(INTELLIHUB) — It is no longer a conspiracy to think that a Chinese seafood market was not the origin of the recent Coronavirus outbreak as more and more information across the interweb points to the possibility that 2019-nCoV is indeed a weaponized strain.
Whether the deadly contagion was released by mistake or on purpose it may have originated from China’s Level 4 National Biosafety Laboratory located at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as reports claim.
New information confirmed by a top epidemiologist reveals how the 2019-nCoV does, in fact, contain “HIV insertions” which appear to have been done by man.
The theory is that the virus, which was developed by infectious disease experts may have originated in the Wuhan-based lab of Dr. Peng Zhou, China’s preeminent researcher of bat immune systems, specifically in how their immune systems adapt to the presence of viruses like coronavirus and other destructive viruses. Somehow, the virus escaped from the lab, and the Hunan fish market where the virus supposedly originated is merely a ruse.
Now, a respected epidemiologist who recently caught flack for claiming in a twitter threat that the virus appeared to be much more contagious than initially believed is pointing out irregularities in the virus’s genome that suggests it might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon, and not just any weapon but the deadliest one of all.
In the abstract of the epidemiologist’s report, it was determined that the virus “is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.” (i.e. the virus was likely engineered)
Key findings from the paper:
Our phylogentic tree of full-length coronaviruses suggests that 2019-nCoV is closely related to SARS CoV [Fig1].
In addition, other recent studies have linked the 2019-nCoV to SARS CoV. We therefore compared the spike glycoprotein sequences of the 2019-nCoV to that of the SARS CoV (NCBI Accession number: AY390556.1). On careful examination of the sequence alignment we found that the 2019- nCoV spike glycoprotein contains 4 insertions [Fig.2]. To further investigate if these inserts are present in any other corona virus, we performed a multiple sequence alignment of the spike glycoprotein amino acid sequences of all available coronaviruses (n=55) [refer Table S.File1] in NCBI refseq (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) this includes one sequence of 2019-nCoV[Fig.S1]. We found that these 4 insertions [inserts 1, 2, 3 and 4] are unique to 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses analyzed. Another group from China had documented three insertions comparing fewer spike glycoprotein sequences of coronaviruses . Another group from China had documented three insertions comparing fewer spike glycoprotein sequences of coronaviruses (Zhou et al., 2020).
We then translated the aligned genome and found that these inserts are present in all Wuhan 2019-nCoV viruses except the 2019-nCoV virus of Bat as a host [Fig.S4]. Intrigued by the 4 highly conserved inserts unique to 2019-nCoV we wanted to understand their origin. For this purpose, we used the 2019-nCoV local alignment with each insert as query against all virus genomes and considered hits with 100% sequence coverage. Surprisingly, each of the four inserts aligned with short segments of the Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins. The amino acid positions of the inserts in 2019-nCoV and the corresponding residues in HIV-1 gp120 and HIV-1 Gag are shown in Table 1.
The first 3 inserts (insert 1,2 and 3) aligned to short segments of amino acid residues in HIV-1 gp120. The insert 4 aligned to HIV-1 Gag. The insert 1 (6 amino acid residues) and insert 2 (6 amino acid residues) in the spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV are 100% identical to the residues mapped to HIV-1 gp120. The insert 3 (12 amino acid residues) in 2019- nCoV maps to HIV-1 gp120 with gaps [see Table 1]. The insert 4 (8 amino acid residues) maps to HIV-1 Gag with gaps.
Moreover, a journalist by the name of Adrian Bond writing for the publication Medium describes in his most recent piece how “outright suspicious” it is that the Google listing for the Wuhan Institute of Virology had changed over the course of just a week.
UPDATE — JANUARY 29, 2020: What’s also odd, and outright suspicious, is that as of January 29, 2020, the location of Wuhan Institute of Virology (where the National Biosafety Laboratory is headquartered) on Google Maps has inexplicably moved since I first viewed it on January 24, 2020 and published this article on January 27, 2020. Its new location is now over twice the distance from the claimed epicenter of the novel coronavirus, Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Even its satellite imagery of the original site has been altered as well. Good thing I took screenshots.
A Google Map Image captured Jan. 24, 2020 of Huanan Seafood market 8.6 miles distant from Wuhan Institute of Virology, where China’s only Level P4 Biosafety Laboratory is headquartered. (Medium.com)Another Google Map Image captured Jan. 29, 2020 displaying Wuhan Institute of Virology now strangely moved approximately 15 miles southwest of its original location. What a difference five days make, eh? (Medium.com)Side-by-side comparison of original Google Maps location of Wuhan Institute of Virology, captured by screenshot on Jan. 24, 2020, and its altered location as of Jan. 29, 2020. What’s going on here? (Medium.com)