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Boston University CREATING New Covid Strain With 80% Death Rate – Echoing Dangerous Experiments Feared Might Have Started a Pandemic
- Researchers added Omicron’s spike protein to the original Covid strain
- The protein makes it highly contagious, meaning the new virus is doubly deadly
- 80% percent of mice died from the lab-created strain at Boston University
- The investigation has been called ‘dangerously reckless’ and ‘very stupid’
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US researchers have developed a new deadly strain of Covid in a lab — echoing the kind of experiments many fear the pandemic has begun.
The mutant variant — a hybrid of Omicron and the original Wuhan virus — killed 80 percent of the mice infected with it at Boston University.
However, when a similar group of rodents were exposed to the standard Omicron strain, they all survived and experienced only “mild” symptoms.
The scientists also infected human cells with the hybrid variant and found that it was five times more infectious than Omicron. This suggests that the man-made virus may be the most contagious form yet.
It will no doubt surprise many Americans that such experiments are continuing in the US, despite concerns that similar studies may have led to the global Covid outbreak.
Covid first started to spread from a wet market in Wuhan, China, about eight miles from a virology lab that manipulated bat coronaviruses.
Chinese scientists were found to have wiped crucial databases and suppressed independent research into the lab’s links to the pandemic.
Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories is one of 13 biosafety level 4 labs in the US
These labs can carry out the most dangerous types of research, dealing with highly contagious viruses such as Covid and Ebola
80 percent of the mice died from the new man-made Covid strain, while none died from the milder Omicron variant alone, researchers at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories found.
In the new ones Research, That hasn’t been peer-reviewed, a team of researchers from Boston and Florida extracted Omicron’s spike protein — the unique structure that binds to and penetrates human cells.
It has always been there, but it has evolved more over time. Omicron has dozens of mutations in its spike protein that made it so infectious.
Researchers attached Omicron’s spike protein to the original wild-type strain that first emerged in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic.
The researchers looked at how mice fared under the new hybrid strain compared to the original Omicron variant.
In the paper, they wrote, “In … mice, Omicron causes a mild, non-fatal infection, but the Omicron S-carrying virus causes severe disease with an 80 percent fatality rate.”
They said it signaled that while the spike protein is responsible for infectivity, changes in other parts of the structure determine its lethality.
The scientists also looked at the effect of the different strains on human lung cells grown in the lab.
They found that the original Covid strain produced the high levels of infectious virus particles, and the new hybrid strain produced five times more infectious particles than Omicron.
The scientists admit that the hybrid virus is unlikely to be as deadly in real humans as it is in mice.
This is because they do not have an identical immune response, as most of the same genes are used differently in mice and humans.
The Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories lab is one of 13 biosafety level 4 labs in the US.
These are laboratories authorized to treat the most dangerous pathogens.
Others include labs in Texas, Atlanta, and Manhattan.
Experiments in these labs often tinker with animal viruses to advance treatments and vaccines that can be used in a future outbreak.