Laboratory Hypothesis Leak Overview

Guest Post by Andrew Tuntable, Ph. D. atuntable@gmail.com @atuntable

DRASTIC and other groups have uncovered substantial evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by the leak of the virus from a laboratory in Wuhan.  This evidence together with many references is described in this paper:

SARS-COV-2 Laboratory Leak Hypothesis

In summary, the evidence is:-

1. The bat coronavirus outbreak occurred in Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the world’s leading bat coronaviruses laboratory.  (Not proof, but certainly of interest.)
2. Wuhan is over 1000 km from the relevant bats.  The bats were not traded in the Wuhan wet markets. 
3. The virus arose suddenly, fully functional, with no known human or animal precursors.  This is unlike SARS-1 and MERS.
4. The virus is a chimera (a mixture) of two different viruses.  Chimera’s can arise naturally, but are also often engineered in laboratories.
5. The virus also contains two different powerful adaptations at the same time, an effective spike protein and a furin cleavage site.  This is why it is the most infectious coronavirus in 100 years.
6. The WIV and the Eco Health Alliance proudly published their earlier results on genetically engineering chimeras based on coronaviruses.  They have also submitted grant proposals to add furin cleavage sites to coronaviruses.
7. It was discovered that in 2013 six bat guano miners became ill with a SARS-like virus, samples of which were sent to the WIV.  This could have been the precursor to SARS-COV-2.  The WIV had said the miners had a fungal infection. 
8. The WIV conducted coronavirus research at biosecurity levels 2 and 3, not high security BSL-4.  A US government report had raised concerns about their biosecurity practices in 2017.
9. Lab leaks are not uncommon and have happened in many laboratories around the world.
10. There is some evidence that workers at the WIV became ill in late 2019.
11. More importantly, the Chinese government has removed data and has angrily thwarted any proper investigation.  They refuse to disclose whether the WIV was studying a SARS-COV-2 like virus. 
12. There does not appear to have been any attempt to trace the contacts of the earliest cases by looking for long lived antibodies.
13. The Chinese government has still not found any natural precursor after an extensive search testing over 80,000 samples.
14. There are no credible rebuttals.

The weight of this evidence shows that the virus escaped from the WIV beyond reasonable doubt.

This is important because this technology has become much more accessible to laboratories around the world, often with minimal oversight.  Advances in technology could enable future genetically engineered viruses to be far more infectious and virulent than SARS-COV-2.

(Permission to use this cartoon is granted with attribution.)

This is what must not be allowed to happen.  Students from existing laboratories setting up their own laboratories around the world and conducting dangerous Gain of Function research with inadequate safety precautions.

The next engineered virus could be even more infectious, have a longer incubation period, a higher mortality rate and, like HIV, attack the immune system.  It could be far more dangerous than SARS-COV-2.

Full Paper here:

SARS-COV-2 Laboratory Leak Hypothesis