning COVID testing tents and demanding an end to lockdowns, according to videos on social media that could not be independently verified.

Thursday's fire that killed 10 people in an apartment block in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, saw crowds there take to the street on Friday evening, chanting "End the lockdown!" and pumping their fists in the air, according to unverified videos on social media.

Source: Reuters #Nov27

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/shanghai-hit-by-covid-protests-anger-spreads-across-china-2022-11-27/

#ChinaProtests #Shanghai #Urumqi #Beijing #Wuhan #A4Revolution