Looking at Web Archive of Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Website
Recent developments on the origin of the Corona Virus has sparked new debates and yet again have raised questions about Wuhan Institute of Virology's integrity on the data they have shared.
Before we dig deeper I would like to note that I am not into any studies related to virology nor do I have any affiliations with any organizations or body, mentioned in the article or otherwise. This is purely what’s available from the Wuhan’s Lab official website (and its old snapshots)
The article contains snapshots of the website http://english.whiov.cas.cn/ from various period of time and analysis on what was once available, then removed and so on.
Article about Bat carrying virus and how bats are able to not get sick even when infected
Archive Snapshot Date: 5th March 2018
Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20180305224933/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/
Looking at this snapshot, the main article featured on the homepage of the website was “How bats carry viruses without getting sick”
The above article is available as a snapshot at http://web.archive.org/web/20180307232828/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/sylbt2016/201803/t20180301_190389.html
However, interestingly when I tried visiting the same article page on the live website the page returned nothing
When a webpage is archived by this WebArchive tool it is saved as a static HTML page, so no matter how the actual files are modified the one that saved captured on an earlier date will remain the same.
In most cases you are able to get to the same file (it could have been modified or not) if it hasn’t been deleted. Here it seems like the Wuhan Institute decided to take down the article completely.
Second China-U.S. Workshop
Archive Snapshot Date: 5th March 2018
Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20180305224933/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/
From the capture of the same date we can find a Notice on the website’s homepage for a Workshop between China-US and it is interesting to look at the contents of it.
The one field of research that’s in the news in the “Gain of Function Research” — while US health officials have claimed they had no knowledge of what the Chinese were doing with their tax payer’s money and that they had no funded it for “Gain a Function” research, as well as going to the lengths saying they usually trust their grantee with what they will do.
However in the notice for 2017 Workshop “Gain of Function” research is # 1 on the list of sessions with officials from U.S. National Academy of Sciences as the top participants.
It is critical to think how their workshop on a “Gain of function” research at the very Wuhan Lab that is now the center of all questions regarding the origin of the virus went unnoticed for more than a year now?
Did they visit the lab, took a session and forgot about it for the next 3 years? Even during the time the pandemic took hundreds of thousands of lives?
Interestingly no traces of that notice could be found on the live site
Again while trying to visit the same URL but on the live website it returned nothing
Could it be another mistake from a developer working on the website who accidently deleted just this old article from the website while many others still remain online?
The mention of the US-China Workshop has been completely erased
The following screenshot is from the live website’s list of international conferences they have held
The US-China workshop’s article was posted on 5–5–2017 — however you can check the dates, it’s completely erased from the chronology, while other events around the same time are still available.
Will SARS come back?
Snapshot date: 27th March 2016
Snapshot link: http://web.archive.org/web/20160327113944/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/News/Events/201512/t20151204_157114.html
This is a question raised in an article from 2016 on the Wuhan Institute’s website.
This article in particular is a very important one,
- They talk about the exact thing that caused the on-going pandemic
- They knew about it, and did further research on it, possibly Gain of Function research in the knowledge of US health officials (Workshop in 2017!)
From the article
“Recently, Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with researchers from University of North Carolina, Harvard Medical School, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology and etc, examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus,”
It is as if many many people knew about the possible human infecting SARS, but during the start of pandemic everybody acted like it were completely something out of the blue.
Which is strange, because
- In various articles on Wuhan’s website they have talked about bats, and also SARS very specifically in connection to how humans can be affected.
- During the outbreak many were completely unaware of what was this for months.
I am not a virologist but if somebody else is in that field and have collaborated with Wuhan Institute on the same thing they would know a thing or two about it. It just feels so wrong to think nobody had any idea.
Finally, the claims that the virus originating from a lab was a complete myth and a conspiracy theory must look at these articles.
As you may have guessed, the article is no longer on the website
Now it is just very possible that their website’s structure changed and the article moved but I was not able to find that article anywhere. It appears as their entire /News/ section was taken off.
Claims of site being hacked
The Chinese officials have claimed their sites we target of hacking attempts which led to the deletion of databases, saved in excel format.
I am not a virologist but I do know somethings about computer, and that is,
- their entire site seems to be mostly made of static HTML files i.e no point of data breach, or use of PHP or other backend languages that could be a potential entry for a hacker.
- excel sheets don’t get hacked. If it were a database saved on the cloud like it would be easier to believe the claims.
What are the next steps?
The task of comparing data from old captures of a website that doesn’t even have search inbuilt and given the fact that not everything the Chinese or Wuhan Lab have were ever published on the website makes is not easy.
It is entirely possible a lot of articles were never published ( at least publicly for its English site ), however, whatever I have found so far that even remotely relates to the 2020 Pandemic have been erased completely off of the website. Without the help of WebArchive tool it wouldn’t even have been possible to find what I have.
I would continue to look for more clues by comparing even older version of the website and see what they had published and what is still available and what they have erased.
Stay tuned!
