Gain-of-function researchers involved in possible Chinese military bioweapons research were among first infected by COVID-19: Report

The Chinese scientists conducting dangerous gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were the first humans infected by COVID-19, according to a new report published on the Substack Public.

This revelation — coupled with the Sunday Times' explosive report suggesting researchers at the WIV were involved in military bioweapons research at the time of the leak — serves to further quash the zoonotic origin theory peddled by Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Peter Daszak, and others with links to the lab, as well as by so-called Western scientists eager to adopt Beijing's wet-market origins narrative.

Investigative journalists Michael Shellenberg, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag learned from multiple U.S. government officials, with one admitting "100%" certainty, that the "patients zero" who got infected in November 2019 included Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.

While all three "patients zero" were WIV researchers, Ben Hu's primary infection is all the more damning given that he ran lead on the institute's gain-of-function research on SARS-like coronaviruses — research intended to make viruses more infectious.

According to Alina Chan, molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, "Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli. ... He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanized mice. If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him."

Zhengli, the so-called "Bat Woman" referenced by Chan, was the top coronavirus researcher at the lab, who years prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 worked with University of North Carolina epidemiologist Ralph Baric to create a novel infectious pathogen by way of gain-of-function research that could infect human cells.

Zhengli and Baric manufactured a "chimeric virus" by placing the "spike of bat coronavirus SHC014" into the molecular structure of the SARS virus, which could replicate in human airway cells and possibly be transmitted to humans.

Hu similarly meddled with COVID-19's apparent forerunners, co-authoring a 2017 paper on chimeric bat coronaviruses with the head of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, who had used American grant money for such dangerous research at the WIV. After his investment went south in a big way, Daszak would go on to champion Fauci's efforts to downplay the lab-leak theory.

Hu and fellow patient zero Yu Ping co-authored a paper with Zhengli in 2019 detailing the SARS-like lineages they studied over the years along with "insights on the bat origin of human SARS."

Here is a video showing Hu alongside a lab worker handling specimens where neither are wearing protective gear:

13年不懈追踪，中国科学家寻获SARS病毒源头youtu.be

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing, told Public, "It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with COVID-19 before anyone else. That would be the 'smoking gun.' Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in Shi’s lab."

Public noted it is presently unclear how long the U.S. government has known about the WIV workers who first got sick wth COVID-19 or why it neglected to let the American people know that the virus that upended their lives was likely not the result of a zoonotic infection, but almost certainly an error made by an adversary bent on developing a weapon of mass destruction.

Chan told Public, "You would expect the country of origin to be defensive ... but you wouldn’t expect a country receiving the virus to be withholding key evidence."

TheBlaze recently reported on newly reiterated claims that China was engineering mutant coronaviruses for malicious purposes at the WIV, including using the new virus as a bioweapon while developing a vaccine to protect its citizens, prior to the onset of the pandemic.

American investigators with the U.S. State Department told the Sunday Times that the lab wherein Hu, Ping, and Zhu took ill was where a People's Liberation Army-backed bioweapons program was under way, making mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans.

"It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic," said one investigator.

Dr. Steven Quay, a scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation, suggested that COVID-19, which killed over 1.1 million Americans, was created by inserting a furin cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanized mice, reported the Times.

Shellenberg noted on Twitter Tuesday that when the WIV "put out their first paper about the pandemic virus, they failed to point out the novel furin cleavage site despite having had plans to and allegedly putting such gain-of-function features into SARS-like viruses in their lab."

Chan said, "It’s as if these scientists proposed putting horns on horses, but when a unicorn shows up in their city a year later they write a paper describing every part of it except its horn."

The mounting evidence of a lab leak and malicious intent paints China's resultant cover-up in a new light.

Chinese authorities delayed warning the world about the emergence of the deadly disease, going to great lengths to silence doctors like the late Lie Wenliang, who had tried to raise the alarm.

While Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu reportedly got sick with COVID-19 in November 2019, communist officials waited until Dec. 31 to alert the World Health Organization, then claimed, "The disease is preventable and controllable."

A Five Eyes intelligence dossier accused the CCP in May 2020 of engaging in an "assault on international transparency" to the "endangerment of other countries," reported the New York Post.

The intelligence dossier indicated that the genocidal Chinese regime had scrambled to bury evidence of the virus and its origins, "destroying" lab samples, censoring evidence of spread, and denying sample requests from other countries.

British conservative politician Bob Seely said in response, "At the end of this when the dust settles, it is also clear that there has to be a re-evaluation by the West of its relationship with China."

The Department of Homeland Security intelligence service indicated in early 2020 that the CCP simultaneously covered up the outbreak while hoarding critical medical supplies and cutting other countries off from items believed necessary to tackle the virus, TheBlaze previously reported.

"We assess the Chinese Government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the International community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports," said the May 1 DHS report.

The CCP also locked down domestic travel internally while knowingly allowing infected Chinese citizens to travel internationally.

The New York Times revealed that while Chinese officials began locking down Hubei province, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the alleged patients zero, they nevertheless continued to permit international travel ahead of the Lunar New Year, when hundreds of millions of people were expected to travel back to their hometowns.

About 175,000 people left Wuhan on Jan. 1 alone.

Seven million people left Wuhan in January before travel was restricted, thousands of whom, the Times indicated, were infected. Thousands successfully made it to cities around the world; 900 reportedly made it to New York; 2,200 to Sydney, Australia; and tens of thousands more to various other cities.