Paolo Barnard - The Origin of the Virus: The hidden truths behind the microbe that killed millions of people

The Origin of the Virus

The hidden truths behind

the microbe that killed

millions of people

Paolo Barnard

Dr. Steven Quay

Prof. Angus Dalgleish

Clinical Press Ltd.

LOrigine del Virus

Chiarelettere

Paolo Barnard, Steven Quay, Angus Dalgleish 2021

The right of Paolo Barnard, Angus Dalgleish and Steven Quay to be identified as the authors and artists of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright owner.

While the advice and information in this book is believed to be true and accurate at the time of going to press, neither the author, the editor, nor the publisher can accept legal responsibility for any errors of omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Case histories and names have been altered to preserve confidentiality.

First published in the UK September 2021

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-85-457107-6

THE ORIGIN OF THE VIRUS E-book version

Published by:

Clinical Press Ltd.

Redland Green Farm, Redland, Bristol, BS6 7HF

With permission of the Italian publishers Chiarelettere.

The book LOrigine del Virus which this book is based on is available in Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

Chiarelettere S.r.l. 2021

Cover design of this English language issue P Goddard 2021

Preface

In a disturbing reconstruction of events two of the most reputable scientists in the world reveal for the first time to the public the deadly biological secrets of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. These were known to the Chinese authorities and to an elite of Wuhan scientists in the very early stages of the first Chinese epidemic, then were covered up under a layer of lies, omissions and obfuscations with later complicity of some people working for the chief US Public Health Agencies and even in scientific journals.

Prof Angus Dalgleish and Dr Steven Quay were coordinated by Italian reporter Paolo Barnard in a year long investigation.

SARS-CoV-2 was endowed with molecular features that made it unusually able to strike the human body way beyond what this class of viruses normally can do. Thats why it kills and sickens so implacably. Its aggressive nature is ascribable to extreme laboratory experiments called Gain of Function, that manufacture novel deadly pathogens in Biosecurity facilities which, as historical records show, are often prone to accidental escapes like the one that gave origin to COVID-19.

Had the Chinese central authorities immediately alerted the international community and policymakers the world over of both the accidental leak and of the foreboding associated with the manufactured deadly features of SARS-CoV-2, very large numbers of lives could have been spared.

The authors of this chilling account of events surrounding the worst health crisis in a century firmly believe that unless these facts are further investigated and those responsible are called to account, it is highly likely the world is destined to re-live this catastrophe all over again and possibly much worse.

A Deadly Silence

by Paolo Barnard

Introduction

The real crime against global health committed in China, well before this pandemic became a world scourge, was the conspiracy of silence by both the authorities in Beijing and by an elite of Wuhan virologists to cover what they already knew of the extreme perils associated with the novel coronavirus that had just accidentally escaped one of their research facilities. In fact, they had very early knowledge since at least January 2020 when Covid-19 was responsible for less than three thousand cases and no more than one hundred victims confined to Wuhan that this virus had been endowed with lethal molecular features well beyond what is normally found in its class, which will be fully illustrated in this work later on. Had they immediately alerted the international health community, the media and policymakers the world over of both the leak and of the foreboding associated with those deadly features of SARS-CoV-2 no doctor in the word was aware of, very large numbers of lives could have been spared. They did nothing of the sort.

This book is a shocking account of the extreme experiments, of the repeated cover-ups and of the international collusions that lead to the outbreak of the worst pandemic in a century. For the first time the public will be acquainted with what really lies at the heart of the nefarious molecular machinery that has now killed more than 4 million humans and disrupted life as we knew it on the entire planet.

Two among the most reputable living scientists, Prof Angus Dalgleish and Dr Steven Quay, have contributed their extensive knowledge and first hand research work to my journalistic quest, shining a disquieting light not just on the Chinese handling of the outbreak but also on those in the West that strived for the truth to be obscured, including some scientific journals. SARS-CoV-2, they reveal, bears beyond any possible doubt the hallmarks of the most extreme form of virological manipulation, called Gain of Function (GOF), which the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was practicing on a regular basis in cooperation with other so called Biosafety laboratories in China.

Between December 2019 and the beginning of 2020 the leading coronavirus expert at the WIV, Dr Zheng-Li Shi, was in all probability the first, or at any rate the most qualified scientist to sequence SARS-CoV-2 as contagion was taking hold in her own city. Among the host of amino acids in the Spike proteins the protruding arms of the novel coronavirus lay a number of molecular weapons that were known in the scientific literature for their potential to lead to extraordinary pathogenicity rampaging through many different classes of human cells. She knew that no other member of the SARS-CoV-2 family had ever been found to posses them and that Gain of Function experiments had in the past purposely inserted at least one of those weapons in the first 2003 SARS coronavirus. Zheng-Li Shis vast experience in the field no doubt told her, in those fateful first days of the Chinese epidemic, that as the pathogen was now travelling the world through the intense connections Wuhan has with international hubs it would almost certainly trigger a dreadful pandemic precisely because of the dangerous and highly unusual biological weaponry she was observing in its genome.

In the meantime the Chinese authorities were busy covering up all they could by having crucial evidence erased from databases or taken offline, and intimidating or arresting all those who were trying to alert the outside world of the realities on the ground in Wuhan. Even when the eminent virologist had an outstanding opportunity to notify international colleagues of what she knew by giving it prominence in her Nature paper of February 2020, in which she and colleagues described the sequence of SARS-CoV-2, Zheng-Li Shi made no mention of its dreadful molecular features.

To be fair, readers must realise that Zheng-Li Shis mitigating circumstances lie in the fact the the entire Wuhan Institute of Virology had long been taken over by the Chinese Military, the PLA, as this book will later document. Also, since January 2020 Major General Chen Wei was charged by Beijing with supervising all COVID-19 operations precisely at the WIV, as publicly stated by the Chinese government controlled The Global Times. It is a fact that Zheng-Li Shi was never free to talk about what she knew.