A German physicist who published a study on the origins of COVID-19: there are many strange things

Who and why is the obstacle to knowing the origin of a pandemic? Why is the zoonotic version of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 followed as if it were dogma and the presumption of laboratory origin rejected in advance? Mr Wiesendanger himself attempted to answer these and other questions by giving a series of interviews to the media after the study appeared.

The University of Hamburg said in a study published on its website that its aim was to have a broad discussion about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. However, instead of the expected discussion in the German media, there was a wave of disparaging judgments: the study was “frivolous”, “toxic”, “misinformative”, and the laboratory hypothesis itself was “favored by the theorists of The conspiracy”. The university has also been criticized for allegedly undermining its standing as a serious academic institution.

Wiesendanger admitted that he did not expect such a “fierce and slanderous” attack. From other countries, the United States, Canada, Brazil, all of Europe, Russia, India, Japan, Taiwan and even China, he, on the other hand, received many favorable comments, the scientist told the Swiss newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ).

On the other hand, you see the fierce struggle over the origins of the virus in, say, Wikipedia pages, where information is sometimes changed every minute and where commentators, the so-called 50 cent army, are diligently harassed by the Chinese regime. .

The investigation took off with the fervor of the detective

R. Wiesendanger worked on the study with true detective fervor most of the year, from January to December 2020. The result is a 100-page document that brings together material from a variety of sources: in addition to scientific literature, it includes articles from print media. and online, and uses arguments from colleagues in other countries.

“After reviewing about 600 documents and references, I could not draw any conclusion other than this: the virus came from a laboratory,” the physicist told Hamburger Morgenpost immediately after the study was published on February 18.

The main reason the researcher undertook this study is mentioned on the University of Hamburg blog page presenting the study: the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically affected “the lives of all of us, its social and economic consequences for a long time. to come”. Therefore, “the fundamental and scientific question of the origin of the current pandemic is of utmost importance, since only on the basis of this knowledge can appropriate precautions be taken to minimize the probability of similar pandemics occurring.”

In response to the claim that he could have conducted such research without being a virologist, Professor Wiesendanger observes that the origin of the pandemic is by no means a purely virological question, but requires interdisciplinary research.

Various aspects are linked here, such as laboratory safety regulations, international safety policy, legal issues, and many more. Furthermore, R. Wiesendanger is a nanophysicist, and the institute under his leadership has conducted research in the field of nanobiology in the past.

The overwhelming argument of colloquial theory sought to deter research

Now he is accused of too low scientific standards. But by what scientific standards did the 27 scientists of the world publish a joint letter to The Lancet in mid-February last year, “strongly condemning” the “conspiracy theories that claim that COVID-19 was of unnatural origin”? By the way, among the signers was the most famous German virologist Christian Drosten, notes the study author.

That letter, according to Mr. Wiesendanger, affixed a stamp of supposed scientific approval to the version of the naturally-occurring virus released by China.

“The letter did not provide any evidence as to why the incident in the laboratory could not have caused the pandemic. However, after such an evaluation, no one dared to begin to investigate the presumption of laboratory origin. Who would want to be called a theorist? of the conspiracy? ”Asked the physicist interviewed by the NZZ newspaper.

He himself, as you can see, did not shy away from risking his scientific reputation. Furthermore, he pointed to the absurd situation that the letter was initiated by Peter Daszak, who had previously collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on dangerous scientific research on bat coronaviruses. Is it any wonder, then, that he was in a hurry to avoid the presumption of laboratory origin by the “crushing” argument of consonant theory? By the way, Mr. Daszak himself joined the World Health Organization (WHO) team of experts that investigated the origins of the pandemic in China.

Main arguments of Mr. Wiesendanger

The concise findings of Professor R. Wiesendanger’s research can be found on the University of Hamburg blog, where there are also links to the study itself.

1) Unlike the case of the SARS and MERS epidemics, even one year after the start of the pandemic, no intermediate animal has been identified through which the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been transmitted from the bat to the humans. So the zoonoses theory does not yet have a solid scientific basis.

2) “SARS-CoV-2 viruses are able to bind surprisingly well to human cell receptors and penetrate human cells. This is made possible by specific cell receptor binding domains fused to a specific coronavirus spike protein cleavage site (furin). Together, these two properties have yet to be identified for coronaviruses, indicating an unnatural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. “

3) No bats were sold at the alleged fish market in central Wuhan. And the Wuhan Institute of Virology has the largest collection of bat viruses in the world. The laboratory studies the pathogens of bats in the southern province of China. It is already highly unlikely that bats from caves 2,000 miles away would have reached Wuhan and caused a global pandemic right next to this institute of virology. (“If there really was a zoonosis, that is, the virus was transmitted from humans to bats through an intermediate animal, then why didn’t it happen in southern China, where do these viruses live?” Wiesendanger asks in an interview. rear.)

4) “A team of researchers from the Wuhan Institute has been manipulating the coronavirus for many years to make it more contagious, more dangerous and more deadly for humans. These so-called “gain-of-function” studies have been confirmed in several original publications in the scientific literature and reported in scientific journals, so they cannot be discussed. “

5) There are serious security deficiencies at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is also documented even before the pandemic outbreak. (As an example, in one of the interviews, Wiesendanger cites an incident from 2012, “in which even a scientist died who received an overdose of the virus. This is believed to be the case that prompted new experiments in the laboratory.” )

6) Finally, “there are a number of direct references to the laboratory origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The young scientist from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is said to have been the first to become infected. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 agent was already present in 2019. In October the Institute of Virology spread to Wuhan and continued. And there are still indications that this virology institute was investigated by the Chinese services in the first half of October. “

Governments have no interest in finding out

There are “a lot of weird things” about the Wuhan lab. Suppose the coronavirus-related data is deleted; Chinese doctors do not have the right to write openly about the initial phase of a pandemic; Patient samples from the 2019 period. Wiesendanger is not even known to members of the WHO commission that recently investigated the origins of the pandemic in China, according to Tichys Einblick.

The scientist regretted that the German government was not interested in knowing the true origins of the pandemic because, he said, it did not want to fan the anger of communist China. His American colleagues told him the exact same thing about the United States government. Germany is not interested, the United States is not interested. There is nothing to talk about China.

But figuring out how the pandemic actually happened should be everyone’s concern. “The consequences of the Uhane incident are dire: millions of deaths, astronomical losses to the economy and incalculable damage to the well-being of each one of us. The world community cannot accept that. It is unacceptable that this danger reappears”, is the first most important reason for the scientist to take on this work and make its results public.

Handling dangerous viruses is not just a matter for scientists

“I am not a member of any party and I have always said that science should not fraternize with politics. I have conducted this study, I emphasize it once again, not as a political signal, but as a warning for people to think about what threatens us in the future if the origins of the pandemic are not clarified and there is no adequate political response . Wiesendanger says.

Dangerous manipulation of viral genes “cannot remain a matter for a small group of scientists, it must be discussed in public as soon as possible,” said the study author. People should demand that their parliaments and governments investigate the true origin of the pandemic.

“It just came to our attention then. But, apparently, journalists avoid these sensitive subjects. They are content to smear those who want to discuss the subject,” a prominent physicist tossed a pebble into the garden of the German media.

At the same time, R. Wiesendanger is pleased that more and more scientists around the world dare to make public the results of their research, which denies the version of zoonosis perpetrated by communist China.

Suppose that, using the empirical method of the Bayes method used to test the hypothesis, the American pharmacologist scientist Steven Quayas tested both versions: zoonosis and laboratory. At first, the lab version seemed unlikely to her, but after evaluating 26 independent study materials, the probability of the lab version rose to nearly 100 percent.

The physicist and philosopher Eduard Kaeser, who mentioned this study in the NZZ newspaper, points out that such calculations “depend a lot on our level of knowledge.”

Unfortunately, “important databases are often kept locked, not just in China, but especially there. For a person who does not belong to the inner circle of connoisseurs, there is only one option left – to browse the data available to him independently. That’s what Wiesendanger did. “