Time to unravel Covid Origins mystery Part-2

China’s Influence over Science Ecosystem

Ian Birrell’s “Beijing’s Useful Idiots” ¹² opens a pandora box and exposes the economic influence of China on science journals. He states that according to an estimate, 49 sponsorship agreements were inked between Springer nature and Chinese authorities. China is biggest national sponsor of open access journals published by Springer Nature and Elsevier, owner of the Lancet. This arrangement can be traced back to 2016 when China asked western scientific journals to block access of Chinese citizens to academic articles that have references to sensitive issues like Tibet, Hongkong and Taiwan.

Debt laden German Springer Nature, Elsevier for the fear of losing access to viewership and outright ban complied. Nature blocked thousand articles that mentioned subjects sensitive to China and defended that less than 1% of the library was affected¹⁹. Elsevier opened its office in Beijing and launched several strategic initiatives¹⁹.

China’s proposal created a divide between the journals, Cambridge acceded initially but later retracted. Sage publishers were open to negotiations. Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press and MIT press refused to comply. With its economic power and influence China began to slowly exercise its control over the content of the academic journals.

Aside the science ecosystem China has cast its influence on the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) which is joint arm of WHO and World Bank that monitors the preparedness towards emerging lethal pathogens. The 15-member GPMB includes members of diverse expertise and has Fauci of NIAID and President of Wellcome Trust Jeremy Farrar who toe Chinese line on the board.

Farrar has been at the forefront in stifling debate on the origins of the virus and went on to suggest that “lab leak” is a conspiracy. With his influence he insisted that evidence suggest that virus has spread naturally from animals²¹.  Clearly, Farrar’s stance isn’t any different from Fauci, who in the face of mounting enquiries, opined, that there is ‘too much of conjecture and theory without data or evidence’ with no evidence to support the lab-leak theory.

Wielding tremendous influence over the entire ecosystem and on all the prominent actors involved in active Corona research, funding and science journals, China has escaped the scrutiny despite the colossal death and devastation caused by the pandemic that originated in Wuhan.

Mounting evidence for lab-origins

Scientific interest in Corona virus research can be traced to a 2013 Kunming Medical University thesis titled, “The analysis of six patients with severe pneumonia caused by unknown viruses”. The symptoms were believed to be caused by SARS like corona virus from horse shoe bat of Yunnan caves.  After the death three miners in the cave in 2012, it was sealed. But Shi reportedly continued to travel to these caves several times to collect the bat guano for her research. SARS-CoV-2 has eight close relatives collected from the cave.

SARS belongs to Beta corona virus that infect Chinese horse bats found in the Yunnan caves of Hubei province which is 1500 kilometers away from Wuhan where the pandemic first broke out.

Though scientists overwhelmingly insisted on natural origins of the SARS-CoV-2 and that the bat population has caused the pandemic, the tyranny of distance invalidates the proposition. Even after testing over 80,000 samples from various animals, no trace of zoonotic transmission or the involvement of an intermediate host could be determined.

The infection trend of SARS-CoV-1 indicated that the virus has to travel through several intermediate hosts to gain a potential mutation capable of infecting the human. The spike protein must continuously evolve and adapt before its transforms from a mild infection into an epidemic. SARS-CoV-1 underwent 14 such changes to become an epidemic. But no such proof has been produced with respect to SARS-CoV-2 and whatever is reported to have caused pandemic appears to be well adapted for humans.

Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 genome lacked diversity seen in natural viruses. It is relatively uniform with no trace of or any hint of any intermediary. Also, the presence of the furin cleavage site with the signature sequence PRRA (Proline-Arginine-Arginine-Alanine) at the S1/S2 junction of the SARS-2 spike protein is really intriguing.

Human furin protein precisely identifies this sequence to cleave a protein. Presence of all the four amino acids in the right order at right place is possible only through manipulation or gain of function. This signature sequence could be naturally acquired either through mutation or recombination. But none of the beta corona viruses have a furin cleavage sites because they don’t need one. Shi published papers wherein 11 GOF experiments are conducted to make SARS-CoV-2 more infective to humans by adding furin cleavage site²¹.

China insisted that the wet market in the Wuhan is the source of the pandemic. But then to cause a pandemic, a large scale of bat population must be present in proximity with intermediate host which in turn can cause infection in humans. But kind of scenario is impossible in Wuhan.

Lab leaks are common and two major lab leaks of dangerous virus were reported from China. Shi has admitted in some interviews that they carried research in BSL-2 lab conditions with minimum precautions, the highest level of safety is BSL-4. Though Wuhan lab is BSL-4 certified, several scientists expressed concerns over the design in 2018.

More so, three people working at WIV became sick within a week of each other and were hospitalised with severe symptoms in November 2019. Though China strongly refutes, scientific evidence strongly favour a lab-leak.

Regime Change in America

More than year to the pandemic, international spot-light is now on lab-leak theory. Amid growing calls for a transparent investigation an appeal in the Science by a group of 18 scientists ²² added a new momentum to the changing paradigm. Suddenly censorship on lab-leak disappeared, dissent voices aren’t throttled and shunted out the social media.

Lab-leak of viruses isn’t uncommon but what made things worse is the flip-flops of scientists who debunked the possibility of an engineered virus causing the devastation. Despite mounting scientific evidence of WIV’s forays into the research of making the microorganisms more dangerous.

Science always enjoyed an unrivalled status in the modern World for giving wings to dreams and innovation and deeming “impossible” a misnomer. Evidently, the scientists with illustrious accomplishments are highly celebrated and respected. Impugning the trust, the scientists disowned the responsibility of changing the truth. Got caught in the political cesspool, turned into purveyors of misinformation.

At this juncture, taking up the cudgels, a group of two dozens of anonymous correspondents, science enthusiasts burned midnight oil worked independently and pieced together the available information. They connected the missing links to unravel the saga of the Corona virus research. Calling themselves DRASTIC- Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19, they broke the biggest story of the 21^st Century²³.

Months ahead of the pandemic, on September 12^th, 2019 WIV has pulled down the website. But DRASTIC travelled the dark alleys of internet and joined together the disparate pieces of data to give a framework to the sequence of events. Sealing off all the information and denying access to WIV, China which offered nothing but the genomic sequence of Virus to the World has annihilated all traces of virus outbreak and silenced whistle blowers.

 Amid growing international pressure, China allowed the investigations by WHO team which wasn’t independent and didn’t have necessary access. If China has nothing to hide, why doesn’t it grant accent to a new probe.

Whether or not the probe really offers any leads, it is essential to have thorough investigation and public scrutiny of a lab investigating dangerous organisms to avert any accidental leakage and to have prudent checks and balances. China has set a dangerous precedent. The World is now forced to seriously rethink about the dangerous of creating super spreader viruses.  

Interestingly, even as the whimper about Covid origins not being natural always played in the background a change of leadership in the US added a new impetus to the hypothesis underscoring the importance of a narrative and detrimental nature of political polarisation. Despite subverting rational scientific investigation and stifling open international discussion, Daszak and Anderson were awarded funds under the $82million grants to Centres for Research in Epidemiological Infectious Diseases (CREID) by NIAID²⁴.

The World has lost valuable time in getting its act together. This delay aided China’s cover-up of virus origins. Much of the incriminating evidence is already lost. The only hope is the intelligence gathered by a network of sleuths. In absence of conclusive evidence, China can be exonerated of all its crimes. Interestingly, even before the World put a collective front, China has launched a counter propaganda.

China’s foreign origin counter narrative

China started labelling the growing clamour for investigation as anti-Asia sentiments. The Global Times has put forth a counter-narrative in place suggesting that pandemic exploded after the October 2019 Military World Games and that foreign military personnel have frequented the Wuhan wet markets. The frozen food carried by them had the contagion. It is already readying the alibi of French agency reports of military personnel returning home with SARS like symptoms²⁵. In support of its claims, it pushed the testimonies of the retailers of the wet market and airport officials about the frozen food brought by them.

China has mastered the art of frantically churning out narrative without scientific evidence. With its no holds barred approach, Beijing would outshout the international media. It would deploy wolf warrior diplomats and the state-sponsored global media network to peddle lies. Relying on a lie told hundred times might be truth, China will defend itself.

But the World owes the humanity answers to the Origins of the pandemic that tore their lives apart. Is it something too much to ask for the psychological trauma and personal losses suffered?

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