Coronavirus DID leak from a Wuhan lab, Australian China expert claims, as he details why wildlife wet market theory 'doesn't stack up' and accuses Beijing of a cover-up
A respected author and China expert claims bombshell evidence suggests coronavirus must have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory - not from wildlife wet markets.
'The argument that the coronavirus emerged from the South China Seafood market just no longer stacks up,' Professor Clive Hamilton told Sky News on Sunday night.
Professor Hamilton said the earliest cases of COVID-19 were in people who had no contact with the Wuhan wet market, which was first blamed for the outbreak.
'This has been demonstrated by top quality studies,' he said.
'So the idea that it originated in December sometime, usually late December, in this market, simply doesn't stack up.
'The only other plausible explanation was that it was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.'
The hypothesis came from Chinese scientists themselves and was all over the internet before disappearing, Professor Hamilton said.
Internet uses all over China had even searched for the woman thought to be patient zero - who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and 'seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet', he said.
Scientists had previously believed the virus jumped from bats to an unidentified intermediary species before infecting humans at the Wuhan wet market where wild animals are kept in cages and slaughtered for meat.
Bat soup (pictured) is a delicacy in China. It was first thought the coronavirus jumped from a bat to an unknown intermediary and then to humans at a Wuhan wet market. Scientists now doubt this is true, and the species of bat that carries the virus were not even sold at the market
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured) is a biosecurity level four laboratory which researched bat coronaviruses not far from the wet market. Scientists think it increasingly likely the virus leaked from here, possibly by an infected staff member
The location of the BSL-4 laboratory as seen from the air
The wet market is located not far from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the only level four biosecurity laboratory lab in China.
The lab researched a range of bat coronaviruses including by engineering them, Professor Hamilton said.
'The potential is there for this extremely lethal virus to have escaped in some way.'
Professor Hamilton, a long-time critic of Beijing, said two Chinese scientists had written a highly regarded paper saying the coronavirus came from a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
'There's a very plausible hypothesis here that someone became infected in the laboratory, walked out and started infecting other people in Wuhan,' he said.
The short paper from February 6 was written by scientists Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, both from Wuhan universities, and was called 'The possible origins of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus'.
The paper noted the bats that carry the suspected virus live in habitat 900km from the seafood market, the bats are not eaten by Wuhan residents, and that 'no bat was traded in the market'.
Many scientific and medical professionals are also becoming sceptical of the first Wuhan wet market explanation.
UK-based medical teacher Dr John Campbell, who provides daily evidence-based updates on the coronavirus pandemic on YouTube, said there doesn't seem to have been an intermediary species between bats and humans after all.
'People thought it was pangolins at first but that doesn't seem to be bearing out,' he said on May 1.
Dr Campbell noted it was a large coincidence that the pandemic originated so close to the Wuhan Virology Institute and said scientists may have been conducting animal research on the coronavirus and one of the lab workers may have sold some animals to the nearby Wuhan wet market.
Professor Clive Hamilton said the only plausible explanation is that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab. The woman he believes to be 'patient zero' worked there - and has disappeared
US-based pathologist Chris Martenson said a suspicious sequence of nucleotides in the RNA coding of the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus appear to have been inserted as they do not occur in any of the close or even distantly related viruses.
Even more suspicious, the nucleotide sequence appears right at a point in the RNA sequence called a furin cleavage site, a place where the enzyme furin can precisely cut proteins, he said.
'None of the closest (viral) or even distant relatives have this site,' he said in a YouTube analysis.
'Those that do only have 40 percent of the same genome.'
Dr Martenson explained on his Peak Prosperity YouTube channel that the insert is not likely to be the result of a natural mutation as mutations usually change by one random nucleotide at a time, not the sudden appearance of a whole new sequence.
An analysis of private cellphone location data has also allegedly shown that the Wuhan Institute of Virology shut down from October 7 to October 24, and this may indicate a 'hazardous event' sometime between October 6 and October 11.
US spy agencies are reviewing the document.
China has been accused of covering up the severity of the pandemic after it started, costing the world vital weeks of preparation time.
China's President Xi Jinping knew about the coronavirus on the 7th of January yet China only shut down the epicentre of the outbreak, Hubei province, on the 23rd of January, after five million people had left to travel through China and the world, spreading the virus.
Australia has called for the World Health Organization (WHO) to support an independent review into how the coronavirus started and spread, and has been lobbying world leaders.
This has angered China which is conducting its own investigation through the Chinese Communist Party, which it says should be enough.
China hit back through its diplomats, with a perceived threat to cut off trade.
Professor Hamilton, who wrote a book last year about growing Chinese political control of Australia called Silent Invasion: How China is Turning Australia into a Puppet State, said the truth matters.
'Prevention of a similar catastrophe depends on it,' he wrote in The Age newspaper on May 9.
'Beijing does not want the truth to be known, going so far as to delete from a European Union opinion piece words noting that the outbreak originated in China.'
A private analysis of cellphone data is said to show the Wuhan Institute of Virology shut down in October, possibly for a 'hazardous incident'. Spy agencies are now reviewing the document
Chinese Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye was perceived to have threatened to cut off Australian exports to China as the Middle Kingdom voiced its displeasure over Australia's requests for an independent international investigation
Worryingly, Professor Hamilton said Chinese scientists with military ties had now infiltrated Australia's largest universities.
'Australian universities have been doing a lot of covering up, they've very embarrassed about this and won't own up to it,' he said.
Professor Hamilton said some of the research scientists had military rank in the People's Liberation Army and were welcomed by Australian universities even after their connections to the PLA or PLA-linked universities in China were pointed out.
Australia's coronavirus tally rose by 12 to 6,939 cases nationwide on Sunday.
Worldwide confirmed cases soared past 4.1 million with 280,564 dead, 2,388,352 sick and 1,445,980 recovered, according to the Worldometers website which tracks coronavirus statistics.
The US continued to have the largest number of cases at 1,347,318 with 80,040 dead from the disease which has been recently found to cause a clotting disorder in the blood.
Coronavirus DID leak from a Wuhan lab, Australian China expert claims, as he details why wildlife wet market theory 'doesn't stack up' and accuses Beijing of a cover-up
![Coronavirus DID leak from a Wuhan lab, Australian China expert claims, as he details why wildlife wet market theory 'doesn't stack up' and accuses Beijing of a cover-up]()
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May 11, 2020
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