10 reasons we KNOW that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Lab
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:
1. The “suicide” of the Wuhan lab collaborator, Dr. Yusen
A key Chinese scientist who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Dr. Zhou Yusen, 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 said he died from “falling off the roof” of the Wuhan lab.
2. Wuhan lab workers were the first COVID patients
In an April 2020 interview, I told Fox News that an infected Wuhan lab worker was most likely patient zero of the pandemic.
The National Institutes of Health called it a conspiracy theory and Facebook and Google censored it, calling it misinformation.
New evidence published this month confirms that what I said was true and identifies the first infected lab workers by name.
3. The lab had a detailed plan
One year before the emergence of COVID-19, scientists at the Wuhan lab submitted a detailed research plan 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 mostly likely it was based on the ancient scientific myth that such research could help predict a future pandemic or enable a vaccine for a pandemic occurs — neither of which has ever happened.
The researchers also submitted proposals to the US State Department, but Secretary Tony Blinken has denied multiple requests to make those grants public.
4. China destroyed all records from the lab
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.
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 called in June 2020 to ask for that information to be deleted.
The NIH honored the Chinese request and promptly deleted the virus sequences in the NIH registry.
5. Top virologists had told Dr. Anthony Fauci that it came from a lab
On January 27, 2020, a panicked Dr. Fauci called an emergency meeting of top virology experts to talk about the origin of COVID.
Three of them told him they believed it came from a lab.
Dr. Robert Garry of Tulane University specifically 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.”
6. Fauci was Orchestrator of the Natural Origin Theory
At the end of Fauci’s emergency meeting with virologists in January 2020, a consensus was reached to “1) don’t write a paper at all and 2) If you do write it don’t mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists.”
Four days later, some of those same virologists who voiced their belief that COVID came from a lab co-authored a propaganda article in Nature Medicine concluding emphatically that COVID “is not a laboratory construct.”
The lead author wrote in his cover letter that the article was “prompted by” Drs. Fauci and Francis Collins, then head of the NIH.
By April 16, 2020 a frustrated Dr. Collins emailed Dr. Fauci about the lab leak theory, “Wondering if there is something the NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy.” Fauci replies, “I would not do anything about this right now. It is a shiny object that will go away in times.”
7. China arrested the first doctors who treated COVID
The Chinese government promptly arrested the first doctors at the Wuhan hospital who treated COVID.
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.
Three days later, the police showed up and detained him and eight others. Li was forced to sign a confession that he was “making false comments.”
The statement read: “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?” Li responded in writing: “Yes, I do.”
Soon after, Li contracted COVID and died. He was a healthy appearing 34-year-old — a risk profile close to zero. It’s also curious that there were conflicting reports about his death on Chinese State TV.
Dr. Ai Fen, a close friend of Li, carried his torch and continued to warn people. She was the director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital.
She also posted warnings and was later reprimanded by the authorities. She gave a pleasant interview to a Chinese magazine and then went missing for a few weeks.
8. A lab leak caused the 1977 flu Chinese epidemic
There is a precedent for a lab leak.
In 1977, 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.
Flu viruses are genetically fragile by nature, making it impossible for a strain to last over 20 years outside of a lab.
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.” An estimated 700,000 people died from the flu strain that year.
9. The lab is 5 miles from the world epicenter
One of the only labs in the world manipulating coronaviruses was right next to where we can trace the beginnings of the pandemic. That’s not a coincidence.
The wet market was blamed, but testing of large swaths of animals revealed no animal source.
10. Wuhan lab conditions were abysmal
The Wuhan Institute of Virology 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.
And anyone who’s worked in a lab, as I have, will tell you that in most labs, accidents can be common.
Conclusion
Former US National Intelligence director John Ratcliffe, who had access to all intelligence during the rise of COVID-19, has 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.”
The facts are clear. But downplaying them has become a political badge for many Democrats.
The origins of COVID represents the greatest liability case in the history of the world.
People understandably want closure after enduring tremendous societal harm.
It’s time for the US to be an international leader in calling for a treaty banning all dangerous gain-of-function research using the principles in a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report setting standards for virus research.
The document identifies seven types of pathogen research that should never be performed given the risk to humanity.
The experiment types became known as “the seven deadly sins.” The Wuhan Lab was committing some of them.
We need to prevent what happened before, when Fauci continued to fund dangerous gain-of-function research despite President Obama placing a moratorium on it.
An updated position paper outlining specific types of gain-of-function research has been carefully laid out by Dr. Laura Kahn in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.
This framework should be adopted internationally in the form of a treaty with active monitoring and verification.
Marty Makary MD, MPH is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay.”
