u/ApprenticeWrangler

For a breakdown of the timeline and the links to the US research community being involved in the potential lab leak, see below:

November 2019: One of the lead researchers on this risky GOF research, Ben Hu and 2 of his collaborators get sick with covid-like symptoms.

https://theintercept.com/2023/06/17/covid-origin-wuhan-patient-zero/

”ONE OF THE first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with Covid in fall 2019, Ben Hu, was getting U.S. financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the transparency advocacy organization White Coat Waste Project.

The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hu is listed as an investigator on the grants.”

Jan. 20, 2020: WIV researchers submitted an article claiming that SARS-CoV-2 is natural in origin. The article renames ID4991 as RaTG13 and contained false information about when the genomic sequence for the virus was obtained.

Late Jan. – Early Feb. 2020: PRC researchers, likely those at the WIV, request EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak’s assistance in responding to suggestions of a lab leak or genetic manipulation of SARS-CoV-2. Daszak helps edit the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s response to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on the origins of COVID-19.

Feb. 6, 2020 at 12:43:40 am: Daszak sends a draft Lancet statement, which cites the Feb. 3 WIV paper, to Wang, Baric, and others asking them to join as cosigners. Within hours, Wang calls him, informs Daszak that he will not sign, and requests that neither Daszak or Baric sign.

Feb. 18, 2020: Daszak statement is published by the Lancet online, which references the letter from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine he helped write and the WIV’s February 3rd paper on the origins of COVID-19. Despite drafting the letter, Daszak is not listed as the corresponding author.

Nov. 17, 2020: As a result of public pressure, Shi, Hu, and other WIV researchers publish an addendum to their February 3rd paper, confirming that RaTG13 was ID4991 collected from the cave in Yunnan, and revealing they collected 293 coronaviruses from the cave between 2012 and 2015.

Here’s the addendum where they admit to renaming the virus, which clearly shows they were attempting to hide potential involvement.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2951-z

“All of the nine betacoronaviruses are SARSr-CoVs, one of which (sample ID4991; renamed RaTG13 in our Article to reflect the bat species, the location and the sampling year) was described in a 2016 publication”

Peter Daszak plays a huge role in this entire leak and the subsequent cover-up, yet he was somehow on the “independent” WHO investigation into the origins of Covid, despite the clear conflicts of interest considering he is a key collaborator at that lab, and key funder of this type of risky research. The investigation was a complete sham, and essentially they asked lab workers, “did it leak from here?” They said no, and the investigation called it a day.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/29/982272319/who-report-wildlife-farms-not-market-likely-source-of-coronavirus-pandemic

June 21, 2021: After public pressure, Daszak updates his public disclosure form for the Lancet statement. He does not mention the WIV or that the statement was drafted at the request of PRC researchers.

July 5, 2021: Daszak and 23 of the original 27 authors release an update to their February 2021 statement, walking back their labeling of public debate around the source of the virus as “conspiracy theories.”

Why would Peter Daszak be so invested in downplaying this?

His company, EcoHealth Alliance, has been deeply involved in risky research collecting and doing gain of function research on bat coronavirus for years. Here’s some added context around the type of things they were doing at the lab.

https://archive.is/wukok

“According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.”

Here’s an article where it shows a grant proposal where this same company, EcoHealth Alliance applied for funding from DARPA, but was denied because it was “too risky”.

https://archive.is/lIuH0

In it proponents of natural spillover say:

“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an unusual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering,” 23 scientists wrote earlier this month in an article in the journal Cell. “There is no evidence of prior research at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”

But as the article follows up:

But the proposal describes the process of looking for novel furin cleavage sites in bat coronaviruses the scientists had sampled and inserting them into the spikes of SARS-related viruses in the laboratory.

“We will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in [a type of mammalian cell commonly used in microbiology] and HAE cultures,” referring to cells found in the lining of the human airway, the proposal states.”

Here’s a link to one of the studies they did at the lab:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

“Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. “

So they created a novel virus out of a bat coronavirus that was shown to infect human airway cells….definitely not something that could cause a pandemic…right?

How does all of this tie to Fauci? USAID funded lots of this research and Fauci has personal ties to Daszak. If EcoHealth was proven to be responsible for helping to fund and conduct research that led to COVID, Fauci, USAID and the broader US research community would be destroyed.

Here’s a letter from the NIH explaining to a congressman that they’re terminating some funding to the same group for failing to disclose data about their research.

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NIH-Letter-to-Congress-regarding-EHA_Comer.pdf

Then surprise surprise, here’s Fauci giving the same group—more money —before he leaves his post.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctor-anthony-faucis-parting-gift-nih-ecohealth-alliance-peter-daszak-coronavirus-research-11665002675

There’s plenty more pieces of this if you’re actually willing to see how many pieces of evidence point to this having leaked from a lab, likely funded by US research grants, then covered up by people either directly or indirectly implicated or who’s careers depend on the funding of this research.

Both always have brown tips. They’re both being watered with filtered water from my fridge (which I sit at room temp for a day so it’s not cold). They don’t have drain holes but I have like 4” of perlite at the bottom of both pots. Both are beside an east facing window and I water them when the moisture meter shows as the low end of moist or at the start of dry.

Any ideas?

But without the flat face or floof or full body tortie coat. We wanted to think of some funny names for our cats and nothing stuck better than Princess Donut and Ferdinand despite the lack of visual match to the book characters

I got two kittens from a breeder that had a litter of 6. I saw the mother and father and both looked like what they were claimed to be (ragdoll mom, Russian blue dad). The kittens had a variety of coats and one was fully blue. We got a male and a female, the male appears to me to be a blue lynx point and the female looks like a blue tortie point. the first few pics with the mottled color on the face and the orange/grey/white striped tail are the female. Any ideas?