After being labeled 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 assessment tool – which they described as the most comprehensive yet – to determine the likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of ‘unnatural’ or ‘natural’ origin.
The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic using eleven criteria that analyzed things such as 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 received a score of 68 percent.
Shi Zhengli – dubbed the ‘Bat Lady’ or ‘Bat Woman’ for her work on bat coronaviruses – explored the possibility that Covid could have emerged from her lab in 2020, according to colleagues
Between 2015 and 2023, at least seven U.S. entities provided NIH grant money to laboratories in China that conduct animal testing, totaling $3,306,061
The study said: ‘The origins of (Covid) are controversial. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediate host is lacking.”
But precisely because Covid was given 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 (the findings) is that the likelihood that (Covid) originated in a laboratory is not trivial. and cannot be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.”
In the study, the virus and the pandemic scored the maximum number of points in three categories.
The first was the ‘existence of a biological risk’, which is considered a geopolitical environment from which a biological threat could emerge.
The pandemic created a biological hazard in an area where research into dangerous pathogens was conducted 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 WIV was located just 300 meters from the wet market, believed to be the site of the first Covid cases, and because Chinese researchers experimented with dangerous pathogens under lax protocols.
In the ‘unusual type’ category, Covid also scored a nine. This class was described as virus strains with atypical, rare, newly emerging or outdated characteristics, and also showing signs of gain of function or genetic engineering.
This score was attributed to the virus’s unique characteristics, which 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 insights’ category.
This was defined as ‘suspicious circumstances and other insights identified before the outbreak, during the period of the outbreak or after the outbreak.’
In this area, researchers highlighted the extensive debates surrounding its origins and “a series of unusual actions at the WIV,” including transferring control of the laboratory to the military and removing a large virus database containing 20,000 bat and mouse samples.
In total, out of the maximum 60 points, the Covid virus and the pandemic scored 41 – or 68 percent.
All four characteristics that scientists tried to create in a new virus in a 2018 research proposal match the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid
The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers participating in a 2018 project proposal
The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers included in a 2018 proposal discussing the work scientists need to do as part of a project
Although controversial, the Covid lab leak theory – that the virus emerged from gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded by the US taxpayer through Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former department – has been endorsed by the FBI and other government agencies.
Those who subscribe to the zoonotic theory believe the virus originated in animals and jumped from hosts to humans.
A September 2023 study published in the journal Nature found that a coronavirus strain found in the rare animal pangolin — believed to be of zoonotic origin — was virtually identical to the virus that caused a global pandemic.
The discovery led scientists to theorize that the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 likely passed from pangolins to people with weakened immune systems.
This gave the new virus ample opportunity to mutate and replicate until it reached its full pandemic potential.
However, proponents of lab leaks were recently encouraged after it was revealed that US and Chinese scientists tried to create a Covid-like virus just a year before the pandemic began.
Documents – obtained through FOIA requests in December – detail a plan to “engineer spike proteins” to infect human cells that would then be “inserted into the SARS-Covid backbones” at the WIV in December 2018.
The proposal was made by the now infamous EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that channels U.S. government subsidies 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 creating Covid.
Speaking about the implications of the research, Dr MacIntyre told this website: ‘Policically this (research) is important because we have greater control over the prevention of unnatural outbreaks, many of which are the result of simple human error or inadequate biosecurity.
‘Poor biosafety procedures at bat sampling and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were documented, but laboratory accidents are common around the world.’