Lab or bat?

About one and a half years after the first alternative media, the NZZ is now fortunately also beginning to ask questions about the origin of the pandemic. Did Sars-CoV-2 escape from a laboratory? In Wuhan, China, vigorous research is being carried out in the notorious gain-of-function research, in which changes in the gene sequence are brought about by biotechnological procedures. During the Obama administration, this research was temporarily banned in the US because it was considered too dangerous. However, by outsourcing this type of research to Wuhan, the ban was partially circumvented.

Image: A bat and the Whuan Institute of Virology

Sars-CoV-2 breaks out in the immediate vicinity of the global centre for research with coronaviruses, where artificial hybrids have been created that can better dock with human cell receptors. The fact that Peter Daszak - president of the Eco Health Alliance and other US scientists working with the laboratory in Wuhan - applied in 2018 to experimentally insert a furin cleavage site into viruses seems particularly disconcerting. Exactly this element - the furin cleavage site - was later found for the first time in the genome of the coronavirus. The fact that the rejected application concerned not only the Sars viruses but also the Mers viruses, which are much more dangerous, is not exactly reassuring either. It has also recently become known that the US Department of Defence has supported Peter Daszak's organisation over the last few years with the handsome sum of 40 million dollars for research into bioweapons. A scoundrel who thinks evil... 

Even though none of this is conclusive evidence, the assumption that the virus escaped from the laboratory seems very plausible. However, this also means that "accidents" in the context of gain-of-function research can always happen!