What Really Happened In Wuhan by Sharri Markson

Author:Sharri Markson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

USAMRIID

FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND

Inside America’s highly secretive army biological research site at Fort Detrick, Maryland, are BSL-4 laboratories. Soldiers guard the premises that house America’s bio-defence agency, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

It’s the last place on earth you would expect to have developed ties with Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who, in turn, are engaging in secret Chinese military activity. But its Chief Science Officer, a laboratory director, a former commander and a research contractor all have links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even visiting its laboratories.

USAMRIID’s Chief Scientific Officer and Scientific Director Sina Bavari sits on the editorial board of the journal where Shi Zhengli is the Editor-in-Chief, Virologica Sinica. Sina Bavari has been at USAMRIID since 2011 and Chief Scientific Officer since September 2014, his five-year term expiring in September 2019, according to his CV.

Before he left, Bavari had agreed to attend an emerging infectious diseases conference with Shi Zhengli in September 2019, in Tofo, Mozambique. Shi Zhengli was a speaker and Bavari, who sat on the scientific committee, was planning to give a talk. Bavari had already paid for his flights and organised his Mozambique visa when he withdrew from the conference 10 days before, emailing organisers to apologise and offer to give his lectures via FaceTime or WhatsApp.

Bavari originally told me he did attend the conference, saying Shi Zhengli gave a presentation on bat coronaviruses and that he hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her that week. “There was nothing that rang any bells.” Five days later, Bavari said he remembered that he had attended in 2018, not 2019, although it does not appear that Shi Zhengli was at the Tofo conference in 2018.

Shi Zhengli did attend the 2019 conference, held from September 1 to 5. She gave a coronavirus presentation, according to another conference participant, who described her as friendly and sociable. A week later, on September 12, the Wuhan Institute of Virology virus database was taken offline.

Bavari had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2014 or 2015, he said, for an editorial board meeting of Virologica Sinica. He didn’t visit the BSL-4 laboratory, which wasn’t open yet, but ventured inside the lower-security BSL-3 lab, where Shi Zhengli was conducting coronavirus research.

Asked what the safety standards inside the laboratory were like, Bavari says: “Oh my God, that was like, seven years ago, so I don’t remember a darn thing. I really don’t. I’m not kidding you. I was jet-lagged and I got there two days after I was supposed to get there because of some screw ups with my flights and so on. So I don’t really remember much about that trip, to be honest. They actually gathered a bunch of virologists together and it was the editorial board of the journal actually. They’re all invited to come there and give presentation, interact with the students, things like that. I remember being in a place walking around, but I don’t remember the details.”

Bavari wasn’t the only senior figure from USAMRIID to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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