Additional research/context on Huang Yanling

I don't know how to merge any of this information, as I have never used GitHub. I made an account to post this message.

To my knowledge, Chinese netizens are not pursuing the Huang Yanling theory anymore, and it has basically disappeared from the online discourse, as she is no longer believed by Chinese citizen journalists/detectives to be a likely option for "patient 0". Here's why:

The WeChat Message:

A message was sent to an alumni WeChat group from Huang Yanling's account in mid-February, asserting that she was healthy and well. The message itself is in a WeChat group, so we can't access it, but it was screen-captured and reposted all over Weibo. I found a screenshot of it here, about halfway down the page, below the screenshot of the WIV headshots:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/h6DBBQKNGJt528lwdOMpnA

The exact text reads:

"各位老师，各位同学，好！好久没有着这里发生了。我是换燕玲本人，还健在 :D。你们如果收到了什么邮件，说的不是真的。”

Translation: (not Google Translate - I'm bilingual) "Hello teachers and classmates! It's been a long time since I messaged here. This is Huang Yanling, I'm alive and in good health. If you've received some emails about me, what they are saying is not true".

Now of course it's trivial for the powers that be to send false messages from someone's WeChat account, but there was a request for it, so here it is.

The Sina News Statement

Sina News later followed up by researching her current place of work, a company called Sichuan Maker Biotechnology ("Maker Biotech"), in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, China.

https://news.sina.com.cn/o/2020-02-16/doc-iimxxstf1890379.shtml

Here's the section with the quote from the company:

15日下午，封面新闻记者联系上四川迈克生物相关负责人。该负责人告诉记者，“公司的确有叫‘黄燕玲’的员工，但不确定就是大家要找的黄燕玲。最近，她的压力很大”。该负责人还表示，他注意到目前网上流传的截图中，黄燕玲和她导师已经做了回应。

Translation: On the afternoon of the 15th, the reporter on the cover of this article contacted a spokesperson for Maker Biotech. The spokesperson said “Our company indeed does have an employee named Huang Yanling, but we can't be sure if she's the Huang Yanling that everyone is looking for. Recently, she has had a lot of pressure.” The spokesperson also said that he had seen the current screenshots being shared online, and that Huang Yanling and her academic advisor had already replied.

The Red Star News Interview

A separate reporter from 红星新闻 ( Red Star News, an online media platform based on Weibo, operated by Chengdu Economic Daily) contacted the company on the 16th of February. Their report was syndicated by MSN Chinese language news. The URL has Chinese characters in it, so I can't link it here, but here's the title of the article so you can Google it:

武汉病毒研究所回应新冠病毒“零号病人”黄燕玲传言：她躺枪了，压力很大

In the Red Star News report, they say:

2月16日中午，红星新闻记者联系到黄燕玲所在的四川一家生物公司，并采访了黄燕玲所在部门的负责人。据其称，黄燕玲于2016年通过社招进入公司，从事生物技术工作。“她在正常上下班，身体没有任何状况，公司每天都在测体温”。

红星新闻记者多次尝试采访黄燕玲，但她通过该负责人拒绝受访。这位负责人称，谣言被扩散当晚，黄燕玲便已看到相关消息，“她只是个躺枪的人，看到各种谣言，她很心烦，压力也很大，不太想说话。她不知道为什么，这样的谣言会落在自己身上。目前，公司已经建议她报警。不要奇怪研究所为什么没有黄燕玲的照片，而是造谣者发现网页上正好有个没有照片的人，就直接利用了。”

Translation (still me, not Google): "On the afternoon of February 16, this Red Star News Reporter contacted the Sichuan biotechnology company where Huang Yanling works and interviewed her department supervisor. According to his comments, Huang Yanling began working at the company in 2016 via recruitment and works in biotechnology. "She is coming to work as normal, and there is no issue with her health. The company checks body temperature every day."

(continued) This reporter from Red Star News attempted several times to directly interview Huang Yanling, but she declined an interview through the company spokesperson. This spokesperson said "Huang Yanling saw news of this rumor by the evening of the first day. She is just a "tangqiang" person (Translation note: This is Chinese internet slang, it means someone who has been unjustly accused of something while actually being marginally involved as a bystander). After seeing all kinds of rumors online, she got very annoyed and has a lot of stress, and doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't know why these rumors would land on her. The company has already recommended that she inform the police. Don't go crazy researching some thing about how there's no photograph...the rumormonger discovered that there just happened to be a missing photograph on the web page and took advantage of that."

Huang Yanling's Patents

Although Sina News was unable to find additional confirmation from Maker Biotech itself, the reporter did note three patents filed by Maker Biotech in 2017 and 2018, respectively, where a "Huang Yanling" was the lead author on the patents, two years after she graduated and left Wuhan. The screenshot of these three patents with patent numbers is the last image on this page, just before the end.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/h6DBBQKNGJt528lwdOMpnA

Just a final point, not fact driven, but just logical: If there was something to conceal about Huang Yanling, her name and details would almost certain be censored on Weibo or WeChat, and that's not the case.

Other Stuff

A final, unrelated point: Having gone to school in Atlanta, I assure you that the CDC is NOT a 15 minute drive from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport :). Might want to Google Maps that...

I admire the level of depth and effort that's gone into this, but you guys need more Chinese speakers AND people who understand Chinese society and culture to eliminate some bogies/false flags/rabbit holes. Quite a few things in here can be explained quite easily and are not weird/suspicious if you have experience in China. For example, the Party Secretary of WIV not knowing what the institute is working on, or what kind of research they've done in the past, sounds TOTALLY LIKELY to me...He's probably not intentionally lying...just clueless. Party Secretaries for these kinds of institutes are just gov't liaisons..they often don't have any technical or professional background at all.

Project-Evidence / project-evidence.github.io