After being denounced as a conspiracy for years, the Covid lab leak hypothesis is now considered the most likely origin of the virus, according to a new analysis.
Researchers from Australia and Arizona used a risk analysis tool – which they described as the most comprehensive yet – to determine the chances that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of ‘unnatural’ or ‘natural’ origin.
The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic with 11 criteria that analyzed things like the rarity of a virus, the timing of a pandemic, the infected population, the spread of a virus and the unexpected symptoms of a virus.
Based on the nature of Covid, researchers assigned a score to each category — less than 50 percent meant the pandemic would be classified as a natural outbreak, but 50 percent or more would mean the pandemic was an unnatural outbreak.
Covid got a score of 68 percent.
Shi Zhengli – dubbed the ‘Bat Lady’ or ‘Bat Woman’ for her work on the bat coronavirus – investigated the possibility that Covid could have emerged from her lab back in 2020, according to colleagues
Between 2015 and 2023, at least seven U.S. entities provided NIH grant money to laboratories in China that conducted animal experiments, totaling $3,306,061
The study said: ‘The origin of (Covid) is disputed. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediate animal host is lacking.’
But just because Covid got a higher score, the researchers said, “the risk assessment cannot prove the origin of (Covid), but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.”
Co-author Dr. Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity at the University of New South Wales, told DailyMail.com: ‘The key point (of the findings) is that the likelihood of (Covid) originating in a laboratory is non-trivial and cannot be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.’
In the study, the virus and the pandemic achieved the maximum number of points in three categories.
The first was the ‘existence of a biological risk’, which is considered to be a geopolitical environment from which a biological threat could originate.
With the pandemic, a biological risk was present in an area where dangerous pathogens were being researched and where poor laboratory security could allow a pathogen to be released.
Covid scored nine out of nine.
Researchers said the score was high because the WIV was located just 1,000 feet from the wet market believed to have been the site of the first cases of Covid, and because Chinese researchers were experimenting with dangerous pathogens under lax protocols.
In the ‘unusual strain’ category, Covid also scored a nine out of nine. This class was described as viral strains with atypical, rare, newly emerging or obsolete characteristics, as well as showing evidence of gain-of-function or genetic engineering.
This score was attributed to the virus’ unique properties that allowed it to evade the immune system and be adept at infecting humans and mutating.
Finally, Covid scored the maximum nine out of nine points in the ‘special insight’ category.
This was defined as “suspicious circumstances and other insights identified before the outbreak, during the period of outbreak or after the outbreak.”
In this area, researchers highlighted the extensive debates surrounding the origins and ‘a series of unusual actions by WIV’, including handing over control of the laboratory to the military and removing a large virus database containing 20,000 samples from bats and mice.
Overall, the Covid virus and the pandemic scored 41 out of a maximum of 60 points – or 68 percent.
All four characteristics that researchers tried to create in a new virus in a 2018 research proposal match the features of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid
The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers included in a 2018 project proposal
The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers included in a 2018 proposal talking about work to be done by researchers as part of a project
Although controversial, the Covid lab theory – that the virus was borne out of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, bankrolled by the US taxpayer through Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former department – has been approved by the FBI and other government agencies.
Those who subscribe to the zoonotic theory believe that the virus originated in animals and jumped from the host to humans.
A September 2023 study published in the journal Nature found that a strain of coronavirus found in the rare animal pangolin – believed to be of zoonotic origin – was almost identical to the virus that triggered a worldwide pandemic.
The discovery led the researchers to theorize that the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 likely jumped from pangolins to immunocompromised humans.
This gave the new virus ample opportunity to mutate and replicate until it reached its full pandemic potential.
However, supporters of lab leaks were recently emboldened after it was revealed that American and Chinese scientists were seeking to create a Covid-like virus just a year before the pandemic began.
Records – obtained by FOIA requests in December – laid out a plan to ‘engineer spike proteins’ to infect human cells, which would then be ‘inserted into the SARS-Covid backbone’ at WIV in December 2018.
The proposal was made by the now infamous EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was rejected by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans in the proposal served as a ‘blueprint’ for how to create Covid.
Dr. MacIntyre told this website of the study’s implications: ‘For policy, this (study) is important because we have more control over preventing unnatural outbreaks, many of which are due to simple human error or inadequate biosecurity.
“Poor biosafety procedures in bat sampling and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were documented, but laboratory accidents are common worldwide.”
