Yes, it is Entirely Possible that COVID-19 was Created in a Lab

This article was originally published, by me, on Medium.

This may upset some people, but there are loose connections to suggest that it is at least POSSIBLE that the virus was lab created.

I'll probably upset even more people when I explain those connections, but I'll go ahead and do it anyway for the sake of disseminating what we know.

1

In 2014, the Obama administration placed a moratorium on gain-of-function (GoF) research w/viruses, and specifically, with the SARS virus. The moratorium was issued when 75 scientists, concerned by numerous biosafety lapses at US research facilities, requested the US cease GoF research. You can find more information about US biosafety lapses here: Lapses.

Below is an interesting paragraph found within a National Institutes of Health (NIH) announcement of the moratorium:

During this pause, NIH will not provide new funding for any projects involving these experiments and encourages those currently conducting this type of work - whether federally funded or not - to voluntarily pause their research while the government determines how to proceed.

They did not follow through with their promise not to provide funding for projects involving GoF experiments.

2

The NIH then began funding Gain-of-Function research through --drumroll please -- Wuhan, China. In this study, which came from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they announce the discovery of a new chimeric virus that has new function, comes from bat-derived SARS and does not respond well to "SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities."

Here are some notable quotes from the abstract:

Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.

And this:

Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein.

And this:

On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

If you'll look at the listed researchers, the following were participants: Boyd L Yount, Jr, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Lisa E Gralinski, Jessica A Plante, Rachel L Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge, Eric F Donaldson, Scott H Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne A Marasco, Zhengli-Li Shi, and Ralph S Baric

The two I will focus on have been bolded and I have added links to their professional profiles: Zehngli Shi

Director of Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Xing-Yi Ge

CAS Key Lab of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China

I also urge you to scroll down to where it says "Protein Data Bank" with a link: 2AJF. This link would have been to the DNA profile of the chimeric virus they created:

When you go there, what do you see? This:

It has been temporarily removed as part of our announced 'brownout' period, from November 3rd, 2020 to November 11th, 2020, during which time pages and data served from our legacy systems will not be available.

So, the day of our Presidential election, they "brownout" and remove the DNA profile and say it'll never come back. What does that mean? Well, I won't speculate but it doesn't necessarily put the situation in a "nothing to see here, folks" light, but who knows.

Also - when you put that link into the Wayback Machine, it shows NUMEROUS snapshots of the link, but in every one of the links, it crashes and shows an error I've never seen on WB Machine before, then keeps redirecting until it takes you to another link.

It takes you to a protein uploaded on 9–20–2005. If you take that url and paste it into your browser, it appears to work just fine.

Why are they keeping a protein bank from 2005 but removing one uploaded in 2015? I have no clue, but, how convenient. Like an officer's bodycam deciding not to function when he shoots someone. [insert eyeroll]

4For those that say "well just because two scientists worked with them doesn't mean Wuhan was involved," so I then point you to this treasure trove of studies as part of a project that was created because of the moratorium, and straight from Wuhan, China's lab: Project I | Project II

Study after study in those projects were from Wuhan scientists who were funded --  during the moratorium  -- to the tune of $661,980 and just happened to create, through GoF research, a chimeric, bat-originated SARS-like virus that gained function and was transmissible to human cells.

---

What does all of that mean? I cannot say. But let's summarize what we know: The US created a chimeric virus in 2015 after a moratorium had been put in place to ban that type of research. It was banned because GoF research is risky and increases the risk of a pandemic, especially since the US had too many biosafety lapses.

So the NIH moved funding from the US to a lab in Wuhan, China, after saying they would not. That moratorium was lifted in 2017, more funding was granted in 2014 and 2019 by the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES (NIAID) in association with Ecohealth Alliance.

Who is in charge of NIAID? This man right here:

So was COVID-19 lab-created? No one at this point can know for certain, but it is entirely possible that COVID-19 is the very same thing they created in 2015. Or, it could have been something created thereafter. But, because because of a "brownout" in the protein databank that occurred on election day, we cannot know for certain if they are one-and-the-same.

Was this then released (purposefully or accidentally) by China? It is possible.

Was it released by the US? It is possible.

Is all of this purely coincidental? Was all the research conducted with the sole purpose of helping discover new, potentially deadly viruses so they could preempt the creation of vaccinations or antivirals? It is entirely possible.

But, when someone says outright that there is NO WAY that the virus was "created in a lab," I have to disagree given the totality of evidence to suggest that it could have been.

Given that COVID-19 was possibly created by the US and Chinese governments, it makes the situation we're in seem a bit scarier. This is yet another reason people need to take this pandemic seriously.

That said, who created the virus, when, where, and why it was created doesn't matter much when you are laying in a hospital trying to breathe. It won't matter who created it or where if it mutates into a deadlier strain. But knowing that it was possibly man-made should make EVERYONE pause and re-evaluate how they are dealing with COVID-19.

I do my best to acknowledge when I offer opinion and when something is proven fact. I have linked to every claim I've made and added my thoughts about the meaning of those links but it is on each of us to take facts and make determinations based on those facts, but we simply cannot ignore that this is the reality.

You must draw your own conclusions.