Report claims Covid-19 lab leak theory ‘more probable’ than natural occurrence

What was once considered a far-fetched conspiracy theory has now been floated as a “more probable” answer to the million dollar Covid-19 question.

The origins of Covid-19 have been pontificated on by millions around the world after the first wave exploded through Wuhan, China in 2019.

The US National Library of Medicine claimed the virus that turned planet Earth on its head originated from pangolin samples “obtained by anti-smuggling operations in the Guangdong province of China”.

But sceptics have been highly critical of the assumption the virus, which was highly infectious to humans, naturally developed in the wild.

The Lancet, another major medical journal, boldly proclaimed that those suggesting the virus originated from a laboratory were attempting to “manipulate public opinion with political language”.

“Peer-reviewed evidence available to the public points to the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a result of spillover into humans from a natural origin,” the Lancet published in 2023.

But now, a major scientific paper led by Australian pandemic expert Professor Raina MacIntyre suggests that a lab leak is actually “equally or more probable” than Covid-19 springing from nature.

The paper, featuring scientists from the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW, says that while a lab leak theory is plausible, the true origin of the pandemic may never be confirmed.

The research used the Grunow-Finke tool, an epidemiological risk scoring method, contrasting with the genetic analysis methods more commonly used to investigate the virus’s origins.

“An unnatural origin of SARS-COV-2 is plausible, and our application of the Grunow-Finke tool suggests it is equally or more probable than a natural origin, although both remain possible,” the researches wrote.

“The gathering of intelligence may include open source, signals or satellite intelligence, political factors, as well as other ‘detective work’ to piece together the complex question of the origin of SARS-COV-2.
 

“This would include full records of viruses housed at the relevant laboratories, of experiments conducted, and records of accidents and illness among staff. The question of origin cannot be answered solely by phylogenetic analysis, as viruses resulting from gain-of-function research using serial passage in an animal model cannot easily be distinguished from naturally emerged ones.”

This analysis is presented against a backdrop of widespread dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis in scientific circles and by the World Health Organisation, which deemed a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology “extremely unlikely”.

The study analysed various factors, including the peculiar biological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, its rapid human-to-human transmission rate, and unusual actions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak, such as military control takeover and removal of a large virus database from public access.

The paper’s findings, suggesting a 68 per cent likelihood of an unnatural origin of SARS-CoV-2 based on the modified Grunow-Finke tool, contrast sharply with other scientific opinions and WHO conclusions.
 

The research has been criticised by some international scientists, including Alice Hughes from the University of Hong Kong, who labelled the analysis method as potentially “dangerous and misleading” due to its subjective nature and reliance on conjecture.

As the world emerges from one of the most destabilising periods in recent history, more and more information about the potential cause of the pandemic has risen to the surface.

In November 2023, a whistleblower came forward to claim CIA analysts who favoured the lab leak theory were bribed to change their position.

The bribe was allegedly made to take the focus off China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The National Intelligence Council’s Director for Global Health Security, Adrienne Keen, worked as an independent consultant for the WHO from 2016.

Former Acting Assistant Secretary of State Thomas DiNanno said that Ms Keene tried to push Covid-19 was a natural occurrence, rather than a lab leak.

“I had found out that apparently she was an outside adviser also to the World Health Agency – they are a political agency, they are a UN agency,” Mr DiNanno said.

“It’s just not appropriate to do work for a foreign power and that would include in the United Nations.”
 

A few months prior, a report claimed that Covid-19’s “patient zero” was a Wuhan scientist carrying out experiments on souped-up coronaviruses,

According to the report, the scientist, Ben Hu, was conducting risky tests at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with two colleagues, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu.

It’s understood all three fell ill with Covid-like symptoms and needed hospital care weeks before China disclosed the virus outbreak to the world.

A bombshell report by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi alleged the scientists were experimenting with coronaviruses when they became sick in 2019.

Many experts and intelligence officials have long suspected scientists at the lab accidentally spread Covid-19 during so-called “gain of function” experiments on bat coronaviruses.
 

The naming of “patient zero” could be the so-called smoking gun – adding to mounting circumstantial evidence of a lab leak.

It’s not clear who in the US government had the intelligence about the sick lab workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organisation advisory committee on human genome editing, described it as a possible “game changer”.

“It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid before anyone else,” he said.

“That would be the ‘smoking gun’. Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in (virologist Shi Zhengli’s) lab.”