Thread by @1foreverseeking

18 months before 1st Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

Requested $14 million funding from DARPA.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/2…

Also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily.

Papers show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for virus to enter human cells.

DARPA bid was submitted by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance. Team members included Dr Shi Zhenglim, dubbed “bat woman”, as well as US researchers from the University of North Carolina & US Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Centre.

Darpa refused to fund the work, saying: “It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk” & warned the team had not properly considered the dangers of enhancing the virus (gain of function research) or releasing a vaccine by air.

Grant documents show team also had some concerns about the vaccine programme & said they would “conduct educational outreach..so that there is a public understanding of what we are doing & why we are doing it, particularly because of the practice of bat-consumption in the region”

Angus Dalgleish, Prof of Oncology at St Georges, Univ of London, who struggled to get work published showing the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been carrying out “gain of function” work for yrs before the pandemic, said research may have gone ahead even without funding.

Viscount Ridley...who frequently calls for further investigation into what caused pandemic said:
“Peter Daszak & EcoHealth Alliance proposed injecting deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised & ‘batified’ mice & much, much more.”

WHO Covid-19 researcher who wished to remain anonymous said it was alarming grant proposal included plans to enhance the more deadly Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome.
“Scary part is they were making infectious chimeric Mers viruses. These viruses have a fatality rate over 30%".