Virus accidentally released from lab ?

[iam4liberty]

The lab in question covered in Nature.  You dont get much more mainstream than that.

https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487
Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens
Maximum-security biolab is part of plan to build network of BSL-4 facilities across China.

A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.

Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.

“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland.
...
The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. “It will be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director Yuan Zhiming.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences approved the construction of a BSL-4 laboratory in 2003, and the epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) around the same time lent the project momentum. The lab was designed and constructed with French assistance as part of a 2004 cooperative agreement on the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. But the complexity of the project, China’s lack of experience, difficulty in maintaining funding and long government approval procedures meant that construction wasn’t finished until the end of 2014.

[surfivor]

I really don’t know what is going on but this is another interesting angle.

I am curious what the actual trajectory will be but suppose that the virus does not appear to spread as rapidly as it should based on the supposed claims or suppose it only spreads to certain cities or even suppose it spreads to areas where 5G exists then it would possibly be the type of scenario that I sometimes suspect. Of course there are supposed isolated cases here and there but if really large numbers do not materialize then it would make me wonder or you have in Arkansas there is a case but they are keeping it secret

The actual scenario could be a bit complex like an actual virus that is not as deadly as it might appear combined with perhaps misdiagnoses  but who knows. More information I guess will develop over time

https://www.allkpop.com/forum/threads/wuhan-was-the-province-where-5g-was-rolled-out-now-the-center-of-deadly-virus.367672/

Wuhan was the province where 5G was rolled out, now the center of deadly virus

WUHAN, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The branches of Chinese major telecom operators in central China's Hubei Province announced Thursday the launch of commercial 5G applications in the province.

Wuhan City, the capital of Hubei, is expected to have 10,000 5G base stations by the end of 2019, said Song Qizhu, head of Hubei Provincial Communication Administration.


——————

http://www.5gappeal.eu/scientists-and-doctors-warn-of-potential-serious-health-effects-of-5g/

The EUROPA EM-EMF Guideline 2016 states that ”there is strong evidence that long-term exposure to certain EMFs is a risk factor for diseases such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and male infertility…Common EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) symptoms include headaches, concentration difficulties, sleep problems, depression, lack of energy, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms.”

[surfivor]

 This is out there, but a lot of other researchers seem to be saying it's not significant

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-contains-hiv-insertions-stoking-fears-over-artificially-created-bioweapon

Coronavirus Contains "HIV Insertions", Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon

..

a respected epidemiologist who recently caught flack for claiming in a twitter threat that the virus appeared to be much more contagious than initially believed is pointing out irregularities in the virus's genome that suggests it might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon, and not just any weapon but the deadliest one of all.

In "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag", Indian researchers are baffled by segments of the virus's RNA that have no relation to other coronaviruses like SARS, and instead appear to be closer to HIV. The virus even responds to treatment by HIV medications.

..

 The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.

[Mr. Bill]

Coronavirus Contains "HIV Insertions", Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon

This is not simple to interpret, so I'm not going to say right now how much I believe it.

Here is where the preprint was made available:

bioRxiv, 1/31/20: Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag

There are two important disclaimers.  The first is from bioRxiv:

bioRxiv is receiving many new papers on coronavirus 2019-nCoV.   A reminder: these are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.

The second is a comment posted by the lead author of the paper, Prashant Pradhan, an hour ago:

This is a preliminary study. Considering the grave situation, it was shared in BioRxiv as soon as possible to have creative discussion on the fast evolution of SARS-like corona viruses. It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories and no such claims are made here. While we appreciate the criticisms and comments provided by scientific colleagues at BioRxiv forum and elsewhere, the story has been differently interpreted and shared by social media and news platforms. We have positively received all criticisms and comments. To avoid further misinterpretation and confusions world-over, we have decided to withdraw the current version of the preprint and will get back with a revised version after reanalysis, addressing the comments and concerns. Thank you to all who contributed in this open-review process.

See the link for many comments from people who understand this stuff a lot better than I do.  For example:

...As already pointed out in multiple comments, the so called unique insertions in the Wuhan isolates compared to the SARS isolate are cherry picked. In fact, a simple blast returned alignments with Bat SARS-like coronavirus that does contain 3/4 insertions in the most recent isolate from 2015, strain SL-CoVZXC21, from bats in the Hubei province, where the novel infectious virus supposedly originated (see attached figure).

All of the insertions sites coincides with positions variable across homologs, which make sense in that these positions are important for host interactions. This is not "uncanny", it's simply how selection works. As for the so called "identity" with HIV gag proteins, again, as pointed out by others, is spurious. Both HIV and coronaviruses are RNA virus and are hypermutable. The fact that positions important for host-virus interactions, i.e. where the new insertions were found, can be variable in the new infectious Wuhan isolate is expected and there is no evidence suggests that this is a result of human manipulation. ...

[Mr. Bill]

FWIW, here's my layman's understanding of the controversy over the "HIV inserts in Coronavirus" paper:

It's like checking somebody's words to see if they are plagiarized from another author.

Imagine you're writing a plagiarism-detection program.  You give it lots and lots of existing texts for comparison.  Then you take the text you're testing, and let your prograpm search for phrases in common with the database of existing texts.

The problem comes in interpreting the results.  If you find the phrase "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", you know for certain that it was taken from Shakespeare.  But suppose you find "Murder cannot be hid long" or "Go with me to the king" or "I will fetch my gold".  Your simple program will say there's an uncanny similarity with Shakespeare, but anybody could have independently come up with those same phrases.  There are only so many ways in English to say "I will fetch my gold", so the coincidence is not suspicious at all.

But in order to see that, you have to go beyond blind statistical analysis.  This, apparently, is what the authors of the paper did not do.

[surfivor]

FWIW, here's my layman's understanding of the controversy over the "HIV inserts in Coronavirus" paper:

It's like checking somebody's words to see if they are plagiarized from another author.

Imagine you're writing a plagiarism-detection program.  You give it lots and lots of existing texts for comparison.  Then you take the text you're testing, and let your prograpm search for phrases in common with the database of existing texts.

The problem comes in interpreting the results.  If you find the phrase "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", you know for certain that it was taken from Shakespeare.  But suppose you find "Murder cannot be hid long" or "Go with me to the king" or "I will fetch my gold".  Your simple program will say there's an uncanny similarity with Shakespeare, but anybody could have independently come up with those same phrases.  There are only so many ways in English to say "I will fetch my gold", so the coincidence is not suspicious at all.

But in order to see that, you have to go beyond blind statistical analysis.  This, apparently, is what the authors of the paper did not do.

That occurred to me too but I really don’t know

I’m listening to Derek Gilbert who is mentioning another expert saying it didn’t come from snakes and is only 68% similar to any known bat coronavirus and that it has no similar natural coresponding virus. If it occurred naturally it would have had to have mutated very rapidly

[surfivor]

I need to keep looking into this but according to infowars, the Indian scientists were pressured from behind the scenes to withdraw their paper. Zero hedge was also flagged as fake news and banned from social media but they only reported what the scientists from India were saying.

The real counter argument however which the scientists mentioned is that the coronavirus has the teeth or delivery system of HIV which if that is true it does seem unlikely that it happened naturally. The science paper says it responds to HIV treatments and has HIV characteristics. It attacks cells the same way that HIV does.

Viruses as far as I know are not intelligent enough to plagiarize other viruses the way we might plagiarize Shakespeare’ etc

[FreeLancer]

HIV and coronaviruses are both RNA viruses, so drugs that have the ability to block common cellular pathways used in virus replication could be effective in both.  So the fact that some HIV drugs may be found to be effective on coronavirus isn't as significant as it sounds.  Same kind of thing applies to antibiotics, as well. 

Using infowars logic, the fact that penicillin is used to treat both syphilis and your kids ear infection must mean that a lab took a spirochete from a horrible venereal disease in order to create a hybrid streptococcus to terrorize the parents of toddlers. 

[surfivor]

Some medicines are more general purpose like antibiotics but not all medicines are general purpose. I’ve never heard of using HIV drugs for other things like the flu or a bad cold but oddly enough in Thailand they are using HIV treatments for coronavirus, they must have been tuned into infowars

It’s funny how real information and actual cures seems to be coming  out of Asia and third world countries like India and Thailand rather than the US or the west but then I am not always impressed with medical system and research in the US. We are supposed to be world leaders in everything but maybe in some ways we are not. There’s too much focus on expensive treatments to relive symptoms than actual cures probably and lots of money spent on brainwashing the public


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-thailand/cocktail-of-flu-hiv-drugs-appears-to-help-fight-coronavirus-thai-doctors-idUSKBN1ZW0GQ

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai doctors have seen success in treating severe cases of the new coronavirus with combination of medications for flu and HIV, with initial results showing vast improvement 48 hours after applying the treatment, they said on Sunday.

[surfivor]

Apparently James Lyon weiler, a noted scientist says the virus has markers indicating gene splicing from a lab. I think this is called p shuttle. When lab work is done using certain tools it leaves behind some kind of trace indicators in the gene according to him. It is a complex article but he is saying it most likely was a vaccine virus that escaped a lab due to p shuttle sequences found

https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2020/01/30/on-the-origins-of-the-2019-ncov-virus-wuhan-china/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

RECOMBINATION technology has been in use in molecular virology since the 1980’s. The structure of the 2019-NCoV virus genome provides a very strong clue on the likely origin of the virus.

Unlike other related coronaviruses, the 2019-nCoV virus has a unique sequence about 1,378 bp (nucleotide base pairs) long that is not found in related coronaviruses.

[surfivor]

From his Twitter feed

https://mobile.twitter.com/lifebiomedguru?lang=en

The available evidence most strongly supports that the 2019-NCoV virus is a vaccine strain of coronavirus either accidentally released from a laboratory accident, or the Chinese were performing clinical studies of a Coronavirus…

[Mr. Bill]

Apparently James Lyon weiler, a noted scientist...

I looked him up.  "Noted" is disputed.  But maybe he's correct on this issue, who knows?

...says the virus has markers indicating gene splicing from a lab. ...

https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2020/01/30/on-the-origins-of-the-2019-ncov-virus-wuhan-china/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

He's got a followup:

https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2020/02/02/moderately-strong-confirmation-of-a-laboratory-origin-of-2019-ncov/

I dunno, there's a lot of technical stuff to go through and I'm not ready to pass judgment.

I noticed that he says in a comment that the coronavirus-HIV link is bunk:

The E-values are not significant and the sequences match many other species.

Hard to say what significance to attribute to four sequences. The hope of course would be that HIV drugs might be of some use, but that’s speculative.

[surfivor]

 I don't know if this guy is spot on or not but anyone should be able to express their opinion on the web and not be censored or attacked. People can say it came from bats if they like, it's their opinion .. we need free speech but people with these opinions and arguments to back up their opinions are attacked constantly and they want to remove all such content etc

https://hnewswire.com/creator-of-us-bioweapons-act-says-coronavirus-is-biological-warfare-weapon/

In an explosive interview Dr. Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Act has given a detailed statement admitting that the 2019 Wuhan Coronavirus is an offensive Biological Warfare Weapon and that the World Health Organization (WHO) already knows about it.

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

In an exclusive interview given to Geopolitics and Empire, Dr. Boyle discusses the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China and the Biosafety Level 4 laboratory (BSL-4) from which he believes the infectious disease escaped. He believes the virus is potentially lethal and an offensive biological warfare weapon or dual-use biowarfare weapons agent genetically modified with a gain of function properties, which is why the Chinese government originally tried to cover it up and is now taking drastic measures to contain it.

The Wuhan BSL-4 lab is also a specially designated World Health Organization (WHO) research lab and Dr. Boyle contends that the WHO knows full well what is occurring.

[Mr. Bill]

Back to the "HIV inserts in coronavirus" theory...

Here's a good article from a few days ago with some actual science in it:

Dan Samorodnitsky, Massive Science, 1/31/20: Don’t believe the conspiracy theories you hear about coronavirus and HIV

...I double checked whether it was true that HIV and coronavirus have similarities. I took the four additional sequences (the “novel inserts”) they found in the coronavirus genome and I looked to see if, as they said, it was similar to HIV. The truth is while these sequences do pop up in HIV,  they also pop up in tons of other viruses. There’s no reason to immediately suspect a nefarious fusion of HIV and coronavirus.

Sequence one out of four is indeed found in both Wuhan coronavirus and HIV. The same sequence also appears in a virus that infects Streptococcus (spherical bacteria), a rat virus, and an “acute bee paralysis virus.”

I did the same analysis on sequence two. Once again, HIV and the Wuhan coronavirus appear together, but also a mouse herpes virus, a rat cytomegalovirus (the virus that causes mononucleosis, popularly known as mono or the ‘kissing disease’), and a virus that infects sweet potatoes.

The stories for the other two sequences are the same. Those sequences appear in benign viruses like Peach-associated luteovirus (a plant virus), Bovine papillomavirus type 9 (the cow version of HPV), and Leptopilina boulardi Toti-like virus (a virus that infects wasps).

So the facts are that Wuhan coronavirus may have some new additions to it, but they’re common bits and pieces found in tons of viruses — not just HIV — and there’s no proof that they even have anything to do with how the Wuhan coronavirus behaves.

And there’s definitely no proof that they were put there on purpose.

See the articles for tables of the many matching viruses.

[iam4liberty]

The first two seem equally simple.  If there is a virus affecting bats which is being examined by scientists, it would just take a moment of distraction for one to become exposed and become patient zero.  in fact, such an accident is bound to happen.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html
Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.

A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.

'The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,' penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats.

It also mentions that bats - which are linked to coronavirus - once attacked a researcher and 'blood of bat was on his skin.'
...
One of the researchers at the WHCDC described quarantining himself for two weeks after a bat's blood got on his skin, according to the report. That same man also quarantined himself after a bat urinated on him.
...
'The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic.' The report says.

[Mr. Bill]

'The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,' penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao

I'm not really fond of ZeroHedge but I have to give them credit for uploading this paper to Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/document/447056518/Originsof2019-NCoV-XiaoB-Res
(Originally uploaded to ResearchGate on 2/6/20)

It's really short and easy to read.

The problem is, it's not a research paper.  It's speculation.  Yeah, it's speculation backed by real information, but still, there is no smoking gun, only circumstantial evidence that the disease could have escaped from the lab.

Not saying they're wrong, but they haven't proven anything.

[iam4liberty]

Not saying they're wrong, but they haven't proven anything.

Occam's Razer.  It is simplest explanation now, no?  Bat originated disease, outbreak occurs near lab where only known bats were diseased ones under investigation, there are at least two related exposure accidents with the bats that resulted in quarantines.

[iam4liberty]

https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/latest-news/was-the-coronavirus-outbreak-caused-by-a-lab-accident
Was the Coronavirus Outbreak Caused by a Lab Accident?
It's possible, says a microbiology expert,

Prof. Richard H. Ebright, the laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University.
.   
The available data are consistent with either the virus entering the human population as a natural occurrence, he said, or a laboratory accident -- "which is exactly what happened in the second, third, and fourth entries of SARS-Cov into the human population in 2003-2004."
...
“Because the bat coronavirus RaTG13 and closely related bat coronaviruses also are known to have been present in a lab," he said, specifically in the coronavirus collection at Wuhan Institute of Virology. "The first human infection also could have occurred as a lab accident.”
.. 
Ebright also criticized the "tens of millions of dollars" spent by the U.S. and China on bat coronavirus surveillance and other bat coronavirus research.

This type of work, he said, has "increased -- not decreased -- risks of outbreaks."

In addition, he said, the work has provided no information useful for combating outbreaks.

"If the research funds spent on bat coronavirus surveillance research and bat coronavirius gain-of-function research instead been had spent on research on coronavirus vaccines and coronavirus antiviral drugs, there might now be effective countermeasures to combat outbreaks."

[FreeLancer]

Anything is possible.

But with the Chinese living cheek to jowl with all manner of creepy crawling critters they like to eat, my money is on that particular zoonotic reservoir they think of as a food supply.

Probability doesn’t always predict the eventual outcome, but it’s the starting point for formulating one’s bets.

[David in MN]

I've been wondering about the bat thing. They've been eating bats for thousands of years. It's actually a delicacy. Their food safety practices are suspect but it's not a new thing. And... that's Asia. They put dead birds in their whiskey.

And let's not be all high and mighty here. I've killed and eaten snakes. I've had pigeon. The fact is all of us have our gross historical foods. And don't tell me that eating a bat is crazy when I will pay hundreds for sturgeon caviar. The most expensive coffee in the world is basically lemur poop.

Can I prove it was a lab accident? No. But this bizarre "they eat weird stuff" explanation is really not right. Why is it that African tribes can consume raw blood and milk?

[iam4liberty]

Not just possible, but highly probable. 

They don't even sell bats at the wet market. And the ones in question live in caves 1,200 miles away.  And there has been no cases found of it in intermediate animals despite thorough testing. And it is clear that China's Ministry of Science sees this as likely source from recent directives to beef up protocols.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/02/article/coronavirus-lab-leakage-rumors-spreading/
Coronavirus ‘lab leakage’ rumors spreading

Ebright said the coronavirus was a cousin of one found in bats captured by the institute in caves in the southwestern province of Yunnan in 2003, and that samples had been kept in the Wuhan lab since 2013.

Also, a paper that appeared in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet at the end of last month has lent credibility to speculation about the origins of the virus. The paper quoted seven doctors at Wuhan’s Jinyintan Hospital as saying that the first patient admitted on December 1 had “never been to the wet market,”
...
Furthermore, a note from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology is seen as a tacit admission that some kind of incident may have occurred at the Wuhan lab.

On Saturday, the ministry issued a directive mandating more stringent handling of viruses and bioagents by all labs and research institutes. The document alluded to the slack oversight and management rampant at some facilities, and stressed that protection and decontamination must be beefed up now that more labs across the nation are intensifying their efforts to develop medicines to treat it and a vaccine to prevent it.

[FreeLancer]

Can I prove it was a lab accident? No. But this bizarre "they eat weird stuff" explanation is really not right. Why is it that African tribes can consume raw blood and milk?

HIV, Ebola, and Marburg are infectious diseases that arose in Africa after viruses circulating in zoonotic reservoirs evolved sufficiently to infect humans. Bushmeat and bats played pivotal roles in the evolution and transfer of those viral diseases, too.

[iam4liberty]

HIV, Ebola, and Marburg are infectious diseases that arose in Africa after viruses circulating in zoonotic reservoirs evolved sufficiently to infect humans. Bushmeat and bats played pivotal roles in the evolution and transfer of those viral diseases, too.

Marburg was lab released.  And it was later refined into a bioweapon by the Soviet Union during the cold war resulting in at least one accident.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/bio-marburg.htm

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union experimented with the Marburg virus in aerosol form on monkeys and determined that infection required only a few virions. Ken Alibek (formerly Kanatjan Alikbekov) who secretly immigrated to the United States in 1992 revealed information about Soviet experimentation with the Marburg virus. The former First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons program, Dr. Alibek reported that Soviet scientists were researching whether Marburg could be loaded into a warhead or a MIRV delivery system. A colleague, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov, died from the virus after accidentally infecting himself while injecting guinea pigs with the Marburg virus for the Soviet biological weapons program. As described by Dr. Alibek, the disease that followed was horrifying and induced hemorrhages throughout Dr. Ustinov's body including from his nose, mouth, and sweat glands. After he died, Dr. Ustinov's journal was covered in his unclotted blood from star-shaped hemorrhages beneath his skin.

From Dr. Ustinov's corpse the Soviet scientists isolated a strain of Marburg that was especially deadly in airborne form; the strain was named Variant U in Dr. Ustinov's honor. According to Dr. Alibek, as of 1991, the Soviets were ready to manufacture Marburg Variant U in large amounts to be place into MIRVs (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles) with 10 separate targeted warheads. Once completed, such weapons were designed to be part of the Soviet strategic/operational arsenal.

[iam4liberty]

Tim Pool coverage: https://youtu.be/rCVrr04N6eI

[FreeLancer]

Marburg was not lab released. 

It was first identified as the cause of a hemorrhagic disease outbreak that arrived with African primates housed in labs in Germany in 1967, which is where it gets its name.  The virus itself exists within a large zoonotic reservoir in Africa, which has been the origin of a handful of human outbreaks over the years on that continent, as may have been the case for centuries. 

The Russians certainly did weaponize Marburg but there's no evidence of release or escape to anyone outside their bioweapon lab.

[iam4liberty]

Marburg was not lab released. 

It was first identified as the cause of a hemorrhagic disease outbreak that arrived with African primates housed in labs in Germany in 1967, which is where it gets its name.  The virus itself exists within a large zoonotic reservoir in Africa, which has been the origin of a handful of human outbreaks over the years on that continent, as may have been the case for centuries. 

The Russians certainly did weaponize Marburg but there's no evidence of release or escape to anyone outside their bioweapon lab.

Marburg certainly was lab released.  How do you think the family member of the lab worker and medical workers got it? 

[FreeLancer]

And that explains why Africa continues to have outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fever traced to Marburg virus in their local bat populations? 

Conflating 1960s European lab outbreaks from a previously unrecognized endemic African virus with Russian bioweapon accidents in the 1980s into a man-made origin story is misleading.

[iam4liberty]

And that explains why Africa continues to have outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fever traced to Marburg virus in their local bat populations? 

Conflating 1960s European lab outbreaks from a previously unrecognized endemic African virus with Russian bioweapon accidents in the 1980s into a man-made origin story is misleading.

What are you talking about?  The stories and links are all above.  There is no conflating anything.

The Marburg incident almost exactly mirrors what is suggested for COVID-19.  A bio lab was set up in Marburg Germany.  While doing research on imported African green monkeys, several lab technicians came into direct contact with them and contracted the disease.  This was passed on to other workers within the lab and spread to family members and later medical workers who attended to them. 

The same situation is believed by many scientists to have occured in the lab in Wuhan.  In this case it was infected bats from another province 1200 miles away. 

Later Marburg was being refined by Soviets into a bioweapon when another lab accident occured. 

The recurring SARs releases within China were also traced back to lab leaks:

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death
China Reports SARS Death Caused by Lab Leak

Chinese health officials have confirmed four suspected cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), including one death, which appear to have been caused by a safety breach at a laboratory studying the SARS virus.

It's the first SARS death reported since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the initial SARS outbreak more than nearly a year ago. From November 2002 until July 2003, the newly discovered respiratory disease sickened more than 8,000 people in 29 countries and killed nearly 800.

The Chinese Ministry of Health says they have clinical confirmation of SARS coronavirus infection in two of the four suspected SARS cases. They are a 20-year-old nurse in Bejing who is currently in intensive care and a 26-year-old female laboratory researcher from Anhui Province.

If confirmed by an independent international reference lab, this would be the third outbreak of SARS to be traced back to inadequate laboratory safety procedures. Two cases of SARS have been reported in laboratory workers in Singapore and Taiwan since the first outbreak ended.

To claim these lab accidents aren't occuring is just odd.  As noted above, scientists were warning there was strong possibility of a leak when the Wuhan lab was first being built. 

[FreeLancer]

Put another way, these monkeys from Africa could have gone to the Marburg Zoo and the outbreak wouldn't be significantly different.  No evil laboratory required.

[Mr. Bill]

BBC, 2/7/20: Coronavirus: Russian media hint at US conspiracy

...One of main national TV networks, Channel One, has even launched a regular slot devoted to coronavirus conspiracy theories on its main evening news programme, Vremya ("Time").

The style of the reporting is ambiguous, appearing to debunk the theories while leaving viewers with the impression that they contain a kernel of truth.

One of the wilder ideas aired by Vremya recently is that the presence of the word "corona", which means crown in both Latin and Russian, in the word coronavirus hints that Donald Trump is somehow involved.

Apparently, this is because he used to preside over beauty pageants, handing the winners their crowns. ...

The subsequent video does admit the crown theory is a "strange construct", but uncritically presents an expert who says that the Chinese coronavirus strain has been artificially created, and that US intelligence agencies or American pharmaceutical companies are behind it. ...

The Channel One correspondent then quotes online conspiracy theories that the novel coronavirus strain affects only Asians and could be some kind of "ethnic bioweapon".

He concedes that there is clear evidence refuting this, but adds suggestively: "Even experts who are cautious in their assessments say that nothing can be ruled out." ...

Rule #1 of government propaganda: never let a good crisis go to waste.