Lab leak glitterati
Germans vs Brits vs Yankees and populism vs elites
Dr Raszek on Congressional lab leak report vs my book
Dr Raszek's book review will follow, but he commented:
In the end, it was well written, in my opinion. It starts a bit confusing, but I think the author purposefully wanted to build up the mystery that the book solves.
A YouTube commenter: The title gives that book away as unscientific garbage.
I read the book, and I can tell you that all the science I studied prior to the book and what the book used were accurate to my standards. The book is written for lay audience, not scientists but I couldn't find any holes in the science that was used.
The book's subtitle causes a jingoistic or conspiratorial reaction, but professional virologists get it.
British virologist on a US lab origin
Virologist Stuart Neil from King’s College in London summarized the US lab origin debate.
Like most professional virologists, Neil has moved from Twitter to Bluesky. His fellow virologist,
said Twitter these days looks like the aftermath of a Civil War battlefield.The lab leak Civil War started years ago, with Neil and Richard Ebright engaged in epic Twitter battles about Shi Zhengli’s engineering capabilities in Wuhan.
Ebright never responded to Neil’s wicked logic question. In biological history's biggest own goal, we learned that Shi cannot engineer SARS2 due to her public record experiments, which Tony Fauci and NIAID partially funded.
Christian Drosten of Germany, James LeDuc of UTMB-Galveston, and Ralph Baric of UNC have since confirmed that Shi’s reverse genetic system couldn’t have created SARS2. Shi’s Vero (monkey) cell would have immediately deleted the furin cleavage site. As Neil noted above, Shi did not possess a molecular clone, which was required for engineering SARS2. According to Baric’s testimony, Shi’s cloning technology was inferior to his.
Fallout from Drosten’s WHO presentation
Neil and Ebright also debated Christian Drosten’s involvement with 2017 research found in the SARS2 genome. Drosten presented Andreas Lisewski's pat7 (MERS-MA30) findings to the WHO, but Ebright and Neil doubted Drosten's enthusiasm.
Lisewski countered:
Drosten was supportive before the WHO SAGO meeting, for example, by stating that my hypothesis would explain the suboptimal FCS in SARS-CoV-2. He also continued to be engaged after the presentation by outlining experimental plans to investigate further implications of my hypothesis at his own lab and through sequence data investigations on my end.
It was my data and presentation material, personally provided to him, that he then “completely” presented to SAGO on 18 February 2025. The meeting was organized as a “special meeting” at Drosten’s initiative solely to discuss my evidence.
Marion Koopmans of Erasmus University claimed that Drosten is “not jumping ship, he is just discussing options.” Neil and Koopmans responded to the WA1 survey in the back of my book, but Ebright had no answer.
Here’s a natural-origin cheerleader
who watched my Manifold podcast, generating good questions.
Why PRRVR, not PRRAR?
The SARS2 furin cleavage site is PRRAR, not PRRVR, as shown in Lisewski’s MERS-MA30 research. Since SARS-like viruses don’t have furin cleavage sites, Baric had to study MERS, which has them.
Norwegian biologist Sigrid Bratlie was impressed with Lisewski's research and Drosten’s support. Bratlie explained that PRRAR to PRRVR is a reversal mutation (A to V). Since a SARS2 variant with A684V (A to V at amino acid 684) was detected in Saudi Arabia, Lisewski claims evolutionary pressure resulting in a reversal mutation, similar to MERS.
UNC’s ENAC research (RRAR/SVAS) explains the alanine (A) amino acid better, and proves Baric had RaTG13 and Laos Banal before the pandemic.
ENaC and UNC
Zach Hensel is a fellow truth seeker who entertains the theory that UNC did it. He footnotes that Neil “Harrison and Jeffrey Sachs argued for a theory in which a sequence was engineered in North Carolina, because a different lab in North Carolina once studied the same sequence. They have yet to flesh out their theory for how this managed to get to Wuhan and start a pandemic.”
That is where RML theory comes in, since Baric’s only alibi was that he never sent his novel chimeras to China. But that SARS2 chimera was years in the making.
https://theintercept.com/2022/05/19/covid-lab-leak-evidence-jeffrey-sachs/
The Harrison and Sachs UNC theory was called ENaC. UNC published RRAR/SVAS in 2018, proving that it researched the SARS2 furin cleavage site (PRRAR). More importantly, the RSVAS in ENaC (red below) showed that UNC had RaTG13 and Laos BANAL bat samples before the pandemic. Therefore, Baric was experimenting with the closest known genomes to SARS2, in 2018.
Of course, Ebright debated this UNC finding with Stuart Neil, since Ebright somehow transposed the UNC furin cleavage site research to Wuhan. Ebright went on to claim:
This codon usage is unusual for a natural bat SARS-related coronaviruses (for which fewer than 1 in 30 arginine codons are CGG) but is optimal for humans (for which most arginine codons are CGG codons).
Ebright thinks humans are the only mammals on the planet, but CGG-CGG was found in animal vaccine patents.
CGG-CGG
SARS2 has a 12-nucleotide insert right at the S1/S2 junction, forming the PRRAR furin cleavage site. The insert is the sequence T-CCT-CGG-CGG-GC. The CCT codes for proline (P), the two CGG’s for two arginines (R), and the GC is the beginning of a GCA codon that codes for alanine (A).
The two side-by-side CGG codons have not been found in any other beta-coronavirus. So how did SARS2 acquire a pair of arginine codons that are favored by human cells but not by coronaviruses? Drosten’s presentation of Lisewski’s research provided an answer:
Baric’s use of the Faul restriction site (molecular scissors) required the second CGG. In 2010, Baric studied human coronavirus (HCoV-HKU1) and its HKU1b proteolytic cleavage sites using CGG-CGT codons; just one nucleotide off the infamous CGG-CGG furin cleavage site.
Why pat7?
Dr Masfique Mehedi from the University of North Dakota previously found pat7 (aka Lisewski’s MERS-MA30) in SARS2:
There are three types of NLSs: pat4, pat7, and bipartite. The pat4 signal is a chain of 4 basic amino acids consisting of lysine or arginine or three basic amino acids, with the last amino acid being either histidine or proline. The pat7 signal begins with proline and is followed by six amino acids, which contains a four-residue sequence in which three of the four residues are basic…
To our surprise, the NLS motif “PRRARSV” was present at the SARS2 furin cleavage site.
A nuclear localization signal (NLS) is like a postal code or delivery tag on a protein. It tells the cell that the protein should be sent into the nucleus, the cell's control center, where DNA is stored. Typically, surface proteins like a virus's spike protein stay outside the nucleus. But if the spike protein has an NLS (like "PRRARSV" in SARS2), it might be able to enter the nucleus. This is unusual and important because it affects how the virus interacts with the cell’s genetic machinery.
Basically, Baric wanted the bat virus inside the bat cell, which contains furin. Mehedi wondered about the purpose of an NLS, was it codon optimized?
Baric outlined a “human codon optimized” genome called HKU3-Smix in DARPA Defuse. He wanted to test it in Chinese bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
HKU3-Smix = SARS-CoV-2?
Yes, Baric’s patented HKU3-Smix (aka SARS2) is a new (2b) branch in the coronavirus tree—there is nothing like it in nature, but it was sitting in a US government patent office.
Baric was asked during his testimony:
There's a bullet here that says, "another idea is... if you build chimera that broadly reduces heterogeneous population of SARS-related coronaviruses in bat caves, this might be something you'd want to develop for humans [or Chinese bats?]
"RB has already generated SARS-like chimeras with RBD from group of bat viruses called 293, which is 20 percent different than the epidemic strains."
SARS2 is 20% different from SARS1, so Baric had SARS2 in his freezer during the 2018 DARPA Defuse bid. Baric rambled and played dumb in his response. Then, the Covid committee specifically asked about 293?
So the experiment I just told you about was 2008 or 2009. We took that backbone around 2012 and introduced a triple chimera. In essence, it had, if I remember correctly, the HKU3 NTD, the SARS1 RBD, and the S2 domain from this other bat virus. I actually don't think it's 293, I think 3 is a typo. It might be 96, but I would have to look at the recombinant DNA thing that I submitted to UNC, which I have, by the way.
Since Baric admitted HK3 = HKU3, then 293 is 279, which means Baric patented the SARS2 genome back in 2018.
Baric was also asked about his quest to find a 20% different genome like SARS2:
So SARS 2003 is the bookend, right? You know how much variation. WIV1 and SHC014 have about 8 to 12 percent variation in the spike or the RBD. The clade 2 strains like HKU3 have 30 to 35 percent variation in the spike, they've got deletions in the RBD, they can't use human ACE2 receptors.
If you take those two numbers, subtract 10 of 12 from 35, divided by 2, added to 12, you get a number between 20 and 25. And that was our prediction, that there would be strains with that much variation that could still use human ACE2 receptors.
It turns out SARS2 had 22 percent variation, so we were within the range, but we were really not completely right.
Baric was right, and Munster thought the HKU3-Smix genome (aka SARS2) couldn't be traced back to them, but we eventually did.
USRTK lawsuit with UNC
Since Baric patented the SARS2 genome in 2018, he uses a “proprietary” definition to avoid releasing his 2019 records.
Dr Meryl Nass adds to US lab origin debate
Fact 3. Lord Matt Ridley decides to muddy the waters on Laos (which is where EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan scientists, and the Proximal Origin authors want us to think is where SARS-CoV-2 naturally zoonotically originated). On May 10, 2025 he tweeted: “Laos only reinforces the need to examine why scientists from…Wuhan…were collecting bat viruses in Laos. And are themselves the only known mammals that were doing so.”
Except scientists from Wuhan were not the only mammals sampling bats in Laos. (What a clever turn of phrase, Matt!). US Navy scientists were also sampling bats in Laos:
“US Navy (NMRC-A) collected those Laos Banal samples in 2017, but didn't allow Institut Pasteur to publish.”—Jim Haslam
Furthermore, Jim told exactly that to Matt Ridley (Lordy, Lordy!) 3 years ago. Confirming that Lord Ridley is another part of the COVID origins coverup.
I am not saying that the US Navy conspired to create SARS-2. But I am saying that the fact the US government obtained potential precursors of SARS-2 is being covered up. Why?
Brit vs Brit
truth-seeking CRG7 piece on Ralph Baric is the opposite of puff piece on Shi Zhengli. Ridley claims 91 footnotes, but two of those reference Shi’s Vero cells, which delete the SARS2 furin cleavage site immediately.DRASTIC member Mona Rahalkar asked why Baric's role was missing in Ridley’s article. Ebright replied, “He is literally in the picture.” Mona replied, “Yes! I saw him, but in the article, I didn’t read much.”
NIH staff walk out on Bhattacharya
Dozens of staffers walked out when NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya discussed Wuhan.
RML scientists protest spending cuts
“Around a dozen people” were laid off in February 2025, so they protested on the streets of Hamilton, Montana!
On an April afternoon, hundreds of people filled the sidewalks at an intersection of Hamilton’s usually quiet downtown, waving signs that read “Hands Off Federal Workers” and “Stop Strangling Science.” Some driving by honked in support, rolled their windows down, and cheered. Others flipped off the rallygoers and cast insults at them. A passing bicyclist taunted protesters with chants of “DOGE”
Even amid the cuts, Rocky Mountain Labs (RML) is in the process of a building expansion that, so far, hasn’t stopped.
The RML building expansion is part of a $125M Chinese horseshoe bat facility, so Vincent Munster doesn’t have to test his Chinese bat vaccines in Wuhan.
NYT writer on lab leak
David Wallace-Wells was not very opinionated in his NYT opinion piece.
But he let it rip in this podcast, claiming that if we can prove who did it, we could throw them in jail if that’s what society wants! He discussed DARPA Defuse and Baric’s UNC court battles with a USRTK FOIA request. The natural origin scientist, Paul Offit, replied, “I’m going to pass on that.”
Political lab leak debate?
One of the many reasons I enjoy the lab leak debate is its apolitical nature. It’s amusing when commentators try to politicize it, as they fail. For example, leftists
debated the right-wing on who was politically responsible for funding GoF in Wuhan.So if I’m interpreting this correctly, Curtis is saying the following: You think Trump is bad. Well elites are much worse!
If the first Trump administration had been ruled by authoritarian populists, more like the second one is, would they have even stopped gain-of-function research? Perhaps, but only by accident, because MAGAs have shown themselves to be hostile to funding science more generally. If your argument is we should shut down all scientific work because it’ll stop things like GoF research, I guess that’s an argument for supporting populism, but one needs to make it directly.
The truth is always more complicated:
In December 2017, weeks after President Donald Trump’s first HHS Secretary resigned over a private plane charter scandal, and while the agency was still without a confirmed Secretary, Fauci’s NIAID quietly restarted funding, with guidance, for what was then termed “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.” News of the funding restart surprised many in the scientific community.
SARS1 was the first disease on the first page of Trump's 2018 biodefense plan, and technically, Fauci funded DARPA Defuse during Trump's first term, but this subject is too complicated for the elites and the populists since it doesn’t fit in a Tweet, so we blog.
Does the FBI read this blog?
The FBI did not immediately respond, but Bongino’s comment represents one of a senior FBI official's most direct public statements regarding the agency’s continued interest in the pandemic’s origin.
Why on earth did the government personnel choose to walk out at the mere suggestion that the virus could be created by humans ?
Even more bizarre was the applause for the walkout.
American citizens must learn to accept the fact that SARS-CoV was created by their own very distinguished scientists, just as the more than 150 nuclear weapons held by Pakistan were funded and overseen by successive US presidents and administrations.
This raises the question: will the FBI conduct a thorough and logical investigation into the virus's origins? The truth will not be startling but most certainly embarrassing.