THE BEGINNING – Unknown Virus
April 2012 six workers in Mojiang mine fell ill from a mystery illness while removing bat feces. Three of the six subsequently died.
From first becoming too sick to work in the mine, patient 2 survived 57 days until he died. Patient 3 survived 120 days after stopping work. Patient 4 survived 117 days and then was discharged as cured. Each had been exposed in the mine for 14 days prior to the onset of severe symptoms and they were treated for infections with symptoms (on admission) of: a) dry cough, b) sputum, c) high fevers, especially shortly before death,
d) difficulty breathing, and e) myalgia (sore limbs). Four had low blood oxygen diagnosed as ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and immune damage considered indicative of viral infection. Tendency for thrombosis was noted in patients 2 and 4. Symptom severity and mortality were age-related (though from a sample of 6 this must be considered anecdotal). Potential common and rare causes of their symptoms were tested for and eliminated. Treatment included ventilation (patients 2-4), steroids (all patients), antivirals (all except patient 5), and blood thinners (patients 2 and 4).
Remote meetings were held with Zhong Nanshan at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangdong. Zhong is the Chinese hero of the SARS epidemic, a virologist, and arguably the most famous scientist in China. Samples from the miners were later sent to the Wuhan Lab and to Zhong Nanshan. The source of infection was concluded to be a horseshoe bat with unknown coronavirus, not SARS virus. Samples were taken from patients for “scientific research” and blood samples (at least) were sent to the Wuhan Lab testing positive for serum IgM suggesting the existence of virus infection. June 27th, 2012, the doctors performed an unexplained thymectomy on patient 4. The thymus is an immune organ that can potentially be removed without greatly harming the patient and it could have contained large quantities of virus.
Science magazine wrote up part of the incident in 2014 as A New Killer Virus in China?
MIDDLE – Virus named BtCoV/4991 (and covertly renamed RaTG13)
Virol Sin. 2016 Feb; 31(1): 31–40.Coexistence of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft
BtCoV/4991, a partial sequence of coronavirus and RaTG13, a full sequence of a coronavirus, are from the same bat fecal sample from Mojiang mine in 2013.
Wuahn lab has great interest in SARS-like bat coronaviruses, searched the Mojiang mine for bat viruses on four separate occasions between August 2012 and July 2013, even though the mine is a 1,000 Km from Wuhan, collecting trips began while some of the miners were still hospitalized.
Partial sequence by Wuhan lab first described in 2016, BtCoV/4991 was a 370 nucleotide virus fragment collected from the Mojiang mine in 2013 by the Wuhan Lab.
In 2017 and 2018 Wuhan lab working with BtCoV/4991 with full sequencing. Full sequence has one segment 100% identical to BtCoV/4991
In February 2020, Wuhan Lab published full sequence of BtCoV/1991 but gave it a new name, RaTG13, without mentioning BtCov/1991 when they had cited BtCoV/4991 twice in earlier publications and once in a genome sequence database . Further there was no mention of miners or deaths RaTG13
END – SARS Cov2 Pandemics hits the world
RaTG13 coronavirus is the closest corona virus to SARS Cov2.
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