COVID-19: Human Immune System Targeted? New Studies

Pam Barker | Director of TLB Europe Reloaded Project

We’re doing a two-for-one of the latest articles this week by Zerohedge regarding the nature of ‘COVID-19’, with the most recent posting first.

We need to remind readers that just because this virus is manufactured in a lab, it doesn’t mean the Chinese were using it to infect the world, as the neocon narrative would have us conveniently believe in order to start a war. Curious cases of pulmonary sickness were present in the US/Hawaii during 2019; some young US athletes who went to Wuhan in October for the world military games were of an unusually low standard, contrary to the usual Olympic level of American participants raising the question who were they?; and many young people from a variety of countries fell sick during those games, a fact which was recently revealed in France by a couple of participants but then buried. Certain European countries, such as Italy and France, had strange pulmonary cases, too, BEFORE the first official Chinese case was registered in December. This may even be the case for the UK.

There have been no successful attempts to track down Patient Zeros so far to our knowledge, which some have said suggests a ‘seeding’ of the virus in certain locations, such as Wuhan itself, France and northern Italy. Further, these locations yield different strains of the virus according to a peer reviewed study. All of which means that both production and dissemination of the virus are likely no accident. Sure the Chinese should fess up, but who else should?

Dr. Judy Mikovits, who was herself involved in viral gain-of-function research, believes the responsibility for the virus’ creation lies somewhere between North Carolina, Fort Detrick and Wuhan. We also remind readers that the French have been heavily involved in the set up of the Wuhan lab, in connection to a similar lab in the French city of Lyon.

The report below cites a study (linked to below, which can be downloaded as a PDF) in which a normal human cell will emit a molecule, found on its surface, signalling that it is infected, which triggers the immune system to attack the invader. The coronavirus, however, has a protein, ORF8, which binds to this signalling molecule in order to destroy it. This strategy is used by HIV.

All of which should not be used to ramp up even more pathological fear. We know it’s a weak virus overall, which dies at 18 degrees celsius. It only attacks the elderly and very sick, and has a low death rate resembling the flu. Most of us simply haven’t noticed it, except for the insane media hype and economy-destroying lockdown. We know there are highly effective treatments for it, so who needs a vaccine? We don’t share Zerohedge‘s pessimism on this.

The 2nd article reveals how the virus shows a unique proclivity to bind more strongly onto human receptor enzymes (ACE2) as opposed to those in animal species. The opposite should happen if the virus passed from an animal species to humans.

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Coronavirus Uses Same Strategy As HIV To Evade, Cripple Immune System: Chinese Study Finds

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden TYLER DURDEN

Back on February 1, when the coronavirus pandemic was only just starting to attract broader attention and the China-influenced mainstream media was still politically inclined to minimize the severity of the disease before pulling a sharp U-turn and now going full bore with a narrative of just how dangerous it is for the Trump administration to reopen the economy (because if the economy recovers by November, Trump just might get re-elected), we published an article referencing an Arxiv pre-print which found that the covid-19 genome contained “HIV Insertions,” stoking fears that the virus was an artificially created bioweapon.

While the mere suggestion that this virus was man-made – never mind sharing discrete segments of its genetic structure with HIV – sparked outrage among the well-paid mercenary enforcers of the First Amendment known as “fact-checkers,” who are employed by such biased organizations as Twitter and Facebook to stifle any line of inquiry that runs contrary to whatever dominant narrative has been blessed by the Zuckerbergs and Dorseys of the world, it was none other than the man who discovered the HIV virus back in 1983, that confirmed our suspicions saying that “the virus was man-made.”

As we reported in April, Professor Luc Montagnier, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, claimed that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and added that the Wuhan laboratory, known for its work on coronaviruses, tried to use one of these viruses as a vector for HIV in the search for an AIDS vaccine.

Needless to say, since this narrative was destructive to China and all those self-proclaimed experts who had vowed there is no way the Wuhan virus was i) manmade, ii) released by a Chinese lab, and iii) had HIV-insertions, the story was quickly buried and never received as much as a minute of airtime in conventional media sources.

That may all change now, as a result of the third, and perhaps most startling twist yet in the bizarre saga of the coronavirus, after the South China Morning Post reported that a new study by Chinese scientists has found that the novel coronavirus uses the same strategy to evade attack from the human immune system as HIV.

Specifically, both viruses remove marker molecules on the surface of an infected cell that are used by the immune system to identify invaders, the researchers said in a non-peer reviewed paper titled “The ORF8 Protein of SARS-CoV-2 Mediates Immune Evasion through Potently Downregulating MHC-I”, posted on pre-print website bioRxiv.org on Sunday (a paper which the great hordes of amateur epidemiologists will make sure is promptly taken down or else their carefully planted propaganda may be obliterated). They warned that this commonality could mean Sars-CoV-2, the clinical name for the virus, could be around for some time, like HIV.

Separately, virologist Zhang Hui and a team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou also said their discovery added weight to clinical observations that the coronavirus was showing “some characteristics of viruses causing chronic infection”.

Some more details on the Hui study: the researchers collected killer T cells from five patients who had recently recovered from Covid-19; those immune cells are generated by people after they are infected with Sars-CoV-2, and whose job is to find and destroy the virus. But the killer T cells used in the study were not effective at eliminating the virus in infected cells. When the scientists took a closer look they found that a molecule known as major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, was missing.

The molecule is an identification tag usually present in the membrane of a healthy cell, or in sick cells infected by other coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. It changes with infections, alerting the immune system whether a cell is healthy or infected by a virus. However, there is one notable disease that makes MHC molecules disappear from the cell surface: HIV.

The coronavirus removes these markers by producing a protein known as ORF8, which binds with MHC molecules, then pulls them inside the infected cell and destroys them, the researchers said.

ORF8, which is also known to play an important role in viral replication, is the gene that is targeted by most commercial test kits to detect viral loads in nose or oral swabs.

Needless to say, the absence of MHC makes the creation of vaccines against covid problematic, although the study authors had a suggestion: while drugs used to treat Covid-19 patients mainly target enzymes or structural proteins needed for viral replication, Zhang and his team suggested compounds be developed “specifically targeting the impairment of MHC by ORF8, and therefore enhancing immune surveillance for Sars-CoV-2 infection”.

And here is where things gets very messy for the frauds known as “fact-checkers,” who – without any actual facts or knowledge – threw up all over our February report that the coronavirus shared genetic material with HIV: while the mainstream media did everything in its power to censor any suggestions that Covid and HIV having genetic similarities (after all who wants to be threatened by an airborne version of AIDS), now it is none other than the South China Morning Post , which writes that “earlier studies found the spike protein of the new coronavirus had a structure that allowed it to enter many types of human cells and bind with them. The same structure was also found in HIV, but not in other coronaviruses found in animals such as bats and pangolins.”

Oops, the SCMP will have a a lot of explaining for reporting on, you know, the facts.

But wait there’s more. Another study by researchers in New York and Shanghai also found that the Sars-CoV-2, sometimes called the “Wu Flu” could kill T cells, or as the SCMP puts it “the discovery came after autopsies in China found immune system destruction similar to that caused by AIDS.”

At this point, the SCMP has pointed out all the exact same facts – that the coronavirus not only shares genetic material with HIV, but also evades and cripples the immune system in a similar way to HIV – that got the “highly respected” StatNews to accuse Zero Hedge of spreading an “infodemic.” We wonder if StatNews author John Gregory will append his “analysis” now that actual “facts” have emerged showing that it’s not the infodemic we should be afraid of, but the censordemic.

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Of course, if covid and HIV share a similar approach to hiding from, and crippling, the host immune system, kiss any hope for a vaccine – or cure – goodbye. Four decades after HIV – a virus that attacks the immune system – emerged, it has killed about 32 million people globally and there is still no vaccine or drug that can completely cure the disease.

Which begs the question: who were the real conspiracy theorists – those who reported the facts, or all those countless “mainstream” publications who sought to stifle the facts, by accusing us – and many others – of peddling conspiracy theories. For the answer, we go back to what HIV-discovered Montagnier said in April:  “Conspirators are the opposite camp, hiding the truth,” he said without wanting to accuse anyone, but hoping that the Chinese will admit to what he believes happened in their laboratory. “In any case, the truth always comes out, it is up to the Chinese government to take responsibility.”

And while we admire Montagnier’s optimism, we are not holding our breath until the truth finally does come out. Until then, the SCMP may want to watch the bank of its social media accounts – can’t have the peasants realizing they were lied to all along. Twitter, for example, has developed a nasty habit of immediately banning anyone who dares to tell the truth about anything.

The full paper is found here (link). Read it before it mysteriously disappears. (ER: or save it as a PDF.)

Original article

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“Like It Was Designed To Infect Humans”: COVID-19 ‘Cell Culture’ Theory Gains Steam

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden TYLER DURDEN

A scientific study which found COVID-19 may have been a “cell-culture” uniquely adapted for transmission to humans (more so than any other animal – including bats), is gaining steam.

The paper, currently under peer review, comes from Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, who has spent over two decades developing vaccines against influenza, Ebola, and animal Sars. He says his findings allow for the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory, according to Sky News.

“The two possibilities which I think are both still open is that it was a chance transmission of a virus from an as yet unidentified animal to human. The other possibility is that it was an accidental release of the virus from a laboratory,” said Petrovsky, adding “Certainly we can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal. They are both open possibilities.”

Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses.

The way coronavirus enters human cells is by binding to a protein on the surface of lung-cells called ACE2. The study showed the virus bound more tightly to human-ACE2 than to any of the other animals they tested.

It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said.

“One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses. –Sky News

“The same process can happen in a petri-dish,” added Petrovsky. “If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system.”

“In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment.”

In January, Petrovsky began modeling the virus to try and create a vaccine candidate. According to the report, he then began to explore “what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans” in order to better understand the origins of the virus, when he discovered how well it infects humans over other species.

We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species, which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise,” he said.

When asked why mainstream scientists are still clinging to the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market, he said that scientists “try not to be political” but that that scientists who support the lab escape theory risk negatively impacting their industry with tighter laboratory controls.

“For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release, that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world, which could make doing research much harder,” he said, adding “So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of.”

Petrovsky has called for immediate investigation now, and not when the pandemic is over – calling any delay in fact finding a “mistake.”

“I’m certainly very much in favour of a scientific investigation. It’s only objective should be to get to the bottom of how did this pandemic happen and how do we prevent a future pandemic…. not to have a witch-hunt.”

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Original article

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