Books By Ed Mitchell China’s Coronavirus: Natural or Escaped Bio-Weapon?

On December 31^st 2019, China notified the World Health Organization of a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan City, which is often called the Chicago of China¹ located 550 miles west of coastal Shanghai. When I heard there was a fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, I said, “Shit!”

My concern was immediate because the epidemic broke out a few miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is located in the center of town. Especially, since it’s the only declared lab site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.² The CIA, NSA, and U.S. military have excellent intelligence regarding Wuhan. For example, a 2019 State Department report revealed suspicions covert biological warfare work in Wuhan.³ The coincidence of bio-warfare work going on in the same city where the outbreak occurred, triggered my worry that a modified virus may have escaped from the bio-lab.

The Chicago of China (Wuhan) — Downtown Wuhan, China

So, I decided to shine light on this issue to help readers make sound near-term decisions to protect their family or themselves. What I’m trying to do is along the lines of a military intelligence report about what’s happening in the field. So, prepare to read about:

Initial coverup

Key characteristics of the virus

How was the virus transferred to people in Wuhan?

What isn’t happening or being asked in Wuhan?

Decision: Natural or escaped bio-weapon?

Why should you put faith in anything I say?

First, to assist you in accessing the merit of my statements, I’ve footnoted the Internet sources I’ve stitched together in this blog. Each surfaced during the first 73-days of the outbreak. Some I think you will decide are excellent sources. For example, the John Hopkins University real-time infection-mortality-recovery-map.⁴

John Hopkins Mortality Chart — Dashboard – Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE. Excellent website for Infection – Mortality status

Second, I’m applying 25.5 years of military experience in the U.S. Army. That includes being suited up within five feet of instantly-kill-you militarized nerve gas. Yes, it caused my pucker factor to spike that day. Plus, I have researched and thought about bio-weapon development long before the appearance of the Wuhan China virus. For example, in my first thriller ( Gold Rush 2000 ), I described impacts from a leak of weaponized-virus from a virology lab in California. Later in my counterterrorism thriller ( The Destiny Relic ) I presented the pros and cons of using weaponized pathogens in the Middle East, including MERS coronavirus, to achieve a national security goal.

Third, I’m applying good research methodology that I learned at the United States Military Academy (West Point). First, state a problem hypothesis. Then try to disprove it. This approach is intended to force the analyst to avoid being biased. Here’s my investigation hypothesis: The Wuhan coronavirus is NOT a naturally-occurring pathogen and may be an escaped weaponized virus that can cause a pandemic.

To disprove or prove the hypothesis I must seek evidence along the chain of development of a laboratory manipulated virus, through its release into the environment, and finally its physical transfer into patient-zero. But to find that evidence may require filtering through any coverup by officials in Wuhan and up to the top of the People’s Communist Party.

Escaping virus from bio lab testing — Chain of development and accidental release of the Wuhan coronavirus.

Coverup Concerns

Across the Internet, on TV and radio, and in the minds of many people in many countries a troubling question emerged after the Wuhan outbreak announcement. Are China’s leaders once again treating an epidemic as a state secret and covering up the size of the epidemic in their country, just as they did in 2002-2003 during the SARS outbreak.⁵ Almost immediately many of those discussing this possibility were labeled as conspiracy whackos.

Chinese authorities in Hubei Province, where the outbreak started, went beyond labeling people. During early-December 2019 they suppressed a doctor and an independent journalist from digitally announcing there was a new coronavirus outbreak. The doctor was arrested and later died from the virus, while the journalist disappeared.⁶ However, China could not stop all the iPhone videos and social media evidence leaking to the outside world showing what was happening in the hospitals and streets of Wuhan. Plus, numerous sources outside China could not be closed down.

Crowded Wuhan Red Cross hospital — Crowded Wuhan hospital

In parallel, the U.S. National Security Agency communication-intelligence monitoring must have collected Chinese government communications as the outbreak grew, revealing concerns beyond public announcements by China’s leaders. Which may have motivated the U.S. to offer on several occasions to help fight the outbreak by sending epidemic experts from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Offers that were turned down by China until February 2, 2020.⁷ Of course, the lack of approval caused some people to believe the Chinese had something to hide and did not want American experts finding out their secret. Possibly a virus leak from the local bio-weapon lab?

But on the positive side, on February 11, 2020 Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, told reporters, “We’ve seen no obvious lack of transparency.” ⁸ Similarly, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also said China has been more transparent than they were with SARS.⁹ Supporting those statements is the fact that the death rate, since the total number of infected climbed above 500, has been stable at or near 2.3%. For example, the death rate was 2.26% as shown on the John Hopkins University dashboard on February 11, 2020 when there was a total of 60,286 people infected around the globe.

So, I believe that the combination of social media evidence and outside pressure by WHO, the U.S. and critics, convinced China to stop covering up initial results. One outcome was on February 12^th, Hubei province officials “revised” their method of reporting coronavirus infections. Their updated count of infections jumped by 14,840 while fatalities doubled to 242 for the province.¹⁰

How ugly is the Wuhan coronavirus?

The danger of the newest coronavirus outbreak was highlighted by its exponential growth of confirmed infections. It rose from 1 person to above 60,000 ¹¹ people during the 73-day period from December 1, 2019 to February 11, 2020.

During that period, trend data emerged, as shown in Figure-1 below that I created, which provides clarity about key characteristics of the Wuhan virus. That is, if you assume the number of infected and died that is daily reported to the World Health Organization are accurate. Given the reported numbers, my tracking of the mortality rate, once 200 or more infections were reported, always hovered around 2.3%. For example, the death rate on February 11, 2020 for a total of 60,286 people infected around the globe was 2.26%. So, the virus is a fast spreading, slow recovery, low-mortality pathogen. Fast spreading is a good thing in a bio-weapon.

Virus Summary Feb 11, 2020 — Figure 1 – Key Characteristics & Similarities

But people like Jon Cohen staff writer for ScienceMag.org, argues that the reported infection-death rate is suspect.¹² However if underreporting is occurring, how can the Chinese achieve a steady mortality number across all the provinces reporting in China. Well, one way could be if the province officials were ordered to NOT report any deaths above 2.3% mortality. Then, send the unreported bodies to a crematory to eliminate the evidence.

Figure-1 presents several disturbing trends such as, the virus is new so the Chinese do not have an on-hand antiviral inoculation.¹³ Thus, China is forced to fight the epidemic by physical means, including city-wide and nation-wide quarantine. Also, the infectious virus can be spread by people who don’t show any symptoms of being sick and by aerosol drift from coughing or breathing. Plus, the Wuhan Virus spreads faster (higher infection rate) than the earlier Chinese SARS virus. The result: the 2020 Wuhan virus has killed more people in 6 weeks than the 2002 SARS did in 8 months.”¹⁴

More promising news is that Nature Research Journal confirmed that the Wuhan coronavirus and the SARS-CoV are almost identical to each other because they share 79.5% of the same genomes and each uses the same cell entry receptor, ACE2. Thus, the inoculation to stop the earlier SARS outbreak may possibly be adapted to stop the Wuhan outbreak.¹⁵

Two things I haven’t seen discussed on the internet or TV, except by me here. One is what I call the incapacity rate (IR) where higher-is-better in a bio-weapon to stop enemy soldiers or factory workers from doing their jobs. Figure-1 shows it in doctor-talk as the “serious-complication rate” = 20%. Wuhan patients with serious complications couldn’t breathe without medical assistance and where sent into intensive care units.

My second metric is the infection-to-recovery rate (I2R), which is a sister to the incapacity rate. You calculate this rate by subtracting died and recovered from total infected, then calculate the percentage left over. By the end of the 73-day period 85% of those-infected remained sick, including the ICU patients. How long that it takes for an average-sick-person to recover and not be able to infect others, with or without medical care, remains unclear at this time.

How was the virus transferred to humans in Wuhan?

Hunting down the source of an epidemic commonly includes finding “Patient-Zero”. A team from the Jin Yin-tan Hospital in Wuhan set out to do that by analyzing the first 41 people infected by the coronavirus in Wuhan.¹⁶ They failed and only got as close as patient-1 for two different groups of people. Here’s how that happened.

The hospital released their results on January 24^th, 2020 and Chart-B below, graphically portrays their major findings. Notice that the chart shows the date of infection for each of the 41 tracked patients and whether they were exposed at the Huanan Seafood Market or somewhere else in Wuhan.

Importantly, the hospital analysis rectified the government’s December announcement that the outbreak began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.¹⁷ That claim was incorrect. Yes, the seafood market can be considered cluster-zero. But notice that 14 of the 41 infected people were not associated with the fish market. Those blue-patients caught the virus someplace else and were not identified as another cluster.

Additionally, the earliest infected patient was a blue-patient who had to have caught the disease in November. But that blue-patient and the other blue-patients didn’t infect the red ones associated with the seafood market. Thus, a true, singular patient-zero may have existed in November who has not been found or identified in any hospital. Therefore, a November patient-zero could have infected the blue-patient-1 who appeared on December 1^st and also infected the red-patient-1 who appeared on December 2nd. OR an animal infected the blue and red groups.

My independent interpretation of the hospital’s chart is consistent with the assessment by Dr. Daniel Lucey, who is an infectious diseases physician and adjunct professor of infectious diseases at Georgetown University Medical Center. In an interview shortly after the Wuhan hospital report was published online, he said about the December 1^st blue-patient-1: “Whether this patient was infected from an animal or another person in November, directly or by fomites (surface contact of infectious material), his infection occurred at a location other than the Huanan seafood market.”¹⁸

But the hospital report did not address which animal mutated the coronavirus, which would have helped Chinese health officials know what local animal to clean out of Wuhan. We don’t need them to, because the Nature Research Journal, on February 3^rd confirmed one animal connection to the Wuhan virus. As captured in the key characteristics on Figure-1, the Wuhan and SARS 2002 viruses are 79.5% identical. Therefore, since SARS is a bat-origin virus so is the Wuhan virus.

Plus, a second animal was identified by Dr. Trevor Bedford, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a leader of the worldwide Nextstrain collaboration that began to analyze Wuhan virus genomes when they were released in January by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control. He declared a link to host-mammal (not yet identified). During the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle he said, “There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find,” . . . “The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution.” . . . “The most likely scenario, based on genetic analysis, was that the virus was transmitted by a bat to another mammal between 20-70 years ago. This intermediary animal — not yet identified — passed it on to its first human host in the city of Wuhan in late November or early December 2019.¹⁹

Supporting Bedford’s scenario, researchers from the South China Agricultural University found that samples from coronavirus patients were 99% identical to samples of a virus taken from wild pangolins (anteater type mammal).²⁰ So the pangolin may be Bedford’s “intermediate animal” hosting the new coronavirus until passing it to a human in Wuhan.

The Jin Yin-tan Hospital also did not report the multiple locations where the blue-patients likely caught the coronavirus. But, assuming for a moment that all the blue-patients were another cluster — begs this question: How did two patient-1s (one blue and one red) at two independent locations get infected by a pangolin at nearly the same time in November 2019?

two people with guns and ant eater — Person-to-Person or Mammal-to-Person transfer?

One animal-to-human transfer sequence to multiple locations during late-November 2019 might be as follows. The true patient-zero ( let’s assume an elderly person) in November 2019 ate infected pangolin meat.²¹ Then she or he moved around Wuhan without symptoms but able to infect others. Along the way she/he cross paths with the blue-1 and red-1 patients, triggering the epidemic. Elderly patient-zero dies from pneumonia and the doctor/hospital staff do not recognize her death as strange or related to a coronavirus, which is why she/he didn’t show up in the Jin Yin-tan Hospital report. Therefore, the Chinese have a basis for claiming the Wuhan coronavirus is a naturally-occurring pathogen that was transferred from a mammal to a human.

One remaining finding is important. The death rate for this small group of 41 people was very high at 14.6% (6 people). That rate is over 6-times higher than the 73-day trend of 2.3%. Possibly the high death-rate was because the six people did not get medical care early enough to prevent their demise.

What isn’t seen or being talked about in China?

Often, a problem can be solved by hunting for what is missing. Across all the Internet and TV chatter, here’s the first thing that I noticed is missing: the lack of public announcements about proactive experts within the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) working to clean up the mess and save lives.

puzzle and puzzle piece — The missing piece

At the epicenter of this new coronavirus outbreak, shouldn’t the public know that China’s best virology experts have rolled up their sleeves and taken action? Where’s the publicity to tell the citizens of China that the WIV has taken responsibility to conduct an emergence effort to find an effective inoculation? (They are doing this.) Or news that the WIV has sent several seasoned “principal investigators” to the front lines to gather intelligence on the virus, like a crack team of Airborne Infantry Rangers to save the day. Or some comments about establishing a liaison team of WIV experts to interface with the soon-to-arrive U.S. Center for Disease Control team to work as a united front to save China and the world from a pandemic? It’s as if the Wuhan Institute of Virology never existed.

7th cavalry charge 5 horses — The missing piece

Meanwhile, the only thing close to telling the public that the cavalry has arrived is Army Maj. Gen. Chen Wei. On February 7^th, he set up a mobile testing lab in a tent in Wuhan and began operations to contain the outbreak. He’s the man that the state-run Pengbai news outlet described as “our nation’s ultimate expert” in biological and chemical weapon defenses. Who is credited with working on the successful fight against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, and the Ebola virus outbreak a decade later.²² Basically, Superman arrived while everyone in the WIV is working behind the scenes instead of in the limelight.

For example, Lead Virologist at WIV, Shi Zhengli and twelve other Institute scientists formed an expert group to research the new coronavirus. In February, researchers led by Shi published an article in Nature titled “A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin”, along with a post in bioRxiv, saying that the Wuhan coronavirus is in the same family as SARS and closest to one found in bats. In February 2020, her team published a paper in Cell Research showing that remdesivir, an experimental drug owned by Gilead Sciences had a positive effect in inhibiting the virus in vitro, and applied for a patent for the drug in China on behalf of the WIV.²³

While Shi led WIV teams to help stop the outbreak, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that she was the focus of personal attacks in Chinese social media by people claiming the WIV was the sources of the virus. That led her to post: “I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab”. When asked to comment on the attacks, Shi responded: “My time must be spent on more important matters”.²⁴

Additionally, Beijing’s Caixin media group reported Shi made public statements against “perceived tinfoil-hat theories about the new virus’s source”. Possibly, Dr. Shi forgot that in April 2004 SARS escaped from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing “due to negligence”.²⁵

Caixin also quoted her as saying: “The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory”.

Great! If what Shi Zhengli says is true, then as a leader within the WIV she should not mind answering the questions in Figure-2. If one of the WIV staff happens to have been infected in November 2019 he/she could be the true patient-zero.

Questions for the Wuhan Virology Institute

I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Shi lumps me into the tinfoil-hat folks if she ever learns I suggested these questions. Hopefully, if the U.S. CDC team ever gets allowed to enter China, maybe one of our folks will ask Dr. Shi these hard-hitting questions.

Escaped bio-weapon or natural virus?

The Chinese, who are known for covering up bio-lab leaks, have a strong argument that the Wuhan coronavirus was an animal-to-human transfer to the victims in Wuhan.

On the other hand, here is a list of facts assembled from the information discussed earlier, that corroborates that it is just as likely that the transmission was via a bio-lab leak into the population as by animal transmission.

√ A level-4 virology lab handles high-risk pathogens in Wuhan.

√ U.S. suspects the virology lab√ of conducting bio-weapons work.

√ China covered up an earlier coronavirus outbreak (2002-2003 SARS).

√ SARS escaped from Beijing’s CDC bio-lab because of negligence (2004).

√ China initially covered up the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

√ Hubei Province under-reported the number of infected and dead.

√ No WIV health status of its staff, research fellows, & visiting scientists.

√ China had been handling the SARS virus since 2002.

√ The Wuhan virus is 75% the same as the 2002-2003 SARS virus.

√ The Wuhan and 2003 SARS use the same ACE2 receptor

√ China unable to identify Wuhan’s patient-zero.

√ No animal has been found in the city carrying the Wuhan coronavirus.

√ China can’t prove transmission to citizens by bat or by human.

√ China can’t reconcile multiple infection-sites in Wuhan by animal-transfer for any of the first 41 infected patients.

√ China has not allowed CDC or WHO doctors to enter China.

Yes, it’s an interesting list but is countered by Dr. Bedford’s genetic analysis and declaration his scientific and statistical analysis supports a mammal-to-human transfer. Of course, there are numerous academics in America that have recently been outed for secretly working for and being paid nicely by the Chinese. But since I have no evidence that Bedford has a conflict of interest, I’m ignoring that possibility.

So, let’s go a step further by aligning information provided above along the chain-of-development of an escaped bio-weapon. Possibly, I can generate a picture that will support the hypothesis that a man-manipulated bio-weapon virus is the Wuhan coronavirus.

Chain of coronavirus development — Pangolin infects WIV researcher who carries the Wuhan infection outside the lab

Pangolins are the most illegally trafficked mammals in the world.²⁶ Because they are environmentally at risk, researchers have studied the animals. Nature Magazine reported on February 7^th that before the Wuhan virus erupted that researchers had noted that coronaviruses are a possible cause of death in pangolins.²⁷ Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Wuhan Institute of Virology experts were aware that the pangolins were host for a coronavirus. They may have brought one or more of the animals into the WIV level-4 laboratory to study. There, one of the staff is infected and while showing no symptoms this patient-zero travels in and out of the lab and around Wuhan infecting others. When symptoms appear, he is quarantined and cured or dies. Meanwhile, the outbreak keeps growing outside the WIV.

Decision: Natural or Escaped Virus

Without any verification that one or more of the staff at the WIV were infected, then the escape portion of the above scenario cannot be proven. Thus, I have disproved my hypothesis. Therefore, based on the available information that I have — I must agree with Dr. Shi Zhengli and Dr. Trevor Bedford. The novel Wuhan coronavirus is a naturally occurring pathogen and not a weapons-lab modified virus.

However, if I had access to the United States’ satellite sensor data and NSA signals intelligence for November 2019 through February 12^th 2020 — that might cause me to change my conclusion.

Conclusion

While the U.S. remained blocked from entering China, the Department of Homeland Security took a pandemic-mitigation step on January 31, 2020. The Department issued new entry procedures at our air and seaports. People in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico should thank our government for that action, despite China and WHO’s saying it was not needed.²⁸ I end this blog the total number of infected now stands at 75,778 people.

Footnote Table