Flavinkins (@Flavinkins)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/27/wuhan-facilities-sheds-light-on-chinas-problematic-oversight-of There is a private zoo and a “wildlife rescue center” in Wuhan that had the “scientific collaboration base” for the WIV. It had amongst others, ringtail raccoons and possibly raccoon dogs and asian badgers inside. The specification also say “several monkey facilities”. “According to documentation from the centre, it houses several veterinary clinics, monkey facilities, pens for amphibians and reptiles, wildlife breeding facilities and an animal hospital. Netting to keep birds and other animals from escaping is visible along the fence.” If they want to intentionally release some virus (vaccine strain or later, challenge strain) to trial a self-spreading animal vaccine (it worked so well in lab mice let’s try it in those animals we keep there https://gab.com/Flavinkins/posts/108779333080481680 https://gab.com/Flavinkins/posts/108943039799474712 https://archive.ph/71Di3 https://gab.com/Flavinkins/posts/108671973520521447), it will be at that site. (Note on the animals paper: https://archive.ph/RrAgM No exact monthly data was given, likely because of an 2018 ban that will negatively impact their conclusion of “rampant, freely available wildlife sales in Wuhan” “up to 2019”.) Also, on the sampling: that they tested is all what they had in their BioBanks. The number of tested animal samples in the various reports and publications are consistent with the maximal capacity for animal samples in the BioBank facilities in China. Other interesting data from the article: illegal wildlife sales especially for species that were on the Nationally endangered and protected species list (for medicine, as in the examples given) are usually sourced not directly sourced by individual poachers or smugglers or from private farms, but primarily sourced from state-operated “wildlife rescue facilities”. Animals were most likely either zoo rejects or at least first cached as “confiscation” within these “wildlife rescue facilities”. For Wuhan, unfortunately the only provincial facility known (required for the long-term handling of animals that were on the list) was “湖北省野生动物救护研究开发中心”, the address of which is in “森林大道 192” and is where the “中国科学院武汉病毒研究所科研合作基地” plaque was found to be located at. This center also performs “hybrid breeding” of wild animals, many of which were species that were evidently intended for faming as food. Whether some of these animals ended up being directly sold (if the facility also operated as a farm or “source of wild animal” with official status) is unknown. Both supply of animals to markets and to farms would spread any viruses/vaccines being trialed there into the legal and illegal wildlife trade within the vicinity of the city (if any). (Note: 湖北省陆生野生动物疫源疫病监测中心 is the same facility as 湖北省野生动物救护研究开发中心 . Collaboration agreement was signed in 2013, However the final organization that ended up being founded in that initial signing was “湖北省首家野生动物疫源疫病科研合作基地” e.g. the final collaboration that ended up being signed was a general collaboration of “research of diseases sourced in wildlife”. The Batvirus database was originally called “野生动物携带病毒病原特色数据库”. https://archive.ph/WKBeE Interestingly, “Several scientific papers show that Yang has promoted the use of Asiatic black bile for traditional Chinese medicine and worked on a paper involving experiments related to the breeding of mink”. https://archive.ph/WcMo9 As Minks could only be farmed effectively north of the Qinling-Huaihe line (a winter is needed for their pelts to mature) and Hubei is not a fur farming province, this center could have been one of the very few if not the only local source of this species within Wuhan. (The rest would have been from northern China, sadly neither Hubei nor Northern China have the right bats with a virus more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than to SARS-CoV. (The ones that were found were HKU3 and ZC45-related CoVs.))