Two scientists have been referred to as as witnesses on the Home Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Choose Coronavirus Disaster listening to, held June 29, 2021.1 Their testimony provides proof that clarifies the origin of COVID-19, which they imagine leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, on account of controversial gain-of-function (GOF) analysis.
Many have acknowledged that we’ll by no means actually know the origin, wanting China confessing or a whistleblower coming ahead. However as Richard Muller, Professor Emeritus of physics on the College of California, Berkeley, acknowledged throughout his testimony, “Now we have a whistleblower, the virus itself.”2
Muller, who has labored on scientific efforts which have received Nobel Prizes, states that the virus, which got here out of China, carried with it genetic details about its origins.
“In my thoughts, there are 5 compelling units of scientific proof that enable us to succeed in this very robust conclusion that, sure, it was a laboratory leak,” Muller mentioned. Dr. Steven Quay, the primary scientist to testify, got here to the identical conclusion that COVID-19 has a laboratory origin, based mostly on “six undisputed info that help this speculation.”
A abstract of the proof, which they overview intimately within the video above, follows, within the hope that, by revealing the true origin of COVID-19, we might help to stop future pandemics and associated lack of life.
‘May They Have Come From Our Lab?’
Quay is a doctor and scientist with a powerful background, together with lots of of revealed articles which have been cited over 10,000 occasions. Quay holds 87 patents throughout 22 completely different fields of medication, has invented seven FDA-approved medicines — and believes that SARS-CoV-2 got here from a laboratory in China.
I not too long ago interviewed Dr. Quay and we’ll put up it quickly. However in his analysis paper of 140 pages, which is extra like a e book, he makes a robust argument that there’s nearly no likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is from nature. How unlikely? Think about all of the atoms within the universe after which think about looking for the identical atom twice. That may be way more seemingly than the virus coming from nature.
As early as December 30, 2019, there have been indicators. This was the day Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) Heart for Rising Infectious Illnesses, also referred to as “bat lady,” was advised a few novel coronavirus that had brought on an outbreak of pneumonia circumstances near WIV.
“May they’ve come from our lab?” Shi, who had been finding out bat-borne viruses since 2004, together with SARS-like coronaviruses, puzzled.3 Since then, proof has continued to build up that COVID-19 seemingly emerged from a laboratory in China after having undergone some form of manipulation to encourage infectiousness and pathology in people, referred to as gain-of-function (GOF) analysis. In keeping with Quay:4
“Within the final 18 months, we’ve realized an intense quantity in regards to the origin of the pandemic, however considered one of my frustrations is that virologists and science writers all over the world appear to need to ignore what has been realized and the inevitable conclusion it reveals.
As inconvenient as it’s, I imagine the proof conclusively establishes that the COVID pandemic was not a pure course of, however as an alternative got here from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and that it has the fingerprints of genetic manipulation for a course of referred to as achieve of operate analysis.”
Quay: Six Undisputed Information Recommend COVID Leaked From Lab
Quay acknowledged that six undisputed info help the speculation that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab.5
1. COVID Didn’t Start in a Seafood Market — Within the early days of the outbreak, China advised the world that the COVID-19 pandemic started on the Hunan Seafood Market, a moist market in Wuhan, as a result of half the preliminary circumstances have been related to that location. That is harking back to different coronavirus outbreaks, together with SARS-Cov-1 (SARS) and Center East respiratory syndrome (MERS), each of which started in animal markets.
Nevertheless, “after 18 months, we all know it [COVID-19] didn’t start in a market in Wuhan for 3 causes,” Quay mentioned. First, not one of the early COVID sufferers from the Hunan market have been contaminated with the earliest model of the virus, that means that once they got here to the market, they have been already contaminated.
“4 sufferers with the earliest model of virus had one factor in widespread,” Quay mentioned. “None had publicity to the market.” Second, not one of the environmental specimens taken from the market had the earliest virus both, which implies additionally they got here into the market already contaminated.
As well as, 457 animals from the Hunan market have been examined, and all have been detrimental for COVID. One other 616 animals from suppliers to the Hunan market have been additionally examined, and all have been detrimental. Wild animals from southern China — 1,864 of them, of the sort discovered within the Hunan market — have been additionally examined and located to be detrimental for the virus.
2. The Virus Has Not Been Present in an Animal Host — Scientists have examined 80,000 samples from 209 completely different species, however the SARS-CoV-2 virus has not been present in a single specimen. “The chance of this for a community-acquired an infection is about 1 in 1,000,000,” Quay mentioned. “That is what you’d anticipate for a lab-acquired an infection.”
3. No Instances of COVID Had been Detected in Blood Samples Previous to December 29 — If the virus had emerged naturally from a wild animal, a small variety of circumstances would seemingly have already been in circulation. However, “after testing 9,952 saved human blood specimens from Wuhan hospitals from earlier than December 29, there was not a single case of COVID in any specimen,” Quay mentioned.
“It was anticipated that between 100 and 400 could be optimistic. The chance of this for a community-acquired an infection can be about 1 in 1,000,000, however that is what you’d anticipate for a lab-acquired an infection.”6
4. No Proof of A number of Animal-to-Human Transmissions — With prior coronavirus outbreaks like SARS and MERS, 50% to 90% of the early circumstances have been clearly linked again to varied animal-to-human infections. For SARS-Cov-2, 249 early circumstances of COVID-19 have been examined genetically and so they have been all human-to-human transmission.
For a community-acquired an infection, Quay mentioned, “That is the chance of tossing a coin 249 occasions and getting heads each single time. That is, nevertheless, what you’d anticipate for a lab-acquired an infection.”
5. SARS-CoV-2 Has Two Distinctive Components That Level to GOF — SARS-CoV-2 has a singular set off on the floor referred to as a furin cleavage website and a singular code within the genes for that website referred to as a CGG-CGG dimer. “These are two impartial ranges of uniqueness,” Quay famous. Furin is a protein coding gene that prompts sure proteins by snipping off particular sections.
To achieve entry into your cells, the virus should first bind to an ACE2 or CD147 receptor on the cell. Subsequent, the S2 spike protein subunit should be proteolytically cleaved (lower). With out this protein cleavage, the virus would merely connect to the receptor and never get any additional. “The furin website is why the virus is so transmissible, and why it invades the guts, the mind and the blood vessels,” Quay defined.7
Whereas furin cleavage websites do exist in different viruses like Ebola, HIV, zika and yellow fever, they’re not naturally present in coronaviruses, which is one purpose why researchers have referred to as the furin cleavage website the “smoking gun” that proves SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab. The complete group of coronaviruses to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs doesn’t include a single instance of a furin cleavage website or CGG-CGG code, Quay mentioned.
Quay’s Bayesian evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 origins revealed that discovering a CGG-CGG codon pair within the furin website of SARS-CoV-2 is “a extremely inconceivable occasion,” and this can be utilized to regulate the probability that SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin to solely 0.5%, whereas the probability of laboratory origin is 99.5%.8
Additional, since 1992, WIV and different laboratories all over the world have inserted furin websites into viruses repeatedly as a part of GOF experiments. “It’s the solely certain methodology that all the time works and all the time makes them extra infectious,” Quay mentioned. WIV was additionally recognized for his or her broad use of CGG-CGG codon pairs.
Quay wrote in his evaluation, “Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology supplied the scientific group with a technical bulletin on easy methods to make genetic inserts in coronaviruses and proposed utilizing the very software that might insert this CGGCGG codon.”9
6. SARS-CoV-2 Optimized for Human Transmission — Quay’s final level targeted on SARS-CoV-2 being preadapted for human-to-human transmission. “Particularly,” he mentioned, “the a part of the virus that interacts with human cells was 99.5% optimized. When Sars-1 first jumped into people, it had solely 17% of the modifications wanted to trigger an epidemic.” How was SARS-CoV-2 “taught” to contaminate people so effectively in a laboratory?
A generally used GOF methodology to optimize SARS-CoV-2, Quay defined, would have been serial passage in a lab on a humanized mouse to develop human-like pneumonia. In brief, researchers infect the humanized mouse with the virus, wait every week, then get better the virus from the sickest mouse. That virus is then used to contaminate extra mice, and the method is repeated till you get a virus that may kill the entire mice.
The problem is to create the humanized mice to start the method within the first place, nevertheless it’s recognized that a part of WIV’s GOF analysis concerned utilizing humanized mice for experiments to find out which coronaviruses might infect people, in addition to analysis to make viruses that weren’t in a position to infect people just do that.10
Different reviews additionally claimed that WIV was finishing up analysis infecting humanized mice with novel bat SARS coronaviruses in 2019, and years earlier video was launched exhibiting WIV scientists working with little or no protecting gear whereas working with dwell viruses.11
What’s extra, in response to Quay, WIV acknowledged they’ve been working with humanized mice, developed by Ralph Baric, Ph.D., on the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.12
5 Extra Indicators That Level to a Lab Origin
Muller largely agreed with Quay’s testimony and added 5 factors of his personal, which additional solidify the excessive probability that COVID-19 got here from a lab.13
1. Absence of prepandemic infections — Like Quay, Muller discovered the absence of prepandemic infections in additional than 9,000 samples taken in Wuhan to be extremely suspect. “It’s unprecedented,” he mentioned. “It didn’t occur with MERS or SARS.”
2. Absence of a number animal — Muller introduced up the February 2020 Lancet letter,14 wherein a gaggle of 27 scientists, together with Peter Daszak, who has shut ties to WIV, condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 doesn’t have a pure origin.”
In the event you take a look at The Lancet letter, Muller mentioned, they are saying you may dismiss a lab origin as a result of China recognized the host animal and even went as far as to reward China for its openness. “This paper, The Lancet, doesn’t learn properly after we take a look at it 16 months later,” Muller mentioned, noting {that a} host animal hasn’t been discovered.
3. Unprecedented genetic purity — Echoing Quay, Muller additionally mentioned that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive genetic footprint is in contrast to that of different coronaviruses like MERS and SARS, in addition to that of different sorts of pure viruses. However, he mentioned, “It’s precisely what you’d anticipate in the event you’d gone by way of achieve of operate.”
4. Spike mutation — Muller additionally highlighted the distinctive mutations within the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. “The truth that there’s no recognized means for that spike mutation to get there apart from a gene insertion in a laboratory is a really highly effective argument,” Muller mentioned.
5. Virus was optimized to assault people — That is one thing that has by no means occurred in pure virus releases, Muller mentioned, “nevertheless it does occur in the event you run it by way of achieve of operate.”
Whereas there isn’t a proof in favor of a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2, “every considered one of these items is compelling by itself,” Muller mentioned. “If we had any one of many 5 issues, we should always conclude that the proof strongly favors the lab origin.” And we now have not one of many 5, however all of them. Muller additionally shared an anecdote that occurred with a colleague of his — a narrative he says is “as horrifying and extra scary than nearly anything in my life.”
Within the early days of the pandemic, he referred to as on an professional virologist pal to assist him overview literature suggesting there could have been a lab leak. The pal mentioned no, so he requested if somebody in his laboratory might do it. However the reply was no once more. Muller pressed him on the refusal, to which he responded:
“If anybody in my laboratory is found to be engaged on a laboratory leak speculation, China will label us enemies of China and the laboratory shall be blacklisted and we’ll not have the ability to collaborate. We collaborate on a regular basis with China. No one will take that danger.”
“The concept China has managed to intrude, to interrupt United States’ freedom of expression, freedom of investigation, freedom of thought by way of this collaboration is absolutely scary,” Muller mentioned, calling it “probably the most chilling conversations I’ve had in my life.” Finally, nevertheless, the reality will prevail so long as the long-censored lab-leak principle and proof in help of it proceed to go mainstream.