“Rare” genome sequencing almost certainly proves that COVID-19 was deliberately created in a Chinese laboratory before leaking to the outside world, American experts say.
According to the Daily Mail, two American experts wrote a damning essay claiming that sequencing of the COVID-19 genome strongly suggests that the virus was produced in a Chinese laboratory.
Dr Stephen Quay and Richard Mueller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, made these statements to The Wall Street Journal amid growing speculation that the coronavirus might have leaked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.
“The most compelling reason for the laboratory leak hypothesis is firmly grounded in science,” said Dr. Quay and Professor Mueller, stating that “COVID-19 has a genetic trail that has never been seen in natural coronavirus.”
Quay and Müller argue that the Wuhan lab was known for conducting “functional enhancement” studies in which scientists “deliberately overloaded viruses to increase mortality.”
COVID-19 features CGG-CGG genome sequencing – one of 36 sequencing patterns. This combination is commonly used by scientists in function enhancement studies, but is otherwise considered extremely “rare”.
Experts say no natural coronavirus like SARS or MERS has ever had a CGG-CGG combination.
“The CGG-CGG combination has never come naturally. This means that the usual method for viruses to acquire new skills, called recombination, does not work here, Quay and Mueller wrote. “A virus simply cannot get a sequence from another virus if that sequence is not present in some other virus.”
In a new essay, Quay and Mueller go on to state that those who believe COVID-19 began with animal-to-human transmission should explain why he chose his least favorite combination: CGG-CGG. Why did he repeat the choices that researchers working in the laboratory would have made?
A couple of experts conclude: “Yes, it could have happened by accident, as a result of mutations. But do you believe it? At the very least, the fact that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, has adopted a rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be a laboratory leak. ”
The expert article comes after media outlets in the West reported last week a “sensational” study claiming that Chinese scientists had created COVID-19 in a Wuhan lab and then tried to cover their tracks with reverse-engineered versions of the virus to it looked as if it came naturally from bats. British professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sorensen claimed they had “primary evidence of retro-engineering in China” for a year, but scholars and major journals ignored them.
Shocking allegations in the study included allegations of “deliberate destruction, hiding or contamination of data” in Chinese laboratories, as well as the silence and disappearance of speakers in the PRC. The magazine article, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, is believed to be causing a stir in the scientific community, as most experts, until recently, flatly denied that COVID-19 originated from anything other than a natural animal-to-human infection.
Analyzing COVID-19 samples last year in an attempt to create a vaccine, Dalglish and Sorensen found “unique fingerprints” in the virus that they say could only have arisen from laboratory manipulation. The study authors say they tried to publish their findings, but they were rejected by major scientific journals, which believed at the time that the virus had naturally passed from bats or other animals to humans.
In recent weeks, the Daily Mail recalls, many of the world’s leading scientists have insisted that work be carried out to determine whether the virus has leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The laboratory leak theory was initially rejected by many in the media and academia.
But the other day, American President Joe Biden ordered the secret services to begin an investigation into whether COVID could be created by humans.
Indirect evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers are known to be experimenting with strains of bat coronavirus similar to the one responsible for COVID-19.
China is insisting that the virus not seep out of the Wuhan laboratory, arguing that the transmission of the virus to humans must have occurred in a “wet market” in Wuhan where live animals were sold.
Largely because of the hostility towards Donald Trump, who from the outset supported the theory of laboratory leaks, the mainstream US media and academics dismissed the possibility, calling it a “failed conspiracy theory.” But reports of three Wuhan lab employees who were seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms back in November 2019 have prompted doubters to reevaluate their views.
Biden rebuked China in his statement on a new intelligence review, calling on allies to help “get China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and provide access to all relevant data and evidence.”
Meanwhile, former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb said that in the spring of 2020, American infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci informed world leaders that the coronavirus may have escaped a laboratory in Wuhan.
American researchers at about the time were still thinking about whether the virus came from a laboratory, and Fauci told health officials that the newly identified strain of coronavirus, according to Gottlieb, “looked unusual.”
Gottlieb says last year Fauci at least believed COVID-19 could have originated from a laboratory.
“I think early on when they looked at the strain, they had suspicions,” Gottlieb recalled Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to American scientists. “And it takes time to do this kind of analysis, and it dispelled some of these suspicions,” he added. And it is also important, Gottlieb said, to look at the virus not only from a scientific point of view: it also needs to be investigated from a national security point of view. “Scientific thinking looks at the virus and its behavior and draws a conclusion,” he said. “The National Security Assessment looks at this, and then at the behavior of the Chinese government, the behavior of the laboratory, other evidence around the laboratory, including infections that we now know to have taken place, and that changes the overall assessment.”
Many experts still believe that the virus was transmitted from the bat to other animal species and then to humans, but the exact origin of COVID-19 remains unproven.
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