https://www.science.org/content/article/ridiculous-says-chinese-scientist-accused-being-pandemic-s-patient-zeroBen Hu denies he was sick in late 2019, or that his coronavirus work led to COVID-19, and newly declassified U.S. intelligence doesn't substantiate allegations against him
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Moreover, a newly released U.S. report of declassified information on COVID-19’s origin, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), fails to name him or substantiate that any WIV scientists had the initial cases of COVID-19
“The recent news about so-called ‘patient zero’ in WIV are absolutely rumors and ridiculous,” Ben Hu emailed Science in his first public response to the charges, which have been attributed to anonymous former and current U.S. Department of State officials. A WIV colleague who has also been named as one of the first COVID-19 cases denies the accusation as well.
Hu and two of his WIV colleagues were thrown into the furious COVID-19 origin debate on 13 June when an online newsletter called Public said the three scientists developed COVID-19 in November 2019. That was prior to the outbreak becoming public when a cluster of cases at the end of December 2019 surfaced in people linked to a Wuhan marketplace. Public’s report was quickly embraced by a camp that argues COVID-19 came from a virus stored, and possibly manipulated, at WIV, rather than from infected animal hosts, perhaps being sold at the Wuhan market. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on 20 June that said it had “confirmed” the allegations against the three, without referring to any public evidence or named sources with direct knowledge, fueled the flames even more. Social media and other publications spread the charges—and the scientists’ names.
The new ODNI report echoes the earlier one in many ways, and says the COVID-19 origin debate remains unresolved. “All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,” it says. The declassification report does confirm a story by the Wall Street Journal that the Department of Energy had moved from being undecided on COVID-19 origin to favoring a lab leak. ODNI now says, “The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2, although for different reasons.”
Yet ODNI continues to assert the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was modified by researchers is weak, challenging the many lab leak theories in which WIV scientists allegedly manipulated a precursor coronvirus to make it more dangerous. ODNI states “Almost all IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination. All IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.”
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Flo Débarre, one of the scientists who analyzed genetic evidence from the Wuhan market, says she is aghast that so many media outlets have passed along the accusations against the three WIV scientists. “I find it shameful that these scientists are denied any presumption of innocence, their names being thrown in the media arena without any consideration for them, without any actual evidence backing the claim,” says Débarre, who is at CNRS, the French national research agency. She says she was originally "very open" to the lab-leak theory but now finds a natural origin more likely and has combated lab-leak proponents online. Débarre posted a Twitter thread that recounts in detail the history of the “sick” WIV lab worker theory.
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