Study Points To COVID-19 Lab Creation; Lead Author Suggests 'Forced Selection' Vs. Genetic Engineering
17 May 2020
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/study-p....A study led by Flinders University vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky in Australia reveals that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, is optimized for penetration into human cells vs. animal cells - undermining the theory that it naturally evolved in animals before jumping to humans, according to LifeSiteNews' Matthew Cullinan Hoffman.
The authors of the study, led by vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University in Australia, used a version of the novel coronavirus collected in the earliest days of the outbreak and applied computer models to test its capacity to bind to certain cell receptor enzymes, called ACE2, that allow the virus to infect human and animal cells to varying degrees of efficacy.
They tested the propensity of the COVID-19 viruss spike protein, which it uses to enter cells, to bind to the human type of ACE2 as well as to many different animal versions of ACE2, and found that the novel coronavirus most powerfully binds with human ACE2, and with variously lesser degrees of effectiveness with animal versions of the receptor.
According to the studys authors, this implies that the virus that causes COVID-19 did not come from an animal intermediary, but became specialized for human cell penetration by living previously in human cells, quite possibly in a laboratory.
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Note that I saw elsewhere that before destroying and sterilizing the alleged wet market source, the Chinese only took surface samples and did not test a single animal. Considering that the virus was undoubtedly widespread in Wuhan humans by then, that proved nothing.
Peer-Reviewed Study Rejects Pangolins As Intermediary Species For COVID-19
15 May 2020
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/peer-re....A prime suspect in the 'wet market' coronavirus origin theory was just given a pass, after a peer-reviewed study found that the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, could not have jumped from pangolins to humans.
As a refresher, SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19 in humans, is 96% identical to a coronavirus strain found in bats known as RaTG13 - which was incidentally collected in a cave in Yunnan, China by scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
On its own, RaTG13 cannot infect humans, however SARS-CoV-2 has a 'receptor binding motif' (RBM) which is identical to a pangolin strain of coronavirus - stoking speculation that pangolins were an intermediary species, or 'reservoir' between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 (despite the fact that pangolins weren't sold at the wet market).
Which leaves us with the following leading theories as to the origins of SARS-CoV-2:
1. A bat coronavirus with a never before seen pangolin-like RBM came from a wet market that didn't sell bats or pangolins, and now some other species is the intermediary - unless a pangolin is eventually found with SARS-CoV-2.
2. It was engineered at Fort Detrick, Maryland's USAMRIID and spread by the US Army in a clandestine mission last October during a military sporting event in Wuhan, China (a theory promoted by the CCP).
3. Scientists working with bat coronavirus, in the exact town it emerged from - who made headlines in 2015 for modifying bat coronaviruses specifically to infect humans (and were internationally admonished for it) - either created SARS-CoV-2 by splicing pangolin receptors onto RaTG13, or captured it in nature, and a former, known employee accidentally infected herself before going shopping at the proximate wet market during the virus's long asymptomatic period (and who hasn't been heard from since).
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Uncovering the potency and evasiveness of the COVID-19 virus
8 May 2020
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-u....SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is highly infectious. Curiously, in many patients, it triggers poor immune responses, which prolongs illness.
[snip]
Specifically, the team of scientists investigated how the virus "unlocks" human cells using a surface spike protein as the "key." They made three important findings:
- the tip of the viral key binds strongly to human cells;
- the tip of the viral key is often hidden; and
- when new virus particles are made, the viral key is already pre-activated by a human enzyme.
"Typically when a virus develops mechanisms to evade immune responses, it loses its potency to infect people," said Li. "However, SARS-CoV-2 maintains its infectivity using two mechanisms. First, during its limited exposure time, the tip of the viral key grabs a receptor protein on human cells quickly and firmly. Second, the pre-activation of the viral key allows the virus to more effectively infect human cells."
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