The case that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, leaked from a Chinese lab seems, on first sight, to be robust.
After all, it first appeared in close proximity to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a major lab that was carrying out research on just such viruses.
Furthermore, it’s plain that the virus is not of natural origin.
The Chinese authorities have confirmed that none of the animal reservoirs that a natural spillover event would require have been found, either in the Huanan wet market in Wuhan or elsewhere, despite wide and extensive testing.
The virus was also already well-adapted to humans in its earliest recorded cases, with no signs of the early genetic diversity that such adaptation would produce.
In addition, the virus is unusually contagious by virtue of having, among other things, a furin cleavage site. This feature has not been seen in SARS-like viruses before, but is often added by scientists in the lab to increase infectiousness.
So, it’s clearly a lab-engineered virus, and it first emerged in a city with a major lab working on such viruses. The conclusion seems inescapable: the virus leaked from the lab, as viruses do from time to time.
There’s just one problem with this theory: there is no real evidence to support it. After more than three years, no hard evidence has appeared that the virus escaped from the WIV.
There is no evidence, for instance, that the WIV held samples of SARS-CoV-2 or had been conducting experiments which would have led to its creation.
The virus known to be most similar to it is (or was at the time) RaTG13. This we know, however, because the WIV team themselves told us about it in their initial paper of January 23rd 2020, where they stated they had a sample of it and compared the two virus genomes.
Importantly, no published paper exists in which RaTG13 was reported to be being manipulated in the WIV. Furthermore, nobody, including from the U.S. Intelligence Community, has claimed to have evidence researchers were carrying out such work there.
There was, in 2015, a paper involving WIV researchers that detailed the addition of a furin cleavage site to a SARS-like virus. However, the work was done in the U.S., and the virus (SL-SHC014-MA15) was very different to SARS-CoV-2, by 5,000 nucleotides, which is around 15%.
So, there is no direct evidence the WIV was working on SARS-CoV-2 or a precursor virus. How, then, do lab leak proponents build their case? Largely by pointing to the alleged tell-tale behaviour of leading WIV researcher Dr. Shi Zhengli.
Matt Ridley and Alina Chan, for example, argue that Shi’s failure to disclose in early 2020 the link between RaTG13 and a severe pneumonia in six miners in Mojiang in 2013 is highly suspicious. However, it’s possible it was just overlooked. After all, Shi and her team were not slow to publish the genome of RaTG13 alongside that of SARS-CoV-2 and draw attention to their similarity, doing so on January 23rd 2020. Given the constraints of the authoritarian secrecy of the Chinese state, there is no sign they were trying to hide anything specifically about RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2.
It’s also been claimed that the first thing Shi did on December 30th 2019, on learning about the virus, was “to alter WIV computer databases of novel coronaviruses used by the world’s virologists for research to make it more difficult to search for which coronaviruses she had in her building”. This appears to be a reference to the altering of ‘key words’ in the WIV database on or before December 30th. The reason this was done is unclear, but it should be noted that the database had already been inaccessible to the public for months by that point. Whatever the explanation, it’s relevant that shortly afterwards Shi published her paper setting out how closely related SARS-CoV-2 is to one of the samples held in her laboratory, so again, she does not appear to be hiding anything.
The WIV did take its virus database offline on September 12th 2019. The Chinese later said this was due to hacking attempts – which if true raises the question of who was hacking it and why. In the 2022 Covid origins report from the U.S. Senate, the U.S. said the removal of the database was linked to a political inspection of some kind – which could be connected with a hacking attempt. Either way, this occurred months before the pandemic and there’s no evidence the Chinese took the action because they were aware of a virus having escaped or anything like that.
In fact, there’s no evidence the Chinese were aware of the outbreak at all before December. U.S. intelligence has stated it does not have evidence the Chinese were aware of it before then, and this is consistent with how the Chinese themselves behaved.
After all, if the Chinese authorities knew a highly infectious engineered virus from their lab was on the loose, why did they spend weeks in January not taking any countermeasures, while investigating whether it spread between humans?
And why did Shi Zhengli publish the virus genome alongside the RaTG13 genome and point out there was no evidence of a recombination event in SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., there was no indication it had been produced naturally from RaTG13 combining in a host with another virus), if she knew that they had in fact created the virus from RaTG13 in their lab?
It’s been claimed that the WIV shut down for two weeks in October, the implication being that this could be the leak event. However, the claim is based only on an unpublished private analysis of mobile phone use that has never been further corroborated. It was not mentioned in the Senate Covid origins report.
The Senate report did list what it claimed was evidence of safety issues at the WIV. However, the details are vague, and the report also makes clear that all of the information included was already in the public domain.
Significantly, a Western researcher, Dr. Danielle Anderson, has said she was working at the WIV during the period in question, up to November 2019, and did not witness or hear about any major concerns or interventions relating to safety or a possible leak.
So, the problem with the lab leak theory can be summarised as follows: there is no evidence the WIV was working on SARS-CoV-2 or a precursor to it, and it’s clear the Chinese did not behave in December and January as you would expect if they already knew a highly infectious engineered virus from their lab was on the loose. Pointing the finger at the behaviour of Dr. Shi Zhengli in the early weeks as supposedly suspicious backfires because it is clear that she swiftly published the virus genome alongside that of RaTG13 and drew attention to the similarities and the fact that it is unlikely the novel virus emerged naturally from the sampled virus.
I won’t say the theory is certainly false. Maybe WIV researchers actually were undertaking these experiments but for some reason had failed to record them anywhere. And maybe there are understandable reasons they would let the virus rip for a few weeks while pretending not to know it was spreading, as well as reasons they would choose to be transparent about the virus’s close relationship with a sample they held and the evidence it did not emerge naturally from it.
But I can’t think of any.
So where did this engineered virus come from, and why did it first appear in Wuhan?
As I have written previously, a major clue may be the fact that multiple U.S. intelligence sources have stated they were following the outbreak in China from November 2019. This is despite China not being aware of the outbreak at that point (U.S. intelligence has even said as much), and there being no detectable signal of such an outbreak.
The evidence above against a WIV lab leak further adds to the case that the Chinese may have had nothing to do with this engineered virus. It’s becoming increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that the people responsible for the virus may be the same ones who already knew it was there.
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Did it come from a lab leak? A wet market?
Whatever…
It seems ‘this virus’ wasn’t a major threat to most people, as originally admitted by the WHO…
So how did we end up with this insane situation, with people locked down, masked/muzzled up, under surveillance, and with needles stuck in their arm every few months?
Will Jones notes “The virus was also already well-adapted to humans in its earliest recorded cases…”
So why was it cast as a ‘novel’ virus, i.e.
A novel virus sounds so much more scary though, a la The Simpsons in 2010: “A new disease, no-one’s immune!”
Yep, as foreseen by The Simpsons, it was a ‘created phony crisis’.
There have been reports that the patent for the viral DNA is held by the US DoD, you can also see why the presence of US biolabs in Ukraine got the attention of the Russians.
Whatever has been happening, and there is also Fauci/Daszak funding evidence, it’s all horribly murky and unpleasant.
This virus has no DNA, it is an RNA virus.
True
Doesn’t Moderna have a patent on it going way back as well?
Yes it’s murky alright but why hasn’t China kicked off if wasn’t them wot dun it ?
And why did they have all of those obviously fake propaganda videos early on of people standing at the bus stop then face-planting the ground?
Indeed. It was a double and even triple bluff on their part.
Obvious question, but if this was a Chinese operation, what have they gained from the last three years? I’d say, absolutley nothing.
Yes, obviously fake, but also easy to fake.
They were good enough to have the entire world crapping it’s pants.
Did you crap your pants?
could be paid by d o d
The main problem I have with this line of argument is that, by making reference to published papers and public statements. it presupposes that the activities of these labs is transparent.
Isn’t that a pretty naive assumption?
The claim that China didn’t act as if it knew a deadly engineered virus had been leaked can be made of every country as a whole.
Similarly the insinuation that a devious group of people within a country (e.g. some US Intelligence agency) were behind it all, could be made of any group in the US, China anywhere.
In terms of motives, one could concoct a rational argument for any number of countries and/or interest groups.
I’m afraid I remain completely in the dark about this.
But most importantly – if it was a bio-weapon, it was a pretty shit one.
Which kind of bio-weapon makes it easier to control how many are killed, who they are and over what period: a respiratory virus or something injected into largely-willing, or at least compliant, arms?
It depends what aspect was being tested. If you are testing the guidance system of guided munitions, they don’t need to carry a warhead.
“But most importantly – if it was a bio-weapon, it was a pretty shit one.”
True. It was, however, apparently subtle enough to get a higher “score” globally in terms of deaths than the original SARS, which was way too “hot” and didn’t know how to be subtle, and was thus easy to contain. It was used to trick the West into collateral social, economic, physical, and psychological self-destruction in the vain hopes of trying to contain it. And of course, it ultimately paved the way for the real bioweapon, the mRNA jabs, which would not have been launched otherwise. And the results of that? Birthrates are down and deaths are still up even three years later.
So it was indeed a rather crappy bioweapon by itself, but combined with the right social constructions, it was actually quite effective. It was literally the world’s first socially constructed pandemic. (Though 1918 was partially socially constructed as well.)
Very well put.
Thanks 🙂
“But most importantly – if it was a bio-weapon, it was a pretty shit one.”
However, as a gateway to a media propoganda campaign the like of which the world has never before witnessed some might argue it was a great success.
If the purpose was to steal billions of taxpayers money in order to pay for the real bio-weapons, the “vaccines,” some might argue it worked a treat and the “vaccines” are now steadily maiming and killing as intended. And we paid for our own destruction!
The whole thing, “virus” and “vaccine” is a US DoD operation.
Anyone who really wants to understand what’s going on needs to read Sasha Latypova and Katherine Watts substacks.
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/
Re ‘there is no evidence the WIV was working on SARS-CoV-2 or a precursor to it’
There is in fact massive and fully established evidence that the Wuhan Institute had been working on laboratory altered bat viruses, including gain of function, for years.
One such project from 2016 was entitled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” and made use of humanised mice. This type of research continued through to 2020 (and possibly beyond) and any of these adjusted viruses could of course have been SARS-CoV-2.
The US Government introduced a ban on gain of function research in 2014. However the head of the National Health Institute Anthony Fauci chose to ignore and bypass this law by channeling funding to the Wuhan Institute via the private Eco Health Alliance.
This organisation was led by Peter Daszak, who in other guises was also central to the early vehement denials of the emergent lab leak theories – alongside Fauci himself. Both individuals and the semi-clandestine organisations involved had long-standing close connections with China.
All the above info can be found in this comprehensive article:
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/
As is well known Anthony Fauci then went on to become one of the world’s most vehement proponents of the CCP instigated brutal and tyrannical responses to COVID, including mass house arrest (lockdowns), school and business closures, mask and vaccine mandates etc.
On the other hand the anti-communist and relatively libertarian Donald Trump put up considerable resistance to these draconian measures.
So the overall conclusion from the above is not that ‘America’ was responsible for the creation of the novel coronavirus, and certainly not in the secret service / military instigated bio-warfare sense hinted at in Will Jones’ article;
But rather that the virus almost certainly leaked from a Chinese state run laboratory, and that CCP sympathetic elements in the West were willing to illegally help fund this highly dangerous research.
And more importantly that a communist-style totalitarian ideology (now mainly based on ultra-health and environmentalism rather than old school class Marxism) has spread so widely across the world that the Chinese Communist Party was able to orchestrate one of the greatest suspensions of basic liberties, and concomitant economic and health catastrophes, in history.
In Feb 2020 Shi Zhengli stated that she had sequenced RaTG13 from a bat dropping sample stored in her lab and that this was the closest match to Sars-CoV-2. What she failed to say at the time and had to admit to later was that RaTG13 was actually discovered in 2013 and had been renamed to try to hide its true origins.
More important is that statement that RaTG13 was sequenced from bat dropping samples in 2020, however the raw DNA contained none of the extra bacterial DNA you would expect to find from that. This sample was clearly taken from live bats or cultured cells, indicating that these had been kept alive in her lab between 2013 and 2020. However this virus got to infect humans Shi’s fingerprints are all over it.
Thanks for that additional valuable info and indicative evidence – all very suspicious.
A quick look at the NIAID grant you link to is to EcoHealth Alliance and is staged over 5 years starting in 2014. Work to be carried out at Wuhan and UNC. They have been doing GoF research non stop for about ten years.
Its entirely possible that Covid is a US invention and it surfacing in Wuhan was a US military/intelligence operation. Its obvious that the people who are the creators of the whole viral gain of function area of research are in the US. The US was funding such work, originally in its own universities, and then in China (and probably elsewhere in the world) too, via shadowy ‘research foundations’. There have been outbreaks of mysterious respiratory type illnesses in the US prior to 2020, which could indicate lab leaks there too. Equally we know the World Military Games were held in Wuhan in October 2019. How easy would it have been for a US intelligence team to attend under cover of being athletes and release covid? A wonderful seeding target – large crowds of people from all over China, and the world. And where better to do it than somewhere where you know the Chinese are definitely doing their own research into SARS like viruses, so when it surfaces there everyone will say ‘Ah ha! It must have escaped from the virus lab just down the road!’. It would be in many ways the perfect bio-weapon operation. You know the Chinese won’t be open about it because they’ll think it was their lab that released it, so they’ll cover up everything for you.
Is the above true? Who knows? If it is we’ll never find out because the US will lie about it as much as the Chinese will have done if they were the cause.
What we can say is that even if the lab leak theory is true, the US is up to its neck in it all anyway, in that it was funding exactly the sort of research that could have created covid-19, and did fund similar work in Wuhan via the Ecohealth Alliance, led by Peter Dazsak. An organisation that will undoubtedly be monitored by the CIA, if not actively run by them. Put it this way – the US is involved whether its lab leak or not. The Chinese theoretically could be the victims here, of a covert US operation to frame them as the creators and releasers of Covid-19. The US are involved either as solely responsible, or as the funders of the work that created it, in defiance of a ban on such work in the US. I suppose one has to consider the possibility the Chinese released it themselves, and its all their fault, however doing so in the very place you have your own virus research lab is not where one would think such an operation would be located.
Occams Razor says that, given everything we know, the US Deep State funded work on viral gain of function in Wuhan because they had been banned from doing so on US soil. The Chinese virus labs are notoriously sloppy and probably released the virus accidentally.
The “lab leak theory” is actually a conflation of 4 theories: 1) the virus was engineered in a lab 2) that lab was WIV 3) it was released from that lab, and 4) the release was accidental. Part 1 is likely based on the structure of the virus, Parts 2 and 3 are plausible but hard to prove due to obfuscation by all parties involved. Part 4 is most concerning, as it raises questions about whether COVID was an act of biological warfare, who may have initiated that act, and who might have been the intended target.
For part 4 who may have initiated that act? If you accept it may have been released intentionally then I would just say follow the money
A virus that initially was significantly more dangerous to men, the old and economically inactive.
Hmmm.
Who might fancy that?
interesting argument posed here.
Nice work, Will. I came to the same conclusion a few weeks back. I figure this thing has at least three levels to it. We passed the first level – Zoonotic Origin, and the second level – WIV lab leak, now we’re onto the third level.
Anyone have suggestions or leads on where to go now?
The plot thickens, then thins, then thickens, then thins once again. As Michael P. Senger wrote in his book Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down The World, the idea of a lab leak or bioweapon was essentially a double bluff by the CCP to scare the world into imposing lockdowns and the damage that followed. Thus, the “Scooby Doo” narrative is basically controlled opposition.
I still think it was possible that it was a lab leak (or possibly even a deliberate release), perhaps via viral clones, or not, but that as viruses go, it really wasn’t all that special. At worst, a super flu of sorts with a high age gradient, and not even remotely close to being an existential threat. Had it not been for the panic, the lockdowns and closures, the antisocial distancing, the perversion of medicine and denial of effective early treatment and prophylaxis, and censorship, the death toll would have been well within the bounds of mild to moderate flu pandemics historically (1899-1892, 1936, 1957-1958, 1968-1969, 1977-1978, 1992-1994, 2009-2010). Note that the 1969 Woodstock festival occurred in the middle of one of these pandemics.
If anything, the real bioweapon is the mRNA jabs, which China refuses to use themselves (except in Hong Kong and Macau). And fentanyl from China as well, at least in the USA. Never get high on your own supply, right?
True enough there is no evidence of a lab leak, but from whom would that evidence come? The Chinese Government, Western intelligence agencies, Western Governments, the WHO?
And would they provide evidence if they had it?
Indeed absence of evidence is not proof of the leak, but nor is it proof the evidence doesn’t exist.
There is no independent way of investigating, but there is every reason to consider a lab leak as highly likely, with a weaker likelihood it was a deliberate release.
Will Jones says there is no evidence of a lab leak (deliberate or accidental), but there has been no credible investigation, the Chinese won’t allow it. The Americans could thoroughly investigate their own organisations, but they have not done that yet either. Maybe the Republicans taking over the House will make a difference. I’m not holding my breath.
In they end they didn’t need a virus. They just said there was a new virus with the same symptoms as a cold or flu and people could be easily brainwashed into believing it.
Let’s not forget the fake PCR test used to ramp up cases where there where no symptoms. Let’s not forget the British Government’s definition of a Covid death was “death from any cause within 28 days of a positive test”.
If the virus was real you would hardly need to fake tests and deaths.
Fake test + fake death = fake virus.
Let’s no forget a British Governments full of fake Conservatives.
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Fascinating and pertinent article by Will. With his previous recent four articles, he’s building a considerable body of work on the origins of the bug.
I’m reminded by a quote from the naval historian, Sir John Knox Laughton, concerning the myths and legends surrounding the 1588 Spanish Armada campaign:
Of the many other myths which have been foisted on to the true history of the campaign, it is unnecessary to speak. The first test of their truth ought to be an examination of the evidence on which they are based. It will be found that many of them rest on no evidence at all …
Given that the virus was certainly circulating world-wide many weeks and even months before it was spotted in Wuhan, I see no reason here to conclude it actually emerged or originated in Wuhan. Odd that it was spotted in Wuhan though – almost as if this piece of ‘evidence’ was engineered.
Is there any evidence that it emerged in Wuhan? About the only reason I can think of is that the virus, lab-engineered as it certainly was, must have come from a lab, and the WIV is presumably one of the labs that could have done the work. I don’t know how many other labs worldwide would have such a capability? The wiping of the virus database is as uncorroborated evidence effectively worthless.
So that’s about it: the virus is engineered and the WIV was capable of doing such work. Entirely unsatisfactory basis on which to conclude WIV is to blame.
I am beginning to think that the BTL commentators on here who have suggested a US lab-leak source may have a point.
Perhaps more importantly, it seems increasingly likely that just about all the opprobrium poured on China for its actions during the emergence of the virus may be unjustified. We need to think about that.
Can you please explain BTL?
Sorry – Below The Line. ATL is Above the line.
I had to look up what these things are, and… I still don’t understand, but thank you anyway.
I’m probably going to get shot down for this but it is just a question. The first official UK cases were early 2020, hospitals begin to fill shortly after, 44000 peak excess deaths in April tailing off by July. If the virus was world wide months earlier then why no excess deaths months earlier?
Along with Midazolam Matt’s heavy care home influence, John Dee on substack has been posting on this (his ‘Trends in Causality England and Wales’ series) – the peak is w/e 10th April across not just respiratory illnesses but across 8 ICD coding ‘chapters’ (including cardiac, genitourinary & mental health). He makes this telling comment:
Such a broad spectrum of death is precisely what I would expect if clinically vulnerable folk in hospital beds were subject to dangerous discharge en masse and/or were placed on end-of-life care pathways that quickly cleared beds for the computer predicted explosion of severe COVID cases that never came.
https://jdee.substack.com/p/trends-in-causality-for-england-and-b8f
So the story is Sars-2 was created in a lab in US or China. Intentionally released probably November 2020 close to the Wuhan lab to blame the Chinese. Monitored by the US before Chinese authorities even knew about it. Fits Event 201 and Bill Gates investments in BioNTech.
There’s also another possibility. I’ve posted the information previously and I apologise if it’s overkill and people are fed up of seeing it.
https://scoopsmcgoo.substack.com/p/pierre-poilievre-must-get-us-the
The writer suggests there was some collusion between Winnipeg labs, Canada and China.
There are several highlighted links in the timeframe in the article.
Expecting to find any evidence of wrongdoing from within the CCP is akin to seeing Father Christmas coming down your chimney
The demise of the US$ as the World’s reserve currency has been on the wall for some time. It is known that the Pentagon has indulged in ‘Economic War Games’. What lengths would elements in the US not go to to ‘save’ the role of the $ – even to delay the inevitable. Given the decades long nefarious US role in promoting/provoking the war in Ukriaine it would not be a surprise the a deliberate release of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan by the US was part of such a $ saving strategy. The bat virus research activity of the Wuhan lab (also promoted and aided by the US) would, of course, provide the necessary cover. ??
If it was created in a laboratory, then it was released from a laboratory. My money is on it being created at the University of North Carolina.
If it didn’t escape from the WIV, but did escape/was let free from a US lab, it would certainly explain the very odd lack of US sanctions against China, as well as the guilty US finger pointing.