Beijing: Ever since the Covid pandemic struck the world, speculation has been rife over the 'lab leak theory' -- that the virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.
Now, Marty Makary, in a column for New York Post, has stated "10 reasons", which make the possibility of the Wuhan lab leak stronger.
"At this point, the only people who believe Covid did not leak from a Wuhan lab are diehards with I (Heart) Fauci bumper stickers. The evidence is clear: The pandemic was the result of irresponsible science. Here are 10 reasons why," Makary stated in his NY Post piece.
He stated that Dr Zhou Yusen, a key Chinese scientist who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, filed for a patent for a Covid vaccine on February 24, 2020, according to documents obtained by The Australian.
"The early timing of his filing raises concerns that the unnamed vaccine was in development months before the COVID-19 pandemic became public. Yet less than three months after filing his patent, Dr Zhou Yusen died under mysterious circumstances. The Chinese media attributed his death to "falling off the roof" of the Wuhan lab," the NY Post piece read.
Makary further said he had told Fox News in an interview that an infected Wuhan lab worker was most likely patient zero of the pandemic, however, his claims were rubbed off by the National Institutes of Health calling it a "conspiracy theory" and Facebook and Google censored it, calling it misinformation.
He claimed further that the new evidence published this month confirms his earlier statement and identifies the first infected lab workers by name.
Makary also cited a detailed research plan that was submitted by the scientists at the Wuhan lab one year before the emergence of Covid-19 to the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to create a Frankenstein coronavirus.
"The virologists cited their preliminary research showing that they were able to do it. They proposed engineering a furin cleavage gene into SARS-like coronaviruses to enable the virus to infect mammalian cells. That's exactly the genetic makeup of COVID-19, and what makes it so deadly. Their motive may have been biodefense-related, but most likely it was based on the ancient scientific myth that such research could help predict a future pandemic or enable a vaccine before a pandemic occurs -- neither of which has ever happened," he stated in his piece.
The researchers also submitted proposals to the US State Department, but Secretary Tony Blinken denied multiple requests to make those grants public.
Notably, keeping a lab book to record all experiments is a standard and universally adopted convention in science. But remarkably, there are no lab records for the key coronavirus experiments performed at the Wuhan lab. There are also no source samples, Makary stated. Researchers, who experiment on viruses do, however, routinely report those genetic sequences to an international virus registry housed by the NIH. Wuhan lab researchers had reported virus sequences to the NIH registry but then asked for that information to be deleted in June 2020, he added.
The NIH honoured the Chinese request and promptly deleted the virus sequences in the NIH registry.
Makary has also cited the claim of Anthony Fauci, the former Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States. Fauci had called an emergency meeting of top virology experts to talk about the origin of Covid, on January 27, 2020. Three of them told him they believed it came from a lab.
Dr Robert Garry of Tulane University told Dr Fauci, "I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted", the NY Post quoted him as saying.
At the end of the meeting, a consensus was reached "not to write a paper and if one writes then don't mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists".
The Chinese government also arrested the first doctors at the Wuhan hospital, who treated Covid patients. Dr Li Wenliang is most likely the doctor who cared for the first infected lab workers. He sounded the alarm on human-to-human transmission on WeChat, the popular social media messaging app in China.
"He was detained along with eight others by the police, three days later, Li was forced to sign a confession that he was "making false comments," Makary wrote in his piece.
"We solemnly warn you: If you keep being stubborn, with such impertinence, and continue this illegal activity, you will be brought to justice -- is that understood?" read the letter sent to Li.
To that, Li responded in writing, "Yes, I do", reported the NY Post. Soon after, Li contracted Covid and died. However, he appeared healthy at the age of 34. What was also sceptic, that there were conflicting reports about his death on Chinese State TV.
Makary further cited a lab leak that took place in 1977. He said there was an epidemic in China of an influenza H1N1 strain that had the same genetic code as a flu strain from 20 years prior. The epidemic turned into a pandemic.
Notably, just before the 1977 pandemic, the Chinese government was injecting military recruits with a mysterious substance. A famous Chinese physician had subsequently admitted "the introduction of this 1977 virus [as] the result of vaccine trials," the NY Post cited.
An estimated 700,000 people died from the flu strain that year.
He further said that one of the only labs in the world manipulating coronaviruses was right next to where the beginnings of the pandemic can be traced. Markary, in his piece, said he believes this can't be a coincidence, adding that although the wet market was blamed, the testing of large swaths of animals revealed no animal source.
He further said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is claimed to be a Biosafety Level 4 lab -- the highest standard.
But in 2018, the US Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending US science diplomats to the Wuhan Lab. They found that the lab functioned at Level 2, at best. In the words of US virologist Dr. Richard Ebright, the biosafety conditions were comparable to that of a US dentist's office.
Former US National Intelligence director John Ratcliffe, who had access to all intelligence during the increase of Covid-19 cases, said "My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government's intelligence . . . has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense", reported the NY Post.
"The origins of Covid represent the greatest liability case in the history of the world. People understandably want closure after enduring tremendous societal harm," Makary stated in his NY Post piece. —ANI
