Dr. Danny Altmann, Professor of Immunology at Imperial College London, has admitted that the emergence of the highly immune-evasive SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron came as a surprise to most experts in the field. He writes in the Guardian:
The onslaught of highly immune-evasive variants was, for most of us in immunology and virology, unforeseen. We’d come to think of the coronavirus family as being rather more stable – less error-prone in terms of mutations – than many viruses… Omicron and the subvariant BA.2 have managed to mutate almost every amino acid residue targeted by protective antibodies, escaping protection.
He doesn’t mention the possibility, but this unexpected nature of Omicron is clearly compatible with the hypothesis that the variant is not of natural origin. Earlier in the year, Noah Carl looked at the evidence that the variant might have leaked from a lab. I recently came across the website of biochemist Dr. Valentin Bruttel, which sets out the evidence for this lab origin in detail (though be aware it has been translated from German, so the text contains a few language mistakes).
The first piece of evidence is Omicron’s evolutionary history – its most recent common ancestor was a strain extinct in the wild and last seen around April 2020.
Normal SARS2 variants emerge when a few mutations (around two to six of those in the spike protein) accumulate in currently circulating virus. Omicron (red line below) emerged from a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) virus that was last seen around April 2020, and accumulated more than 25 new spike mutations in complete isolation. That means Omicron was evolving at a never before seen speed (3.3 times faster) and without infecting others.
The second piece of evidence is the very high number of sequential non-synonymous mutations (mutations which alter the amino acid sequence) that Omicron has accrued.
Many Omicron non-synonymous mutations reduce viral fitness. And in the pre-outbreak Omicron spike protein, there are 26 non-synonymous mutations in a row, without a single synonymous mutation in between. That many non-synonymous mutations in a row has never before seen in natural SARS-like coronaviruses, but a few times in synthetic ones.
The third piece of evidence is that almost all of Omicron’s non-synonymous mutations appeared in scientific publications before they appeared in Omicron, an event which has been calculated to be statistically impossible.
SARS2 variants usually inherit a few mutations from the parental strain and then evolve a few new ones themselves… Instead of inheriting only parental mutations, Omicron ‘copied’ almost all of its spike mutations from other variants (many of them which appeared after its most recent common ancestor) or from scientific publications. That’s a bit like directly inheriting genes not only from your father, but also from six younger cousins and five classmates you first met when you were seven. Almost all of Omicron’s non-synonymous mutations were already known about half a year before Omicron emerged. Those not from variants were mostly known to confer resistance towards vaccines, or from vaccine-associated publications.
The fourth piece of evidence is that we know Omicron-like variants were being created by scientists – and indeed that Omicron’s most recent common ancestor virus, though extinct in the wild for over a year, had been stored and cultured in Durban, South Africa, not far from where Omicron was first spotted.
We know that publicly-known lab leaks happen about twice a year. We also know that scientists selectively made vaccine-resistant SARS2 viruses in labs by culturing them with diluted sera from vaccinated donors. Others made ‘greatest hits’ synthetic polymutant SARS2 spike proteins that contain 20 non-synonymous mutations known to enable vaccine escape or from other variants. The latter experiment was done in a lab with a pseudovirus, but those can also escape and their spike protein can then be copied into SARS2 by a process called template switching. We also know that this lab’s partner lab in Durban collected, froze and later cultured exactly the SARS2 variant which is not circulating anymore out there and from which Omicron evolved. And it did patient sera virus culturing experiments. Such a lab leak would explain the extinct most recent common ancestor virus, isolated ‘evolution’ and precise inclusion of only published non-synonymous spike mutations.
The fifth piece of evidence is that pharmaceutical companies were trying to create a pan-variant vaccine based on a spike protein like Omicron’s which incorporated many key mutations from circulating variants. One such vaccine was being tested in HIV patients in southern Africa, where Omicron was first spotted.
I wonder what Professor Altmann makes of this evidence, and whether it would solve for him the mystery of the unexpected highly immune-evasive variant.
To my mind the evidence is compelling, though I admit I haven’t seen the counterarguments set out. It reinforces that this kind of research is dangerous, and is likely to do more harm than good. While some might say that Omicron has brought benefits in being a milder variant that has given many countries the confidence to reopen, the fact is we don’t know what would have happened had it not appeared. The Delta wave in a number of countries appeared to be declining before Omicron showed up (see below), despite it being December when respiratory viruses normally take off – though it’s fair to say we don’t know what other variant might have appeared in Omicron’s absence.
Isn’t it time to end the dangerous research?
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Makes the whole situation even more disgusting given that we are at the mercy of crap like this. Countless millions starved to death because of this. I don’t see it as some minor abstraction.
Nor do I. In among the fancy graphs and fines issued to PMs, we rarely discuss the cleaners, van drivers and small business owners ruined by this.
Then there’s the same people now pushing to inject young children. Where are the riots?
Perhaps the anger will come but I am not optimiitic about this.
Nor me. People don’t like to feel like they’ve been duped and prefer to ignore evidence that they have, however strong it is.
True.
Carl Sagan,
Particularly when they have been duped into having something dangerous injected into them – something which they cannot remove.
Look up Dr Bryan Ardis – he has a protocol for the removal of the spike protein.
Wonder how many people would give his protocol a go if they knew how harmful the spike protein injected into them was and if his protocol was successful.
Nor me if I’m honest. Most will rationalise it.
“Isn’t it time to end the dangerous research?”
It’s certainly time to end the lies.
There were pictures, allegedly of the high security bio-lab in Wuhan that showed the freezers they kept their samples in. The seals were broken and massive ice build-up meant the doors couldn’t even be shut properly. Not using kit that would be condemned in a corner shop might be a good place to start?
Why the mass panic by the experts over the original Covid-19 outbreak, particularly in China, if it was just a natural virus?
Why the refusal of those experts to accept reassurance from South Africa if Omicron was just a natural evolution?
Why the ongoing over-zealous concern over new variants?
Jenny Harries et al need to explain why they have always been so concerned about what should have been a minor health problem; and why they want the panic spending to continue.
Where is the examination of the god complex that underlies all of this? From dangerous pathogen research to grand visions for society, why are we so poor at identifying this kind of insanity and dealing with it?
As an example, the announcements from the WEF are clearly driven by megalomania; nothing more strenuous than visiting their website or reading some of their material is needed. Yet they are courted at the highest levels.
Money isn’t the root of all evil but the love of money is.
Truly, these masters of the universe have swallowed the toxic fallacy “ye shall be as gods!“
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
highly immune-evasive SARS-CoV-2
Where and what is the evidence for that?
Is the implication that it is more “immune-evasive” than any other flu virus?
And yet… a lot of people have not contracted CoVid (not ‘vaccinated’ before availability of mRNA therapy and not ‘vaccinated’ after) and for 99% of people infected, their immune system was effective enough to make sure the symptoms were mild to moderate.
You can’t hide the truth forever, as even the BBC and Guardian seem to be realising,
So who shot JFK? Why did Building 7 come down? How many politicians and bureaucrats have been groomed by WEF?
Alas, some truths never see the light of day.
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/29/davos-2020-categorised-list-of-uk-attendees/
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/16/names-and-faces-of-young-global-leaders-in-uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
Experimental gene editing is no more research than experimental assembly of lego bricks: Neither of both enhances our knowledge about the real world (research), both end up creating real-word objects dreamed up by human fancy which would never have existed without it.
That said, the Guardian is UK Pandemic Central and whatever gets published there is supposed to drive the pandemic narrative. A sensible suggestion would be to stop reading the article after the onslaught of highly immune-evasive variants. That was the onslaught because of which we were to be put back into lockdown before Christmas as otherwise, the health system would surely collapse and subsequently, the sky would fall upon us. It didn’t happen. Case closed.
Some observation about the language used here: Onslaught is a melodramatic and presumably, somewhat dated term referring to a so-called charge which is the central element of infantry or cavalary shock tactis: An overwhemling mass (ideally) of attackers is racing towards a line of defenders and overcomes them in an orgy of bloodshed through the momentum of the attack and the weight of numbers. It’s absolutely inappropriate as description for a wave of colds and used here precisely because it is, as per standard Corona narrative tactic.
Highly immune-evasive variants is an old friend and close relative of Nobody is safe until everybody is safe. It’s code language for This is a new virus (which does not discriminate), everybody is susceptible to it and everybody is greatly at risk because of it as the immune system provides cannot protect anyone against it (implied by immune-evasive). More run-of-the-mill Corona narrative.
“the variant might have leaked from a lab.”
Or, as some have been saying for two years, it didn’t “leak” it was deliberately released.
And very probably after it was deliberately “enhanced”.
See Dr,.David Martin’s take on this. And Igor Chudov.
Moderna had patents for the bloody thing ( original covid 19/sars 2 that is) before the bats created it. Lol.
Do you think Moderna should sue for breach of copyright?
I think that was mentioned in Plandemic back in 2020. Ahead of their time.
Whoever released it is probably destined for Schwab’s laser shark tank. Omicron essentially ended Covid-19 (the disease) within a couple of months. They must have been so pissed off, but they still managed to keep up the propaganda and maintain irrational fear in 99% of the population, terrified of a mild cold (even after they had personally experienced how mild it was).
No. I would have been much worse for them, had they not taken their boosters.
And they continue to refer to omicron as ‘covid’ so that people will forget omicron is much milder. Our government asking the Italian government to keep quiet about its relative mildness and positive effects is a dead giveaway.
Odd that the ‘experts’ were so flummoxed when right at the beginning of this, the word on single strand RNA viruses (like Covid) was:
RNA viruses have high mutation rates—up to a million times higher than their hosts—and these high rates are correlated with enhanced virulence and evolvability, traits considered beneficial for viruses.
‘Leaked’
I’m not sure I can believe this story. Is this vague theory being pushed out to support the continuation of the useless “vaccines”?
Hardly, since it is vaccine resistant.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full
I understand little of this, save to conclude that one should stop meddling with things you don’t understand, otherwise you might end up with something like, err, covid.
Apparently, the USA has 336 biolabs in 30 different countries throughout the world.
Plus, they are funding work at many other labs, including gain-of-function work being funded by Fauci through the US taxpayer-funded NIH at Wuhan.
It’s not like we’re very good at safety in our own biolabs either. The 2007 foot and mouth outbreak was traced back to a leak from the Pirbright Institute’s drains.
Of course Omicron came from a lab. It has all come from a lab.
If you are not getting angry now, you should be.
Someone have a word with Fauci, Gates and Schwab. I strongly suspect they know what has gone on
Reminds me of a piece I read somewhere. Where was it? Oh yes. …
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/01/did-omicron-come-from-a-lab/
“The onslaught of highly immune-evasive variants was, for most of us in immunology and virology, unforeseen. We’d come to think of the coronavirus family as being rather more stable – less error-prone in terms of mutations – than many viruses…”
This must be the first Coronavirus that millions of people have received vaccinations for. Could that have anything to do with the unforeseen onslaught of immune-evasive variants and with this coronavirus being less stable? The lab story keeps getting peddled to cover up the weird stuff being caused by the vaccines.
‘We’d come to think of the coronavirus family as being rather more stable – less error-prone in terms of mutations – than many viruses…”
If that is so why are there no vaccines for the 4 coronaviruses that cause 10% of Colds.
A “highly immune-evasive” lab leak that only targets the vaccinated. Amazing!
That or the vaccines are poison and people are suffering the effects of allowing poison to be pumped into them.
I know – some in my family have had Omicron twice and I haven’t had it at all. Odd.
The ‘gain of function’ experimentation is with military purposes in mind. Having created a disease-causing, fast spreading, biological agent, the next step is to fine tune it to be vaccine resistant.
All of it was made in a lab in that sars-cov-2 exists only as a computer generated fiction, the claimed virus doesn’t actually exist anywhere in the natural world, neither do any of the fantasy variants.
As with all virology the process of virus identification is a farce.
And one presumes this sort of “research” is continuing today. Will the next man-made variant be one which will kill everyone?
It puts into perspective the Western obsession with Putin as a danger to the world when this sort of unethical “research” is seemingly allowed to continue.
… and Putin’s obsession with US bio labs.
We are in the middle of World War 3, but I have little idea of who is fighting who.
We are fighting ourselves, the aim is self-annihilation – and we are winning.
I’m surprised this article by The Ethical Skeptic from November 2021 did not get more traction. It’s a long article and not easy to read, but it goes into the lineage of Omicron in some detail. It also explains why the virus affected different parts of the world differently. Worth your time to read it.
https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/11/15/chinas-ccp-concealed-sars-cov-2-presence-in-china-as-far-back-as-march-2018/
Looking at the dates in this article (“The elevated rates of unidentified ‘flu’ in longitude E65-180 nations during 2018/19, matching geographic pathogenic history”) now confirms for me what I have all along suspected, that I had covid19 in the summer of 2019 and contracted it in Charles deGaulle airport – when I had it there was a distinct period when I literally thought that I wouldn’t make it through the night for 3 or 4 nights in a row and hence that explains why I haven’t had what the pandemic was declared for since March 2020. Because I had already had it and have natural immunity.
I would be curious about the author’s view on the (Twitter) Ethical Skeptic’s theory that Omicron’s predecessor predates the Wuhan strain and is a cousin, rather than a descendant. The number of mutations is possible in the wild – but the timeline needs to change.
Are there any US funded bio labs in South Africa? In a discussion about bio labs in Ukraine it was also noted that the US has bio labs in a whole lot of other countries, including South Africa. I don’t remember exactly where I saw it but I’m sure you can search for it.
Made in a Lab???
Surely not!
Well I never!
Yes, it is time to stop the dangerous experiments.
However, some doctors describe Omicron as ‘the vaccine we should have developed’, so if it did come from a lab, deliberately or accidentally, that is a Good Thing.
Regardless of what other variant might have followed Delta, Omicron displaced Delta waves that were still going strong, and therefore saved many lives, as well as getting us to the point where most countries are bored of the pandemic and are back to normal.
So maybe we should be grateful that South Africa was doing dangerous experiments.
It wasn’t the Chinese, unless they thought they were creating a super-killer variant and still haven’t realised that they created a pussy-cat rather than a tiger to kill off the West
‘Omicron displaced Delta waves that were still going strong, and therefore saved many lives’
Unless you are suggesting Omicron be given as a live vaccine to cause disease and transmission, making a vaccine from a deactivated version would have no effect on other variants.
Overall all cause mortality during the last two years is no more than the average. CoVid then killed nobody that wasn’t going to die anyway.
This was suggested earlier – in December 21 there was a paper which in the abstract said – and I quote:
Collectively, our results suggest that the progenitor of Omicron jumped from humans to mice, rapidly accumulated mutations conducive to infecting that host, then jumped back into humans, indicating an inter-species evolutionary trajectory for the Omicron outbreak.
My question would be where are people and mice likely to be in close contact.
Title: Evidence for a mouse origin of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant
‘My question would be where are people and mice likely to be in close contact.’
Disney. There is clearly something weird going on there.
I would have liked a reference for the statement about the Durban lab.