Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Dashboard 2020-02-16

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A Chinese scientific paper has suggested careless biosecurity at a disease research laboratory just 280 yards from the market where the outbreak was originally detected was responsible for the Covid-19 Chinese Corona Virus.

Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that ‘the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan’

It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology

WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE PUBLISHED: 00:22 AEDT, 17 February 2020 | UPDATED: 03:00 AEDT, 17 February 2020 Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market. A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province. ‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,’ penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats. It also mentions that bats – which are linked to coronavirus – once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’ … Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html

The abstract of the paper.

The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus Botao Xiao 21.93 South China University of Technology

Lei Xiao The 2019-nCoV has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were almost identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory. Our proposal provided an alternative origin of the coronavirus in addition to natural recombination and intermediate host. Original link (deleted): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus

Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus

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There have been suggestions that Wuhan was performing biological warfare research, a claim China strenuously denies.



The paper cited above does not go into detail about exactly what the Wuhan laboratory was doing with their infected animals, but careless biosecurity is a plausible explanation for what happened; researchers in constant close contact with infected mammals, obviously not wearing proper protective clothing to prevent injury or contamination, getting scratched and urinated on, not taking proper precautions, would have created plenty of opportunities for cross over and hybridisation between bat and human Corona viruses, and whatever else they were keeping in their cages.

If the claim of careless biosecurity is correct, the emergence of a dangerous hybrid virus capable of infecting humans was always a possibility. Through their carelessness, the virus researchers may have been inadvertently creating and incubating a stream of increasingly dangerous hybrid pathogens, until finally a potential pandemic escaped their laboratory.

Map showing the South China University Disease Research Laboratory and the Wet Market where Covid-19 was First Detected. Source Daily Mail

Update (EW): h/t Danny Davis – Corrected the name John Hopkins -> Johns Hopkins and fixed the link to the Corona Virus dashboard in the top caption.

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