1) Pandemic caused by bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--city 1000 km from nearest wild bats with SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
2) In 2015-2017, scientists and science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was conducting and contemplating research that posed an unacceptable risk of lab accident and pandemic (; ).nature.com/articles/natur… nature.com/articles/natur…
3) In 2017-2018, WIV constructed a novel chimeric SARS-like coronavirus that was able to infect and replicate in human airway cells and that had 10,000x enhanced viral growth and 3x enhanced lethality in mice engineered to display human SARS receptors on airway cells.
4) In 2018, in an NIH grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct more novel chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses, targeting chimeras that replace natural spike gene with novel spike genes encoding spikes that have higher binding affinities to human cells.
5) Also in 2018, in a DARPA grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct novel "consensus" bat SARS-like coronaviruses, and to insert furin cleavage site (FCS) sequences at the spike gene S1-S2 border of bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
6) In 2017-2019, WIV constructed and characterized novel SARS-like coronaviruses at biosafety level 2, a biosafety level patently inadequate for work with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and patently inadequate to contain virus having transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2.
7) In 2019 a novel SARS-like coronavirus having a spike with high binding affinity for human cells, and having an FCS at the spike S1-S2 border--a virus having the specific properties set forth in the 2018 WIV NIH and DARPA grant proposals--emerges on the doorstep of WIV.
8) SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of more than 850 known SARS-like coronaviruses that contains an FCS. This feature does not rule out natural origin, but is more easily--much more easily--explained by lab origin. Especially since insertion of an FCS was explicitly proposed in 2018.
9) The FCS of SARS-CoV-2 has codon usage unusual for bat SARS-related coronaviruses and has an 8-of-8 amino-acid-sequence identity to the known FCS of human ENaCa. These features do not rule out natural origin, but are more easily--much more easily--explained by lab origin.
10) In 2020-present, WIV and its funders/collaborators at EcoHealth Alliance have withheld information, misrepresented facts, and obstructed investigation...even though, if not connected to origin, they easily could have cleared their name though cooperation with investigation.
All statements in all posts are demonstrable facts. Sources for posts 1-2 include the following:
The U.S. House of Representatives has released preliminary spending bills for the 2025 fiscal year...NIH would face...a ban on...gain-of-function…research....The bill also includes a plan…to collapse NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into 15 institutes."
"Among other changes,...ARPA-H, a 2-year-old [slush fund for NIH administrators' cronies] with...current $1.5 billion budget would be cut to $500 million, with the $1 billion distributed across other institutes [that, unlike ARPA-H, fund important research]."
"The bill also includes a ban on funding for GOF research. That term is...used to describe risky experiments on viruses that could make them more likely to cause a pandemic."
"Steve Luby…at Stanford…has concerns about the safety of the experiments the new facility will make possible…Luby, who for 8 years investigated…Nipah virus outbreaks,…says…'if we…get pandemic viruses released, this is a catastrophe for all of us."
Luby: "We should weigh in on this as a society very seriously"
"Colorado State University (CSU) is building...a facility housing two bat species that are natural reservoirs of coronaviruses and other viruses that could trip off a pandemic."
"Ebright said if COVID-19 came from the lab in Wuhan, which he thinks is a high likelihood, 'it came out of that lab because of weaknesses, flaws, in U.S. federal oversight of biosafety and biorisk management.”'"
"Ebright told senators that 'only after there is an acknowledgement that there is a very real possibility... of a lab origin, will there be the political will to impose regulation on this scientific community that has…resisted…regulation for two decades.'"
"The new federal guidelines...have structural conflicts of interest,...Ebright...told National Journal."
"The Pentagon has admitted that it has no idea to what extent it has funded the creation of deadly viruses in an adversarial nation it has identified as its 'top pacing challenge'"
"The report noted...that for "'seven awards, a prime awardee provided funds to a subawardee or contracting research organization in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.'"
"[T]he Inspector General's Office concluded, 'The full extent of DOD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown.'"
"[T]he Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously passed...amendment to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act to close all potential pathways for EcoHealth Alliance to receive further federal defense funding."
"The move comes after NIH principal deputy director…Tabak admitted during a congressional hearing…that EcoHealth Alliance used federal funding to conduct gain-of-function research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
"The experiments, which resulted in far more infectious versions of the naturally occurring bat coronavirus, caused the COVID-19 outbreak, some virologists say."
"The evidence continues to mount that the most likely source of…source of the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,…was…gain-of-function research that was funded, at least in part, with our own tax dollars."
"While much of the world has only recently woken up to this reality, one man, Dr. Richard Ebright, has been warning us for 20 years that this day was coming."
"For 20 years, his warnings have largely been ignored, primarily thanks to Dr. Anthony Fauci."
"To most Americans, even those who follow the news closely, Fauci was helicoptered into their consciousness out of total obscurity in early 2020, when he became the public face of the government’s pandemic response."