Wuhan: "New Coronavirus with Pandemic Potential Discovered"

Zheng-Li Shi & WIV team announce: "Bat-infecting merbecovirus HKU5-CoV lineage 2 can use human ACE2 as a cell entry receptor"

Zheng-Li Shi has worked closely with Ralph Baric on bat SARS coronaviruses

I have been vaguely expecting news along these lines, right as President Trump is just getting started. The disruption would, I figured, either come in the form of war escalation or a “new virus of pandemic potential discovered in China.”

The Daily Mail, Newsweek, and other mainstream papers are reporting that Zheng-Li Shi & and her Wuhan Institute of Virology team have just published a paper in CELL titled. "Bat-infecting merbecovirus HKU5-CoV lineage 2 can use human ACE2 as a cell entry receptor."

Same bat lady (Zheng-Li Shi), same bat place (Wuhan Institute of Virology).

The other thing I’ve been vaguely predicting is that, because the stupid U.S. government never took vigorous action to discipline ANYONE involved in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, it taught all of the actors involved that they can do whatever they want with impunity.

As for the reality of HKU5-CoV lineage 2: the McCullough Foundation will carefully examine the paper ASAP. For now, I am not seeing anything about the identification of an intermediate animal host, which we would expect in the case of a SARS coronavirus evolving from bats to infect humans. Note that no intermediate animal host was ever identified in the case of SARS-CoV-2.

The intrepid “virus investigator” Peter Daszak—dispatched to Wuhan by the WHO in the way the LAPD might have dispatched Charles Manson to 10050 Cielo Drive to investigate the murder of Sharon Tate—suggested it might have come from an animal at the Huanan seafood market, though he was never able to identify the species.

This is a breaking story. Stay tuned for more on HKU5-CoV lineage 2.