The Wuhan virus lab requested funding to release a modified coronavirus into a wild bat population. The Telegraph. New documents show that the lab proposed to release spike proteins as a vaccine into the wild bat population to vaccinate them against Coronaviruses that could potentially infect humans. They also planned to modify Coronaviruses to create chimeric viruses that would be better able to infect humans. They planned to mix more infectious but less dangerous viruses with the more dangerous and lethal ones. The current Coronavirus pandemic puzzled scientists with the spike proteins that allowed human cells to be infected. The proposal was to get funding from DARPA but DARPA refused to fund the work citing the high danger of a lab escape and global pandemic. The work into gain of function research may have continued and would explain how the Coronavirus pandemic started. Most disturbing of all is that the lab was reported to have modified the MERS virus, a much more deadly Coronavirus with a fatality rate of 30%, to be more infectious.
My Comment:
The case for a lab leak being the cause of the pandemic is growing stronger. We now know that the lab was interested in some very dangerous things. It's clear now that they were trying to make viruses more infectious and were working with bats. It's very possible that one of the viruses they cooked up escaped.
My guess is that they modified one of the viruses and through gain of function research they made a virus that could easily infect humans. This had an obvious outcome when one or more of the lab techs got infected and then spread it to the rest of the world. Remember intel agencies claim that some of the workers at that lab had gotten sick in late 2019. This is the most plausible origin of the pandemic.
Some of the other things they were doing at this lab were just as crazy. The idea of an airborne vaccine to infect these wild bats seems like a horrible idea. The vaccine could have unpredictable results if humans were exposed, possibly acting as a virus itself. Indeed, this too could have been the origin of the pandemic, but there is no evidence that the experiment was actually tried. It's a crazy idea though because of the obvious chance of something going wrong.
But the Telegraph buried the lede on this story. If the lab was working with MERS we are extremely lucky that was not the virus that escaped. A virus that has 30% fatality would cause the apocalypse if it was as infectious as the SARS-COV2 virus. Millions would have died and society may have even collapsed. I don't think we would have been able to develop a vaccine fast enough and a lot of people would have died...
That's the danger of this gain of function research. There isn't a good reason to do this kind of research and the threat of a viral escape is extreme. Both Obama and Trump did not want this research done but it appears China did it anyways.
I think the circumstantial case for the virus being created and escaping from the lab is very strong now. Probably not beyond reasonable doubt but under the preponderance of the evidence standard you could convict China for this virus. The case for it being a deliberate release is a lot weaker and the chance of it being a natural virus seems remote now.
Will China ever face any consequences for this? Millions of people are dead, others are injured and weakened by the virus, billions of dollars have been spent, and people have lost almost two years of their lives. But China hasn't faced any consequences whatsoever and indeed, our government seems more interested in defending them than actually doing anything to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.
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