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Covid-19 being designed-developed in the United States and escaping from the Wuhan lab can both be true. They aren’t mutually exclusive. On the contrary, US based researchers and Chinese from the Wuhan lab were all involved in Coronavirus research, which converted a bat coronavirus into one which could cause a human epidemic, and pandemic. A researcher at a Swiss-Italian institute was also involved in providing monoclonal antibodies.

While we believe that someone let Covid-19 out of a lab (or multiple labs), we don’t know who did it. Most of the researchers probably simply suffer from hubris, but all researchers connected to coronavirus research must be investigated – not just Fauci.

Many government funded researchers had a motive, as big, or bigger, than the pharmaceutical and biotech companies, for letting Covid-19 escape and spread. In short, they could be like the fireman who sets fires. Their academic survival almost certainly depends upon grant monies. It is also possible that it was done by someone who lost their funding, for instance a foreigner on an F-1, OPT, or H1B visa, whose presence in the USA depended upon funding (cut under Trump). Then, of course, they could have been ordered or bribed by the Chinese government, or other parties, for socio-political reasons.

The best-laid schemes of mice and men, Go oft awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain…” (Robert Burns, 1785) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse

In a research article “SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence” by Vineet D. Menacherya, Boyd L. Yount Jr., et al., PNAS, pp. 3048–3053, March 15, 2016, vol. 113, no. 11 regarding biosafety and security and the Wuhan lab, it says: “Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol: project title: Generating infectious clones of Bat SARS-like CoVs; lab safety plan ID: 20145741; schedule G ID: 12279. These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain of Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses… Continuation of these studies has been requested and approved by the NIH”. They “thank Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for access to bat CoV sequences and plasmid of WIV1-CoV spike protein.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

Vineet D. Menachery was the lead author and a key researcher for coronavirus experiments (2012-2015), which turned a bat coronavirus into a human coronavirus, which could cause an epidemic (and pandemic). However, Boyd L. Yount Jr., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “designed the infectious clone and recovered chimeric viruses.”(See: “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/). (The origin of Menachery is India, the origin of this Yount is may be the North Carolina Jund(t) from the Rhineland.)

Vineet D. Menachery has continued with related research (2015 to present), as principle investigator (PI) and affiliated with the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL). According to the 2015 paper, their research found that while their proposed vaccine helped protect younger mice, it didn’t protect older mice and sometimes led to worse disease-outcomes. His current research has been focused on the impacts of coronavirus on aging mice and humans.

Will nursing home Covid-19 statistics be used as part of Vineet Menachery’s research?

Vineet D. Menachery was the lead author and researcher for the now notorious paper: “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13. However, there is a long list of individuals who participated in the research in the US, China, and the Italian part of Switzerland (Ticino).

In this US government funded research and paper, which included not only US based researchers but researchers from both the Wuhan lab, and a Swiss-Italian researcher, they “examined the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which” [was] “circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations”. And, “Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system”, [they] “generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis.” Furthermore “Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.”

More specifically regarding vaccination (NB – this vaccine appears different from the ones being given, but how different?), the vaccinated young mice got protection, but the aged mice weren’t protected and sometimes got sicker: “To evaluate the efficacy of existing vaccines against infection with SHC014-MA15, we vaccinated aged mice with double-inactivated whole SARS-CoV (DIV). Previous work showed that DIV could neutralize and protect young mice from challenge with a homologous virus14; however, the vaccine failed to protect aged animals in which augmented immune pathology was also observed, indicating the possibility of the animals being harmed because of the vaccination15. Here we found that DIV did not provide protection from challenge with SHC014-MA15 with regards to weight loss or viral titer (Supplementary Fig. 5a,b). Consistent with a previous report with other heterologous group 2b CoVs15, serum from DIV-vaccinated, aged mice also failed to neutralize SHC014-MA15 (Supplementary Fig. 5c). Notably, DIV vaccination resulted in robust immune pathology (Supplementary Table 4) and eosinophilia (Supplementary Fig. 5d–f). Together, these results confirm that the DIV vaccine would not be protective against infection with SHC014 and could possibly augment disease in the aged vaccinated group.” See p. 1510 of “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/

A 2016 update to the 2015 article says: “In the version of this article initially published online, the authors omitted to acknowledge a funding source, USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance, to Z.-L.S. The error has been corrected for the print, PDF and HTML versions of this article.” Z-L.S. is “Zhengli-Li Shi , Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095988/

US Based & Funded Group (EcoHealth Alliance) Affilated with Chinese Lab at Center of COVID-19 Origin Investigation; Info Requested by US House Republican Leaders

A related article “SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence” by Vineet D. Menacherya, Boyd L. Yount Jr., Amy C. Simsa, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar S. Agnihothramc, Lisa E. Gralinskia, Rachel L. Graham, Trevor Scobey, Jessica A. Plante, Scott R. Royal, Jesica Swanstrom, Timothy P. Sheahan, Raymond J. Pickles, Davide Cortie, Scott H. Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne A. Marasco, and Ralph S. Barica, PNAS, pp. 3048–3053, March 15, 2016, vol. 113, no. 11 says that “Focusing on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like viruses, the results indicate that the WIV1-coronavirus (CoV) cluster has the ability to directly infect and may undergo limited transmission in human populations. However, in vivo attenuation suggests additional adaptation is required for epidemic disease. Importantly, available SARS monoclonal antibodies offered success in limiting viral infection absent from available vaccine approaches…https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

Regarding safety, funding, and the Wuhan lab, it (pdf) says:
Biosafety and Biosecurity. Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol: project title: Generating infectious clones of Bat SARS-like CoVs; lab safety plan ID: 20145741; schedule G ID: 12279. These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain of Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses (www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf), and the current paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Continuation of these studies has been requested and approved by the NIH.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for access to bat CoV sequences and plasmid of WIV1-CoV spike protein. Research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the NIH under Awards U19AI109761 and U19AI107810 (to R.S.B.), AI1085524 (to W.A.M.), and F32AI102561 and K99AG049092 (to V.D.M.). Human airway epithelial cell cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease under Award NIH DK065988 (to S.H.R.). Support for the generation of the mice expressing human ACE2 was provided by NIH Grants AI076159 and AI079521 (to A.C.S.).” https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/11/3048.full.pdf

Note that Obama actually didn’t stop already funded research, and the pause was only to be for six months, anyway. From the Obama Whitehouse (2014): “Because the deliberative process launching today will aim to address key questions about the risks and benefits of gain-of-function studies, during the period of deliberation, the U.S. Government will institute a pause on funding for any new studies that include certain gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses. Specifically, the funding pause will apply to gain-of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route./ During this pause, the U.S. Government will not fund any new projects involving these experiments and encourages those currently conducting this type of work – whether federally funded or not – to voluntarily pause their research while risks and benefits are being reassessed. The funding pause will not apply to the characterization or testing of naturally occurring influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses unless there is a reasonable expectation that these tests would increase transmissibility or pathogenicity.” See: “Doing Diligence to Assess the Risks and Benefits of Life Sciences Gain-of-Function Research” October 17, 2014, 3:30 pm https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research

The Swiss-Italian research center (The Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona) gets some funding from Bill Gates, among other sources listed. The researcher, Lanzavecchia, is also affiliated with the Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zurich. However, Switzerland isn’t going to force vaccinate its people. They may not have vaccine induced herd immunity, because they aren’t sheep: they won’t allow it. The original Swiss cantons banded together (Eidgenossenschaft) to stand against the Habsburg Empire, approximately 500 years before the US won its independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidwalden Nonetheless, one of the early Covid-19 vaccine deaths was a person in a Swiss nursing home.

Gates-affiliated US-based epidemiologist-biostatistician, Ali Mokdad, has complained that the US may not get herd immunity due to vaccine refusal. Ali Mokdad, who had to retract or correct at least one paper due to computational error, even though that is essentially his only field of expertise! “Fwd: Correction: Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000” by Ali H. Mokdad, PhD et al., JAMA: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/200177 He is also an author on a Covid paper retracted-corrected because the dates included were off. Ali Mokdad shares a name with a Lebanese Hezbollah parliamentarian, and advises Saudi Arabia. He even looks frightening. Maybe he needs to go home and herd Middle Eastern sheep? If he’s Shi’a, as implied by his name, the Shi’a sheeple are supposed to listen to the clerics, who are supposed to be infallible (like the Pope). Fauci, of course, was a speaker at a recent Vatican Conference. Maybe he needs to go herd sheep, too.

Those involved in the research-paper A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13, included a long list of US based individuals (see below), as well as Xing-Yi Ge and Zhengli-Li Shi of the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.

Fauci’s father was a pharmacist and had grandparents from the mafia strongholds of Sicily and Naples, as well as Swiss-Italian ones. And, here we have a Swiss-Italian research Institute participant: Antonio Lanzavecchia, Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology, Switzerland. The article says Zurich, but Bellinzona is a town in the Italian part of Switzerland, whereas Zurich is Swiss-German. The guy’s apparently affiliated with Institute of Microbiology, ETH in Zurich, as well. Where was Europe’s first major outbreak? Italy. Coincidence? Maybe yes; maybe no.

Anthony Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1983 (or 84). https://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/director
Dr. Fauci received his A.B. from the College of the Holy Cross and his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He then completed an internship and residency at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. In 1968, Dr. Fauci came to NIH as a clinical associate in the NIAID Laboratory of Clinical Investigation. In 1980, he was appointed chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation, a position he still holds. Dr. Fauci became director of NIAID in 1984https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/anthony-s-fauci-md

Funding for research related to “SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence” by Vineet D. Menachery, Boyd L. Yount Jr. et al. (PNAS paper) came from grants from the (US) National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) under awards U19AI109761 (R.S.B.), U19AI107810 (R.S.B.), AI085524 (W.A.M.), F32AI102561 (V.D.M.) and K99AG049092 (V.D.M.), and from the National Natural Science Foundation of China awards 81290341 (Z.-L.S.) and 31470260 (X.-Y.G.), and from USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from [for?] EcoHealth Alliance (Z.-L.S.). The human airway epithelial cultures were supported [In what way? Funding? Providing the materials?] by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease of the NIH under award NIH DK065988 (S.H.R.). M.T. Ferris (Dept. of Genetics, University of North Carolina) reviewed the statistical approaches and C.T. Tseng (Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch) for provided Calu-3 cells. The “experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.” Vineet Menachery (V.D.M.) “designed, coordinated and performed experiments, completed analysis and wrote the manuscript”. Other authors and affiliations: Boyd L. Yount Jr., and Kari Debbink of the Department of Epidemiology, and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; Sudhakar Agnihothram of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Lisa E. Gralinski of the National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, Arkansas, USA; Jessica A Plante, Rachel L Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge  of the Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Xing-Yi Ge of the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China; Eric F. Donaldson, Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Scott H. Randell, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Cystic Fibrosis Center, Marsico Lung Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Antonio Lanzavecchia, Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology, Bellinzona and Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Wayne A. Marasco, Department of Cancer Immunology and AIDS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Zhengli-Li Shi, of the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China, and Ralph Baric of the Department of Epidemiology, and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.

According to “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” (2015) by Vineet D Menachery 1, Boyd L Yount Jr 1, Kari Debbink 1,2, Sudhakar Agnihothram3, Lisa E Gralinski 1, Jessica A Plante 1, Rachel L Graham 1, Trevor Scobey1, Xing-Yi Ge 4, Eric F Donaldson1, Scott H Randell5,6, Antonio Lanzavecchia7, Wayne A Marasco8,9, Zhengli-Li Shi4 & Ralph S Baric 1,2:

B.L.Y. (Boyd L. Yount Jr., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “designed the infectious clone and recovered chimeric viruses”; S.A. (Sudhakar Agnihothram, North Carolina) completed neutralization assays; L.E.G. (Lisa E. Gralinski, Arkansas) helped perform mouse experiments; T.S. (Trevor Scobey, North Carolina) and J.A.P. (Jessica A. Plante, North Carolina) completed mouse experiments and plaque assays; X.-Y.G. (Xing-Yi Ge of Wuhan) performed pseudotyping experiments; K.D. (Kari Debbink, North Carolina) generated structural figures and predictions; E.F.D. generated phylogenetic analysis; R.L.G. completed RNA analysis; S.H.R. provided primary HAE cultures; A.L. and W.A.M. provided critical monoclonal antibody reagents (Antonio Lanzavecchia and Wayne A. Marasco); and Z.-L.S. provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids. R.S.B. designed experiments and wrote manuscript.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/

The head of the National Institute of Aging (NIA) is Dr. Hades, whoops, Dr. Hodes. The NIA has apparently given Vineet Menachery-the Galveston Lab over a million dollars to study Coronavirus in aging mice and humans (2015-2021).

There are many people who may be to blame, directly or indirectly, for the Coronavirus pandemic, in our opinion. Almost exactly a year ago, we pointed out the connection between the Galveston National lab in Texas and the Wuhan China National lab. The immediate academic “godfather” of Vineet Menachery is Ralph Baric, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Will the nursing home statistics be used as part of Vineet Menachery’s research? His ongoing US government grant (2015-2021) on “Utilizing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)”, starts with mice but also “extends examination into primary human airway and immune cells in order to confirm and validate in vivo finding…” It’s possible that the human research was supposed to be in vitro (lab cell lines), whereas the living, in vivo, is mice. However, that’s not what has happened. And, seniors have been serving as coronavirus vaccine guinea pigs, as well.

As most people now know, most of the dead have been senior citizens, and the most massive devastation was within nursing homes. The governors of certain states, like Cuomo in New York, appear to have knowingly and willfully spread Covid-19 throughout nursing homes. While the intent was most likely to save the state Medicare money, it fits in, rather neatly, with the description of Vineet Menachery’s research. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is using open borders to replace the dead with young people, mostly young men, who they call children. Anyone post-puberty is NOT a biological child. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of single young adults, mostly men in their mid 20s, from all over the world, are coming into the rugged Big Bend (Texas) sector of the US-Mexican border, since they know that it is short of border patrols.

So, the government-taxpayer “National Institute of Aging” is behind this work, which we consider criminal, apparently to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars per year. It was signed off on by Rebecca Fuldner: https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/staff/fuldner-rebecca

The head of the National Institute of Aging, since 1993, is “Richard J. Hodes, M.D., is the Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Hodes, a leading researcher in the field of immunology, was named to head the NIA in 1993.” https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/staff/hodes-richard

Project Funding Information for 2019
Total Funding
$241,668
Project Start Date 14-July-2015 Project End Date 30-May-2021
Budget Start Date 30-June-2019 Budget End Date 30-May-2021

From one of Vineet Menachery’s grants: “Utilizing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), the proposal seeks to compare young, middle-aged, and aged mice in order to identify, confirm, and validate major change in pathway and immune activation that contribute to enhanced susceptibility and can be exploited for therapeutic treatment. In addition, the project extends examination into primary human airway and immune cells in order to confirm and validate in vivo finding….https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9720777#clinical-studies https://archive.md/yRsxA

Vineet Menachery’s roots seem to be in Kerala and he is likely a “Christian”, so we can’t blame Hinduism for this scumbag, though we may still be able to blame India’s caste system. Although caste isn’t supposed to exist in Christianity, it often does in reality.

Nonetheless, the bigger system to blame is an academic system where grant-monies are everything. And, the members of Congress – Democrat and Republican- who continue to fund this bloated, and sometimes dangerous, pork barrel funding. Before Vineet Menachery was born, and perhaps before he or his parents arrived in the United States, I recall Biochemists complaining about research funding. All were ethnic Europeans – most Americans. They weren’t able to get funding for things that truly interested them. With time, this complaint became common across different academic fields: the need for funding, usually in the form of grants, to preserve academic employment. These grants may be private or public and the offspring of some wealthy people seem to endow academic positions for their offspring or the offspring of friends.

Universities are, at best, worthless, and at worst, dangerous. This is especially true since the United States has increasingly imported foreigners to take the few existing academic jobs, and there are no caps on academic H1Bs, so sometimes they are stealing jobs from Americans just to sit in the USA on H1Bs and get their green cards. Foreign students work on F-1 visas and take grant funding from American students, giving the foreigners grant experience and allowing them to later work on H1Bs. They can sit on the H1Bs until they have tenure. Universities are not required to give a fair chance to Americans. And, Americans weren’t forewarned before doing their degrees. While the problem in the sciences (STEM) is obvious, less obvious is that the country is giving ideological control to foreigners who teach within the social sciences.

Systems Based Analysis of Host Factors that Contribute to Aging Pathogenesis
Project Number
5R00AG049092-05
Former Number
5K99AG049092-02
Contact PI/Project Leader
MENACHERY, VINEET D
Awardee Organization
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MED BR GALVESTON

Excerpt: “Therefore, these studies take a systems based approach to characterize and examine the early tissue-specific and innate immune responses to respiratory virus infection within the context of aging. Utilizing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), the proposal seeks to compare young, middle-aged, and aged mice in order to identify, confirm, and validate major change in pathway and immune activation that contribute to enhanced susceptibility and can be exploited for therapeutic treatment. In addition, the project extends examination into primary human airway and immune cells in order to confirm and validate in vivo finding. Finally, efforts will be made to explore the contribution of broad epigenetic changes to differential responses in young and aged models. Together, these approaches will yield important findings critical to understanding and treating current and future respiratory virus infections in aged populations.” https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9720777#clinical-studies

Vineet D. Menachery, Ph.D : “The underlying thread of my career has been using highly successful viruses to examine critical aspects of the immune response. By employing virulent respiratory pathogens including coronaviruses (CoV), I have been able to probe and identify host-virus interactions that dictate disease outcomes. These insights extend into immunology, host genetic variation, and viral processes that are critical to understand and ameliorate human disease.“ (March 24, 2020 https://archive.vn/zaAYp ) Ameliorate is to improve. So, does he want to improve outcomes for patients or to improve on the survival of spread of the virus?

He has also worked on this project which runs from 2012-2022:
Systems Immunogenetics of Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens in the Collaborative Cross Project Number 5U19AI100625-09 Contact PI/Project Leader BARIC, RALPH S Awardee Organization, UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
Excerpt: “Our research team has quantified variation in baseline, as well as SARS-CoV, IAV, and WNV-induced immune responses in a panel of 110 CC RIX lines (reproducible F1 crosses between CC recombinant inbred (RI) lines that model heterozygous human populations). To our knowledge, this represents to most comprehensive analysis of immune response variation ever conducted in a genetic reference population, and in ongoing QTL mapping studies, we have identified 100+ quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with variation in virus-induced innate and adaptive immunity, inflammation and disease…https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10003924

R00 AG049092-01A1 (PI: Menachery)                                                                          
July 2017- June 2020
Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00), National Institute of Aging  
Title: Systems Based Analysis of Host Factors that Contribute to Aging Pathogenesis           
This grant utilizes systems biology and the SARS-CoV mouse model to identify target host pathways that contribute to differential disease outcomes in the aged host compared to young
“.

Texas Rising STAR Award (PI: Menachery)
May 2017- June 2017
Faculty Science & Technology Acquisition and Retention (STARs) Program, University of Texas System
Award recognizes promise of junior faculty member; funds for purchase equipment to begin independent research career.
Role: PI
https://archive.md/TU228

Excerpt from Bio:
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology
University of Texas Medical Branch
May 2017- Present

Laboratory of Dr. Ralph S. Baric
Dept. of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Post-doctoral fellow                                                                                                                 August 2010- May 2017

Once described to me as the “wild wild west”, the Baric lab operates at the cutting edge science with research on coronaviruses (SARS and MERS-CoV), influenza viruses, noroviruses, and dengue viruses.  While its claim to fame is generation of reverse genetic systems for CoVs, the lab employs a number of strategies to better understand viral infection and the host immune response including examination of host genetic diversity through the collaborative cross, comparative systems biology, and generation of chimeric particles to induce long lasting antibody responses. The lab is an excellent environment to foster new ideas and build a career…https://archive.md/TU228

As our blog reported a year and a month ago (April 11, 2020), the Galveston Texas lab is connected to the Wuhan lab: “In preparation for the opening of the Wuhan BSL-4, we engaged in short- and long-term personnel exchanges focused on biosafety training through international cooperation (8). Four staff members visited the P4 Jean Mérieux-Inserm Laboratory in Lyon, France; 2 visited Galveston National Laboratory, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas, USA; and 1 visited the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Geelong, Victoria, Australia for training and certification on BSL-4 laboratory operations, maintenance, and scientific or support work. These members are now the main instructors for our BSL-4 laboratory user training program…
Galveston National Lab: “As one of two National Biocontainment Laboratories constructed with funding awarded in October 2003 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/National Institutes of Health (NIAID/NIH), the GNL provides much needed research space and specialized research capabilities to develop therapies, vaccines, and diagnostic tests for naturally occurring emerging diseases such as SARS, West Nile encephalitis and avian influenza – as well as for microbes that might be employed by terrorists.” https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2020/04/11/wuhan-bsl-4-lab-built-within-framework-of-china-france-cooperation-staff-visited-france-the-united-states-australia-for-bsl-4-training-capacity-building/

March 2020 Vineet Menachery lab page https://archive.md/sUCUf

At the end of the paper, we learn that Vineet Menachery “designed, coordinated and performed experiments, completed analysis and wrote the manuscript”: “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” Vineet D Menachery et al. Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13 Epub 2015 Nov 9.
Research in this manuscript was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) under awards U19AI109761 (R.S.B.), U19AI107810 (R.S.B.), AI085524 (W.A.M.), F32AI102561 (V.D.M.) and K99AG049092 (V.D.M.), and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China awards 81290341 (Z.-L.S.) and 31470260 (X.-Y.G.), and by USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from [for?] EcoHealth Alliance (Z.-L.S.). Human airway epithelial cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease of the NIH under award NIH DK065988 (S.H.R.). We also thank M.T. Ferris (Dept. of Genetics, University of North Carolina) for the reviewing of statistical approaches and C.T. Tseng (Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch) for providing Calu-3 cells. Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS V.D.M. designed, coordinated and performed experiments, completed analysis and wrote the manuscript. B.L.Y. designed the infectious clone and recovered chimeric viruses; S.A. completed neutralization assays; L.E.G. helped perform mouse experiments; T.S. and J.A.P. completed mouse experiments and plaque assays; X.-Y.G. performed pseudotyping experiments; K.D. generated structural figures and predictions; E.F.D. generated phylogenetic analysis; R.L.G. completed RNA analysis; S.H.R. provided primary HAE cultures; A.L. and W.A.M. provided critical monoclonal antibody reagents; and Z.-L.S. provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids. R.S.B. designed experiments and wrote manuscript.

Nat Med: 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13. doi: 10.1038/nm.3985. Epub 2015 Nov 9.
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence Vineet D Menachery 1 , Boyd L Yount Jr  1 , Kari Debbink  1   2 , Sudhakar Agnihothram  3 , Lisa E Gralinski  1 , Jessica A Plante  1 , Rachel L Graham  1 , Trevor Scobey  1 , Xing-Yi Ge  4 , Eric F Donaldson  1 , Scott H Randell  5   6 , Antonio Lanzavecchia  7 , Wayne A Marasco  8   9 , Zhengli-Li Shi  4 , Ralph S Baric  1   2 Affiliations
* 1
Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
* 2
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
* 3
National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, Arkansas, USA.
* 4
Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
* 5
Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
* 6
Cystic Fibrosis Center, Marsico Lung Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
* 7
Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology, Zurich, Switzerland.
* 8
Department of Cancer Immunology and AIDS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
* 9
Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

*
Paper Abstract
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV underscores the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare no competing financial interests
. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/ How about non-financial interests?]

Vineet David Menachery is possibly a Syriac Christian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Menachery India’s caste system exists, unofficially, within Christianity, as well as Islam.

US government-taxpayer funding for Vineet D. Menachery:
Systems Based Analysis of Host Factors that Contribute to Aging Pathogenesis
National Institute on Aging (Baltimore) 
2015-07-15 to 2020-05-31|Grant
GRANT_NUMBER: R00AG049092
URL: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.7026163

Systems Based Analysis of Host Factors that Contribute to Aging Pathogenesis
National Institute on Aging (Baltimore) 
2015-07-15 to 2017-05-31|Grant
GRANT_NUMBER: K99AG049092
URL: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.4177471

Evaluation of SARS-CoV 2’O Methyltransferase Mutants
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Bethesda) 
2013-01-01 to 2015-05-30|Grant
GRANT_NUMBER: F32AI102561” URL: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.2370873

Systems Immunogenetics of Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens in the Collaborative Cross National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Bethesda) 2012-08-05 to 2022-08-31 Grant GRANT_NUMBER: U19AI100625” URL: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.2695900

Research Training Program in the Vision Sciences” 
National Eye Institute (Bethesda) 
2000-09-30 to 2021-03-31|Grant 
GRANT_NUMBER: T32EY013360 https://archive.md/hSuPZ

The PREDICT program, mentioned above, is based out of UC Davis and partnered with EcoHealth Alliance.

USAID Predict program U.C. Davis, 5 year funding, page last updated in September 2019. Therefore appears to be from 2014-2019. “New Award this quarter – $11,600,000 The overall 5-year award is $138.4M“. They were given at least $200 million over the course of 10 years. Trump stopped their funding in September of 2019. Because of the pandemic, a bureaucrat extended their funded.

Emerging Pandemic Threats Program 2 PREDICT-2, Principal Investigator
Mazet, Jonna
Research Team
* One Health Institute Faculty, including:
* OHI Faculty (Tracey Goldstein (co-PI)
* Christine Kreuder Johnson (co-PI)
* Woutrina Smith
* Kirsten Gilardi
* Brian Bird
* One Health Institute staff led by David Wolking, Elizabeth Leasure & Matt Blake.
* Full participant list here. https://archive.md/d889Q
*
* Sponsor
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Award Amount
New Award this quarter – $11,600,000
The overall 5-year award is $138.4M.
Abstract
PREDICT enables global surveillance of pathogens that can spillover from animal hosts to people by building capacities to detect and discover viruses of pandemic potential. The project is part of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program and is led by the UC Davis One Health Institute.

In addition to UCD Vet Med, the core partners are USAID, EcoHealth Alliance, Metabiota, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Smithsonian Institution working with universities, NGOs, and ministries of health, agriculture, and environment in 35 countries. 
One Health
https://archive.md/yrJlF

PREDICT Publications
https://archive.md/HDkae

PREDICT was apparently started as part of post-2008 pork barrel spending (stimulus). Over the course of 10 years over $200 million was given to them. It was started by Dennis Carroll of the USAID and Jonna Mazet of U Cal Davis was its global director. PREDICT collected over 10,000 samples from bats, and identified over 160 coronavirus’ that could cause human disease. It worked in the Amazon, South Asia and Southeast Asian, as well as the Congo. It’s “virus hunting” strategy “has been criticized as an ineffective way to prevent pandemics”. PREDICT helped “discover” a new variant of Ebola, Bombali ebolavirus, and was partnered with EcoHealth Alliance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PREDICT_(USAID) https://archive.md/1hD6G

Although we were unable to find the funding amount for the first five years of PREDICT, the Wikipedia article says that they received $200 million over the decade for part I and II. Funding ran out in September of 2019 and Trump ended the program in March 2020. In April 2020 USAID gave them an additional $2.26 million for six months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PREDICT_(USAID) https://archive.md/1hD6G In short, their funding was cut a few months before the pandemic started and they got millions of dollars because of the pandemic. Thus, they would have had a huge motive to let a Coronavirus escape to get funding restored.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dab/aged-rodent-colonies-handbook/nia-rodent-colony-health-summaries

Trump stopped EcoHealth’s funding in April of 2020, because they were working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and then Fauci apparently doubled their funding to $7.5 million: “EcoHealth’s bat research in China was entirely funded through the $3.7 million NIH grant… The National Institutes of Health has awarded a grant worth $7.5 million over five years to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit that hunts emerging viruses. The award comes months after NIH revoked an earlier grant to EcoHealth…” NPR- Maria Godoy, 8.29.20 https://wfuv.org/content/group-whose-nih-grant-virus-research-was-revoked-just-got-new-grant Their Ukrainian British director, Peter Daszak, “had publicly defended gain-of-function research and co-signed a February 2020 statement published in The Lancet in “to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” Later it emerged that he drafted the statement and covertly arranged the 26 co-authors.” https://wikispooks.com/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance. The head of the EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, is Ukrainian-British. He used US taxpayer money to work with the Wuhan lab.