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Abstract:
Although the overall structures of human and bat virus S proteins are similar, there are key differences in their properties, including a more stable pre-cleavage form of human S and about 1000-fold tighter binding of SARS-CoV-2 to human receptor.
Together, our structural and biochemical data indicate that a bat virus, similar to RaTG13, would not be able to bind effectively to human ACE2 receptor and would be unlikely to infect humans directly. Given the modular nature of the human and bat spike glycoproteins, and the number and structural locations of the amino acid sequence differences between them, our observations support the involvement of recombination8 between distinct coronavirus genomes in the generation of SARS-CoV-2.
The law instructed Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to “declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin” of COVID-19, including intelligence on the “activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People's Liberation Army” and “coronavirus research or other related activities performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak” of SARS-CoV-2. The legislation also told the Biden administration to hand over any information on the “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019.” Biden said on March 20 that he was “pleased” to sign the measure into law, contending that “I share the Congress’s goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin” of COVID-19.
Dear President Biden:
We write today to urge the swift and complete implementation of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which Congress unanimously passed, and which you signed into law on March 20, 2023.1 As you know, the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to “declassify any and all information” relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19 within 90 days of the law’s enactment. That deadline, June 18, 2023, is fast approaching. Your Administration has not yet provided any indication of when the relevant material will be declassified.
originally posted by: KKLOCO
So, it’s Tuesday. Where’s the report?
That’s what I thought. Color me shocked.
They probably realized they had thousands of more pages to redact.
originally posted by: flice
originally posted by: KKLOCO
So, it’s Tuesday. Where’s the report?
That’s what I thought. Color me shocked.
They probably realized they had thousands of more pages to redact.
But I wonder... what do you need the report for?
Do you not trust your own eyes? Genuinely curious...
On Tuesday, Michael R. Gordon, who helped launch the Iraq war by promoting Bush administration allegations that Saddam Hussein was using aluminum tubes to build nuclear weapons, claimed, citing anonymous government sources, that world-renowned researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were among the first people to be infected with COVID-19. Gordon’s article, published in the Wall Street Journal, serves to lend credibility to the conspiracy theory, invented by the fascist ideologue Stephen K. Bannon and his wealthy Chinese anti-communist associates, that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology created COVID-19.
On March 1, Josh Hawley, the senator who raised his fist up in support of insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, introduced the “COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023.”
The act asserted, contrary to established scientific consensus, that “there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
The fascist senator’s bill, basing itself on Gordon’s earlier reporting, declared that “the Director of National Intelligence should declassify and make available to the public as much information as possible about the origin of COVID-19,” specifically demanding to know the names of “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019... ”
All workers and young people must reject the racist lies being promoted by the Biden administration and US media to scapegoat China and leading scientists for the deaths of over 1 million Americans from COVID-19—deaths that are attributable to the subordination of public health to private profit under both Trump and Biden.
The agencies are expected to release declassified material on what they have learned about Covid’s origins. People briefed on the material say there is no smoking gun.
Inquiries during the Trump and Biden administrations have yielded no definitive answers. The Energy Department and the F.B.I. favored the theory that a laboratory leak may have caused the pandemic. Five intelligence bodies considered theories of natural transmission — that the coronavirus developed naturally and was transferred to humans at an animal market or other location — more likely. But the C.I.A., the nation’s leading spy agency, would not make an assessment with even a low level of confidence.
The declassified material is unlikely to satisfy the debate over Covid’s origins. Some lawmakers and experts have argued that China’s failure to open its labs up to outside investigators is evidence of a cover-up and suggests the coronavirus may have leaked from a lab accidentally.
“All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Friday in a 10-page declassified report.
“Almost all” intelligence agencies agreed that the virus wasn’t genetically engineered, and all agencies agreed that Covid was not manufactured as a biological weapon.
It described how between 2017 and 2019 the lab funded, and some of its personnel conducted, research in collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army to boost China’s knowledge of pathogens and early disease warning capabilities for the military’s defensive and biosecurity needs.
(3) the Director of National Intelligence should declassify and make available to the public as much information as possible about the origin of COVID–19 so the United States and like-minded countries can— (A) identify the origin of COVID–19 as expeditiously as possible, and (B) use that information to take all appropriate measures to prevent a similar pandemic from occurring again.
That sound you may have detected rising from the ether of social media this weekend was the gnashing of teeth by COVID conspiracy-mongers, outraged by a U.S. government report debunking their most cherished claims.
The long-awaited report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put the lie to the theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, China, where the disease was first detected in humans.
The lab-leak conspiracists were certain that the report would validate their contentions, for which there has never been any valid scientific evidence.
Instead it did just the opposite.
In an interview shared by ANI, Chao Shao told Jennifer Zeng, a member of the International Press Association, that he and his colleagues were given four strains of the virus to determine which strain could spread most effectively. Zeng, a Chinese-born human rights activist and author, took the interview between March and April 2020. Chao Shao recounted an incident where another researcher from the institute, Shan Chao, admitted that their superior had given them four strains of the coronavirus to test their infectivity across various species, including humans. Chao Shao also referred to the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”
In May 2021 Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. reported at The Gateway Pundit that the COVID-19 virus was made in a laboratory in China and was part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) biological warfare program. That much is clear. The matter yet to be resolved is the manner of its release, whether accidental or deliberate.