A new study purporting to show that the new chinese lab-made coronavirus was published through a couple of nonprofit teams connected to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strata, who now faces felony fraud charges.
The study, co-written through a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, states that “laboratory manipulation is a component of SARS-CoV-2 history. “His findings were temporarily collected through a handful of major news organizations such as the New York Post, which prompted “explosive” claims that go against all existing clinical literature about the source of the virus.
The exam is the paintings of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations Bannon helped create. According to documents posted on the company’s online page last year, he chaired the group. through Kevin Bird, a PhD candidate at Michigan State University and shared through Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington, who called the exam “strange and unfounded. “
Research on google scholar websites and the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation indicates that organizations have never published clinical or medical studies before and it is not known whether the article has been peer reviewed. Zenodo’s website, a directory of public clinical and educational studies in which anyone can download their work.
The two nonprofits under review were formed in collaboration with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, with whom Bannon collaborated on a series of advocacy efforts aimed at the Chinese government and corporations that caught the attention of federal law enforcement officials.
In addition to their paintings of law-based nonprofits, Bannon and Guo also collaborated on a news website, G News, which published articles suggesting that coronavirus was manufactured through the Chinese army.
In July, Bannon gave the impression of advancing upcoming clinical studies supporting his claim that coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. He told the Daily Mail that lab scientists had “defected” to the United States and were participating with U. S. intelligence agencies. In the “War Room: Pandemic” podcast, Bannon greeted others who speculated that the virus would possibly be a Chinese “biological weapon,” but said he believed the explanation was more believable that it “came from on-the-fly experiments” in this lab in Wuhan.
This is a line that has been retouched through some senior U. S. officials. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have alluded to intelligence reports supporting this theory. “This is circumstantial, of course,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said in an April column for the Wall Street Journal, “but it’s all about Wuhan Labs. “
While an accidental leak from Wuhan’s virology laboratory remains a imaginable theoretical source of the initial outbreak in the city, the vast majority of the clinical literature on the virus has decided that its origins are herbal and that it was not laboratory-produced. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Trump administration’s coronavirus contact, has continually pointed out that all the evidence indicates that the virus was not a human being.
The study published Monday through Bannon’s organization is therefore incendiary. “This virus is not natural,” said Dra. Li-Meng Yan, one of the scientists who conducted the study, who appeared monday on a British television show. The virus came from a Wuhan meat market as a “smoke screen” designed to mask its true origins.
But virologists disagree and say the document makes false statements about a number of basic facts. “Fundamentally, everything is circumstantial and some of them are completely fictional,” dr. Angela Rasmussen, virologist at Columbia University, to the Studio’s Daily Beast. .
The paper argues that the coronavirus genes are “strangely similar to those of a bat coronavirus discovered through army labs” in China, a claim according to Rasmussen, which is not unexpected because “these are SARS-like coronavirus”.
The study authors made a similar statement about some of the complex SARS-CoV-2 proteins, which viruses use to break down and infect cells, and wrote that it is similar to the original SARS virus in a “suspicious way” and suggests genetic factors. manipulation. ” SARS-CoV also used ACE2 as a cell receptor, as did other SARS-like BAT coronaviruses,” Explains Rasmussen. “This is not suspicious and is expected to be similar in receptor binding domain names that join the same protein. “
Rasmussen also stated that the document incorrectly presented fundamental facts about some other component of complex coronavirus proteins called furine excision sites. The authors claim that the SARS-CoV-2 spin-out site is “unique” and invisible by nature. But according to Rasmussen, “Furine excision sites occur naturally in many other beta-CoVs, adding MERS-CoV and other SARS-type bat coronaviruses.
Yan said he fled China to avoid retaliation from the government over his allegations that he was unclear on the origin and nature of the virus. He said he had warned authorities in December that the virus was highly transmissible between humans, but that his claims had been ignored.
The Hong Kong University School of Public Health, where Yan worked, questioned his claims that the university ignored its warnings before the outbreak in China.
In August, Yan gave the impression on Bannon’s podcast. During that broadcast, Bannon said he ‘wasn’t in the camp yet because he thinks they let him out intentionally, but I’ve been firmly in the camp from the beginning that he got here from Wuhan’s P4 lab. ”’
Unrelated to his paintings with law groups, Bannon also faces felony charges so federal prosecutors say it is an effort to extract millions of dollars from a nonprofit to privately finance the structure of a wall on the southern border of the United States. blame the fees.