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No, Chinese scientists did not ‘create COVID-19 strain that is 100% lethal’
WTHR ^ | February 2, 2024 | Emery Winter

Posted on 02/09/2024 5:05:03 PM PST by nickcarraway

Viral headlines exaggerated and inaccurately described a recent study about a coronavirus in mice.

It’s been four years since the COVID-19 virus first began to spread. The U.S. National Intelligence Council assessed that two theories on the virus’s origins are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident.

Recent alarming headlines of Chinese experiments involving the virus reignited pandemic-era fears online.

VERIFY reader Karen asked us on Facebook if a story from the Staten Island Advance, a newspaper local to New York City’s Staten Island, titled “Chinese scientists create COVID-19 strain that is 100% lethal to ‘humanized’ mice, report says” is true. Similar headlines have appeared on other news sites like the New York Post.

THE QUESTION Did Chinese scientists create a COVID-19 strain that’s 100% lethal to mice?

THE SOURCES Viral study titled “Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR)”

Posts made to ScienceCast, a forum for researchers to discuss studies, by Lihua Song, Ph.D., one of the scientists who worked on the study

Studies of the same virus published in March 2020, December 2022 and January 2023

Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC)

The Jackson Laboratory

THE ANSWER This is false. No, Chinese scientists did not create a COVID-19 strain that’s 100% lethal to mice.

Chinese scientists did recently conduct a study in which they cloned a coronavirus, not a COVID-19 strain, that killed all four mice that were infected with it. However, this is not consistent with past studies, and the researchers say it does not mean it would kill humans.

WHAT WE FOUND A group of Chinese scientists, the majority of which are affiliated with the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, recently pre-printed a study — meaning they’ve published it online before it has been reviewed by peers to confirm it’s scientifically sound — titled “Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR).”

The scientists did not create a mutant COVID-19 strain to conduct this study, as some of the headlines suggest, nor did they use COVID-19 at all. Instead, the scientists studied a different coronavirus using just four mice. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that include COVID-19, but also strains of the common cold.

Score BIG for the Super Bowl! Transform Your TV into a GAME-WATCHING BEAST! FEATURED BY The study’s authors clarified that the mouse infections in the study do not mean the virus would also kill humans. The exact same virus has been the subject of other studies, including those in which the virus infected similar kinds of mice. The mice in those other studies did not die.

First, we’ll explain why the claim that the scientists “created a COVID-19 strain” is false. Then we’ll add context to this coronavirus’s lethality to mice — both in this study and in similar studies.

Chinese scientists did not create a COVID-19 strain

The scientists explain within the text of the study that they worked with a coronavirus, which is a family of viruses that includes COVID-19, but not COVID-19 itself. This coronavirus, which they called GX_P2V, was a sample they found in an animal called a pangolin in 2017, according to the scientists.

The virus used in the study was first collected in 2018, according to an earlier study by researchers from Hong Kong and Beijing. Its collection date is confirmed by the Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC), which shows it was one of six related viruses collected from pangolins by researchers at the time.

The virus began adapting, or mutating, after it was first collected, according to a study published in December 2022. The study’s researchers, some of whom later worked on the viral lethal mouse study, said the virus “rapidly adapted” to a kind of animal cell commonly used as a host for viruses studied by scientists.

Lihua Song, Ph.D., one of the scientists who worked on the viral lethal mouse study, explained on ScienceCast, a forum for researchers to discuss studies with other scientists, that the sample they used is a clone of the virus sample that mutated between 2018 and 2022.

Scientists no longer have an original, unmutated version of the virus because the original sample adapted in the animal cell, Song explained. Song suspected that the original pangolin sample mutated because it had difficulty growing in the animal host cells used by scientists

Putting “100% lethal to ‘humanized’ mice” claim in context

The scientists in the viral study used a small sample size of mice: 12 in total, four of which were infected with the virus. All four of the infected mice died, but the researchers noted that the virus did not kill similar mice in other studies.

The mice used in the study were “ACE2 humanized” mice. These kinds of mice, according to the Jackson Laboratory, are “humanized” because their cells have “human ACE2, the receptor used by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) to gain cellular entry.”

“While GX_P2V(short_3UTR) proved lethal in our mouse model, it's important to consider that it did not cause disease upon infecting two other distinct ACE2 humanized mouse strains,” Song said on ScienceCast.

Song is referring to a January 2023 study that said it infected three groups of mice, two of which were groups of humanized ACE2 mice. The researchers noted that the infected mice “presented no obvious clinical symptoms,” leading them to believe that GX_P2V may not be very good at causing disease.

Song and the other researchers in the viral study wrote that the reason the virus was so lethal may have been because their mice had abnormally high ACE2.

“It is very likely that the high pathogenicity of GX_P2V C7 in our hACE2 mice is due to the strong expression of hACE2 in the mouse brain,” the researchers wrote. “Under normal circumstances, both human and mouse brains exhibit low expression of ACE2.”

The researchers said that because of this “mouse infections in this study have no correlation with human infections.”

The scientists said the purpose of the study was to assess a potential candidate for use in vaccines or drugs meant to protect against broad groups of coronaviruses.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: covid1984; fakenews; tldr
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1 posted on 02/09/2024 5:05:03 PM PST by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

Democrats only ordered that for Maga republicans!


2 posted on 02/09/2024 5:07:45 PM PST by ncfool (America has died we are living in the united socialist states of aMeriKa)
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To: nickcarraway

Well if it’s the media debunking something, of course I’ll believe it. It’s not like they’d lie to us, right? /s


3 posted on 02/09/2024 5:09:05 PM PST by Prince of Space (Trump 2024!)
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To: nickcarraway
Author Emery Winter..."Emery leads the team of researchers and is the longest active member of the VERIFY team. THEY first joined the team as an intern while in college in 2018 before becoming a full-time news researcher for the team in 2019. Originally from Virginia Beach, THEY are currently based in Charlotte where THEY also attended and graduated from Queens University of Charlotte. 

The freak doesn't even know if it is a man or woman.


4 posted on 02/09/2024 5:09:53 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: nickcarraway

Emery Winter leads the team of researchers and is the longest active member of the VERIFY team. They first joined the team as an intern while in college in 2018 before becoming a full-time news researcher for the team in 2019. Originally from Virginia Beach, they are currently based in Charlotte where they also attended and graduated from Queens University of Charlotte. 

5 posted on 02/09/2024 5:09:55 PM PST by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Well done.


6 posted on 02/09/2024 5:10:25 PM PST by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: nickcarraway

WEF talked about virus X at Davos24, then told the Chinese to shut up and deny, deny, deny


7 posted on 02/09/2024 5:14:00 PM PST by jpp113
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To: nickcarraway
Victor Davis Hanson interviews Dr. Steven Quay on the February 1, 2024 episode "Modern Epidemiology, Ancient History." He discusses a coronavirus developed in China with a potential lethality of 60%.
Quay received his education from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed his doctorate in 1975. Quay worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana at MIT. He has previously worked as a faculty member of Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine.

In 2009, Quay founded Atossa Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company based in Seattle. The company is listed on Nasdaq since 2012. In September 2021, Quay published a book, The Origin of the Virus: The hidden truths behind the microbe that killed millions of people, along with Angus Dalgleish and Paolo Barnard. He is also an author of a book named Stay Safe: A Physician's Guide to Survive Coronavirus.


I know who I believe.
8 posted on 02/09/2024 5:17:42 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: DoodleBob

LOL...TWO seconds! Gotta be quick around here!


9 posted on 02/09/2024 5:18:35 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: nickcarraway

No virus is 100% lethal.

I am starting to think that the original SARS-COV was the precursor to COVID-19, though and it was TOO lethal - too lethal to spread, in any event.

I thought it was interesting in Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin, that when the subject of scientific advancements came up, Putin spoke only of the very old-fashioned concept of an engineered super-athlete or soldier. This is much more science fiction than the very real scientific advances in the creation of bio-weapons.


10 posted on 02/09/2024 5:21:33 PM PST by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: nickcarraway

Don’t believe anything until then government officially denies it.


11 posted on 02/09/2024 5:23:58 PM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus…)
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To: Empire_of_Liberty

“No virus is 100% lethal.”

Over a long enough time frame, everything is 100% lethal. :-)


12 posted on 02/09/2024 5:32:03 PM PST by Brooklyn Attitude (I went to bed on November 3rd 2020 and woke up in 1984.)
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To: Brooklyn Attitude

Over a long enough time frame, everything is 100% lethal. :-)


Everyone who has died has eaten carrots.............


13 posted on 02/09/2024 5:33:36 PM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: nickcarraway

So these morons are asserting that you can prove a negative?

Interesting basic logic fail, that.


14 posted on 02/09/2024 5:47:43 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

“...Emery leads the team of researchers and is the longest active member of the VERIFY team. THEY first joined the team as an intern...”

I get referring to IT as THEY since it is posessed by multiple demons.


15 posted on 02/09/2024 5:51:14 PM PST by chuckb87
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To: All

It is doubly true.

1: No matter how hard they try, so far they haven’t been able to make one that will kill EVERYBODY.

2: Covid wasn’t created by Chinese Scientists. It was created by Ivy-league University American scientists, then farmed out to a chinese biowarfare lab for refinement and production.

And besides that: They have no desire to kill EVERYONE. They want the elite to survive, and enough peasants to keep them fed, comfortable and entertained.


16 posted on 02/09/2024 6:15:42 PM PST by LegendHasIt
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To: chuckb87

LOL...ok, now the plural makes perfect sense!


17 posted on 02/09/2024 7:10:27 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: nickcarraway

They’re working on it.


18 posted on 02/09/2024 7:41:18 PM PST by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.)
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To: TBP

Four U.S. Intelligence Agencies warned the U.S. & NATO of Covid 4 weeks before the Chinese could have known about it. U.S. & Israeli media confirmed it. http://tiny.cc/37v6wz


19 posted on 02/09/2024 10:02:26 PM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: nickcarraway

. . . yet.


20 posted on 02/09/2024 10:25:39 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE. THE REVOLUTION IS THE ISSUE.)
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