Chinese virologist who discovered coronavirus broke silence

Shi Zhengli, the principal investigator of the coronavirus at the Institute of Virology of Wuhan, in China, has defended its institute amid requests to investigate the origin of COVID.

In the event of a coronavirus leak from his lab, Zhengli stressed in an interview with the New York Times that there is no evidence and lamented the dirt that is being dumped. “on innocent scientists“.

“How the hell am I going to offer proof of something that there is no proof of?He said annoyingly in the interview, a visceral and rare way when scientists talk about the subject.

“I don’t know how the world got there, constantly dumping bullshit on innocent scientists, ”he added in his response sent by text message to the American media.

In a March 2020 article in Scientific American, Shi Zhengli said the genetic code of the virus that causes COVID does not match any of the samples in his lab.

He also told the World Health Organization (WHO) team, which traveled to China to find out the origin of the coronavirus, that all staff had tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies.

Versions that contradict Wuhan virologist Shi Zhengli

US President Joe Biden last month ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of the pandemic, including the laboratory leak theory.

The leak hypothesis had already been raised during the global epidemic, including by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, but was dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

However, it has recently gained in popularity, fueled by reports that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in 2019.

These contagions this would have happened after visiting a bat cave in the southwest of China’s Yunnan province.

What Shi Zhengli Said About COVID Infections In 2019

The scientist pointed out, in a research article published in November of last year, that symptoms similar to pneumonia scientists were a fungal infection.

These types of diseases are caused by fungi and organisms that are neither animals nor plants.

Shi and his team also said in published research that they retested 13 serum samples from four of the patients.

In this test nor found signs that they had been infected by Sars-CoV-2.

How is safety in the Wuhan laboratory

The Wuhan Institute of Virology houses a laboratory with a biosafety classification “P4“, the highest possible.

This ranking is determined by the level of danger and the consequent safety measures posed by the pathogens studied there. In that case, level P4 pathogens They include those that cause diseases like Ebola.

Wuhan’s P4 laboratory is the first in Asia, was built at a cost of $ 42 million and was inaugurated in 2018.

Wuhan institute studies some of the most dangerous diseases the world and, before COVID, conducted research on the links between bats and disease in China.

Its scientists helped shed light on the COVID pathogen in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan.

The mysterious studies that were “erased” from the Wuhan lab

In January, the British newspaper Daily mail published alarming news: over 300 studies published by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, including research on diseases transmitted from animals to humans, have been eliminated.

State organization removed dozens of online content, including studies performed by the virologist Shi Zhengli, based in Wuhan, nicknamed “Batwoman”.

This 56-year-old scientist earned the nickname “Batwoman” for his research on collecting cave samples of this type of animal.

According to the Daily Mail, the mass elimination of online studies reaffirmed months ago the tExcited China is trying to obstruct investigation on the origin of the coronavirus.

The data, including the risk of infection between bat species with coronavirus similar to SARS and research on human pathogens carried by bats is no longer available.

Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative leader and member of the International Parliamentary Alliance on China, said, “China is clearly trying to hide the evidence.

Duncan Smith added that “a thorough investigation is vital about what happened, but China appears to be doing everything it can to prevent that from happening. “

Wuhan Institute of Virology in the crosshairs

In March, the Wuhan laboratory received a visit from experts from the World Health Organization (WHO).

And at that moment suspicions and theories have been rekindled on the research center which has several maximum security laboratories.

Most researchers believe that Sars-CoV-2 probably came from bats and would have passed through another species (we do not yet know which) before being transmitted to humans. At the moment, there is no evidence to validate this hypothesis.

In mid-January, before stepping down as US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo re-enrolled at the Wuhan Institute.

“The US government has reason to believe that some investigators inside (the facility) fell ill in the fall of 2019, before the first case of the outbreak was identified,” Pompeo said.

According to the Washington Post, the US Embassy in Beijing, after visiting the institute, alerted US authorities in 2018 that some security measures were insufficient.

Despite the insistence of the United States and the international scientific community, it has not been possible to confirm the origin of the coronavirus, which is vital for understanding the behavior of the disease.