Last week, The Australian newspaper claimed that the Chinese People Liberation Army (PLA) scientists were discussing how to weaponise SARS five years before the murderous virus killed millions all over the world. The report, firmly denied by the Chinese government, brought to the fore the core issues behind the Coronavirus- what truly is the origin of this virus? Is it man made or is at an accident of evolution?

On May 5, 2021, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in a searing expose confirmed what Hardnews wrote about a year ago. The article raised the issue about how the US government funded Wuhan’s “gain of function research“ on SARS. Hardnews asked then: Could a chimeric virus be created in a lab without the vaccine or anti-body protection? Who weaponised it when it was apparent in 2015 that a lethal Coronavirus could be engineered! What is shrouded in secrecy is how did the virus from bats jump on to human beings?

After Trump demitted office and Joe Biden took over, there has been no let up in the quest of scientists to ascertain the origin of the virus. And how it reached this proportion without the United States getting to know about it. Did they really take their eyes off China? Or is there another story to it? The Hardnews investigation told a different perspective, but it was ignored. What is worse, an Indian laboratory housed in the Kusuma Institute of Biological Sciences in the Indian of Institute of Technology Delhi, found inserts in the SARS virus with an uncanny resemblance to HIV, but it was told to shut up by the Indian government. Why? This bizarre report has reared it’s head again.

Long before the outbreak of the virus in December 2019, it was recognized by the governments of the US and China that a chimeric Coronavirus could be created in a laboratory, which did not have the necessary vaccine or anti-body protection from the Coronavirus. Hence, the funding was stopped.

The question is, who weaponised the virus when it was apparent as early as in 2015 that a lethal Corona virus could be engineered! The latest expose tells only part of the story that only blames China.

Background of the Coronavirus: 

It will be illuminating to revisit a collaborative paper that appeared in the prestigious Nature magazine in November 2015 written by a bunch of scientists that seems prophetic about what the world will go through five years later. Titled, ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat Coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence’, this study was funded by US bodies like the National Institute of Health, USAID and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation of China

Different partners brought in different skills and aspects to help in building the chimeric virus. The Chinese brought in the ‘spike version of the bat Coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse adapted SARS-COV backbone’.

It was on the basis of this study that was conducted at a laboratory at the Chapel Hill University of North Carolina that the then US President Barack Obama had cautioned about a possible pandemic in a few years time. Similarly, Gates Foundation chief, Bill Gates, too, had spoken about the threat of a pandemic, which could be more dangerous than a nuclear attack.

‘The most important finding of this study was the re-emergence of a life-threatening virus that could not be managed with a vaccine or anti-bodies‘. The introduction to the paper, pretty much explains how a transmissible chimeric virus could be created, which could have ‘disastrous’ implications for the world.

“The emergence of severe and acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle-East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV, underscores the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014- CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat Corona virus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal anti-body and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.”

Menachery, V., Yount, B., Debbink, K. et al. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med 21, 1508–1513 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3985

Significantly, the paper further states:

“The emergence of SARS-CoV heralded a new era in the cross-species transmission of severe respiratory illness with globalization leading to rapid spread around the world and massive economic impact.”

Menachery, V., Yount, B., Debbink, K. et al. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med 21, 1508–1513 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3985

Evidently, that is what the Covid19 virus has done ever since it began to roil over more than 180 countries of the world since January 2020.

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RECOGNISING THE DANGEROUS consequences of the study of the virus and its impact on humans and how it could possibly spill into the society, the US government discontinued funding the ‘gain of function’ studies in the US. “Be assured that countries have the ability to create such a chimeric virus,” claimed an Indian scientist who has overseen such a programme in the past.

The US scientists associated with this study decided to carry on with this study in Wuhan, which has the safeguards as one of the world’s best virology laboratory. It was US entities like the one backed by Dr Anthony Fauci that provided funding for Wuhan to continue its ‘gain of function’ research on bats and Coronavirus.

The first grant was given immediately after the US study was concluded. This $3.7 million grant was renewed last year.

What is shrouded in secrecy till now is how did the virus from bats jump on to human beings?

Authoritative scientific journals have given the Chinese the benefit of doubt and claimed that their laboratory could not have found a way that the virus transmits to a human being. This assertion — and many have been made over the past few months — flies in the face of the original study elucidated above, which finds the consequence of this ‘gain of function’ study threatening and finds merit in abandoning it.

In the study, a chimeric virus was created that could infect the airways of the human beings and rodents — this is exactly what Covid19 does.   

Fauci and scientists in another eminent journal, Lancet, denied that the virus was created in the laboratory and reasserted that the Coronavirus originated in wildlife. Nature also demolished the brewing theory that a “laboratory-based scenario was possible”. Fauci claimed that the virus’s “mutations” are “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human being”.

Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had claimed evidence to back their claims that the virus originated from the Wuhan laboratory. The Chinese, have aggressively retaliated by giving legitimacy to a Global Research report that links the spread in Wuhan to a visit of a US delegation last year.

An Indian investigation into the Corona virus: 

Besides the leakage of the virus from the Wuhan lab, which the Trump administration claims to be accidental, there are also suggestions, based on the 2015 ‘gain of function’ research that the Corona virus could be a bio-weapon.

According to research by Indian Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Kusuma Institute in a research paper titled, ‘Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag 4,’ insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other Corona viruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the four inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag.

According to Indian researchers, it was not a coincidence that the four insertions were together. They hinted at a design and this provoked a major retaliation from the Chinese scientific community and others in the West. The pre-paper (as it had not been peer reviewed) was withdrawn promptly and its findings ignored.

Sources in the Indian research community claim that the IIT scientists came under enormous pressure from the US and they had to pull out their findings. Scientists are tightlipped on whether they are pursuing it at all or not.  

Withdrawal of the paper by the Kusuma Laboratories has not dampened the ire of the conspiracy theorists that blame China for the bio-weapon and are seeking urgent compensation for the death and losses that global economy has incurred due to the pandemic. Security outfits are also looking at the findings of the Kusuma Laboratories to understand why the virus has turned virulent in some societies and not in others.

For instance, it has killed thousands in Iran, but very few in Iraq or even Syria! Also, its symptoms are life-threatening in some cases, while, in others, the virus presents itself as very mild.

Why?

Besides, there is little clarity about it after more than 90 days of its global spread across diverse societies and geographies. The only people who seek to benefit from this catastrophe is the pharma lobby the medical equipment- makers, surgical mask-makers and those who are racing to make the vaccine to fight the Corona virus.

IN THE EARLY days of the pandemic, Trump grandly announced that Hydroxylchlorquine (HCQ) was the drug that would cure the virus and later threatened retaliation against India if it did not export this medicine. At that time it seemed that the cure of the feared Corona virus was here and it would help countries to tide over this problem at a cheap price.

India, especially its prime minister, realizing that it was great time to be a benevolent influencer, decided to send free consignments of HCQ and Paracetamol to 55 countries. Trump’s bold claim was based on a French epidemiologist’s theory, but scientists of other institutions and countries trashed this theory.

In the US, it was claimed, that it was hastening the death of those who were infected by the virus. Fauci also saw no help from this treatment. The truth, however, lies elsewhere.

The Remdesivir story

After HCQ’s fall from grace, Trump decided to give permission to an anti-viral drug, Remdesivir, developed by an American bio-pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. The drug is meant to provide emergency treatment for those hospitalized with severe Covid19.

Remdesivir was developed to fight Ebola, but as its geographical spread was limited, it never got the necessary traction or profit to its promoters. Studies on the efficacy of the drug to treat Coronavirus patients are only marginally encouraging — there was only 31 per cent improvement — but this is being tom-tommed as the so-called ‘great hope’ for the world.

Long before COVID-19 became as fearsome as it is now, those who keep a watch on the vaccine eco-system were confident that Remdesivir would find its way to be accepted by WHO and other bodies as the drug to treat the virus. They had a reason.

China holds the patent of Remdesivir through an agreement with Gilead, a drug patent sharing company called UNITAID, which has an office in Wuhan. The main contributors of UNITAID are Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, and WHO, has a permanent seat in the board. WHO is represented in the board by a Chinese, Ren Mighui, who was the former Director General of Health and Family Committee of the People’s Republic of China.

Gilead Sciences had filed a patent for Remdisivir in 2017, but the government approved it only in February 2020 — around the time when Bill Gates visited India.

US and its efforts to militarise Quad comprising India, Australia and Japan also mean establishing that China is a nuisance

Anthony FauciBioweaponChinacoronavirusCOVID19Donald TrumpJoe BidenpandemicRemdesivirWuhan