Now the New York Times strongly raises the hypothesis that the Sars-Cov-2 virus it was created in the laboratory. And he launches an even more serious accusation: that that laboratory created the virus as part of a research project in which American organizations funded by the United States government collaborated. This is stated by the Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chanwho works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard and wrote the book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. Chan says a growing body of evidence suggests the virus “leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, China. If this were the case – notes Chan – it would be the most damaging accident in the history of science” (the pandemic has caused at least 25 million deaths). Here is the main evidence indicated by Chan:
1. The pandemic began in Wuhan, where the most important research laboratory on viruses similar to Sars was located. Viruses similar to Covid have been found in a mine in Yunnan province and in a cave in Laos, but while there is no evidence that these viruses circulated in humans in those areas or in other Chinese cities before the infections in Wuhan , it is known that the Wuhan laboratory was working on samples of these viruses collected in Yunnan.
2. In 2018 the Wuhan laboratory, in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance (an American scientific organization that was funded with 80 million dollars by the US government) and University of North Carolina epidemiologist Ralph Barichad developed a research project, called Defuse, in which he planned to create viruses similar to Sars-Cov-2. In particular, he suggested building viruses in the laboratory with a very rare type of spike protein (the “harpoon” that allows the virus to enter the human body and be particularly infectious) which is cut by the cellular enzyme furin and has so far been found only in the Covid virus (and in no other virus in nature).
Chan underlines the peculiarity that: “A never-before-seen SARS-like virus with a newly introduced furin cleavage site matching the description in the Wuhan Institute’s Defuse proposal caused an epidemic in Wuhan less than two years after it was written of the proposal.” Furthermore, it is not known which viruses the Wuhan laboratory actually worked on: the database with 22 thousand samples of these types of viruses published in 2019 was closed in the autumn of that year without the US collaborators in Wuhan being able to access it. Not only that: when Wuhan scientists published their fundamental paper on Covid at the beginning of the pandemic they made no mention of its particular furin-cut spike protein, despite it being a characteristic they had already been studying for some time: an anomalous circumstance for science and particularly suspicious according to Chan.
3. The safety levels of the Wuhan laboratory (i.e. measures to avoid accidental release of viruses) were much lower than those required by the safety standards of American research facilities. Even from those who collaborated with Wuhan. Professor Baric had commented on one of the first drafts of the Defuse project specifying that the safety levels foreseen for the experiments were too low.
4. There is no substantial evidence to say that the spill-over, i.e. the contagion from another animal species to humans, occurred in a market in Wuhan, as claimed by the Chinese. “This bias in early case finding meant that cases unrelated to the market or located far from it were most likely missed. To make matters worse, Chinese authorities blocked the reporting of the first cases unrelated to the market and, citing biosafety precautions, ordered the destruction of patient samples on January 3, 2020, making it nearly impossible to get a full picture of the first cases of COVID-19. Information on dozens of first cases in November and December 2019 remains inaccessible» writes Chan, according to whom the epidemic at the Wuhan market came after the virus had escaped from the laboratory. Also because all the animals infected with Covid that we know of got it from humans, and not vice versa.
All this suggests that the hypothesis of a virus built in the laboratory is the most probable. Chan demands that the United States investigate it thoroughly. And he underlines a particularly disturbing aspect: «Whether the pandemic began on a laboratory bench or in a market stall, It is undeniable that US federal funding helped create an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to the research that has empowered them.” In fact, it is a circumstance also recognized by the American government, given that the Biden administration canceled all current and future funding for EcoHealth in May, precisely because of the excessively risky experiments conducted in Wuhan. Now it is essential, concludes Chan, that the United States is committed to preventing research from being carried out – even abroad – in such a dangerous way and that any responsibility for the origin of the pandemic is recognised. Only in this way can it be avoided from happening again.
He spoke about the issue today in a hearing in the House Anthony Fauci, the 83-year-old Italian American immunologist who led the US response to Covid (he was head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until 2022). Republicans have long accused him of hiding American responsibility in the pandemic. But despite having spent the last 15 months analyzing all his communications, so far they have not found anything that implicates him directly. «The accusation that I tried to cover up the hypothesis that the virus could have arisen from a mutation created in the laboratory is false. The opposite is true: in an email sent on February 12, 2020 I asked to clarify and report to the relevant authorities” Fauci told the Chamber. This does not exclude that – as explained by the New York Times — there may be responsibilities of other American research institutions.
