Two experts: evidence COV-19 came from a lab is ‘firmly based in science’

The Wall Street Journal is behind a paywall, therefore, we will give the most complete summary of this important article that we can.

In an opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Steven Quay and Richard Muller, the authors state it is more than circumstantial evidence that suggests a Wuhan lab leak, the most compelling reason is “firmly based in science.”

There are sequences in the coronavirus that we don’t typically see in nature. That is the bottom line. The clues are in the analysis of the virus’s DNA — the genome sequence, the authors assert. The combination of the virus’s DNA segments has never been found in nature in any other coronavirus. In fact, the sequence is so perfect that it is the exact sequence the scientists would use to achieve gain-of-function.

The article explains that in gain-of-function, a microbiologist can significantly increase coronavirus lethality by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. It doesn’t leave a trace of manipulation but it alters the virus spike protein. That makes it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell.

In all of the CoV-2 coronaviruses, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means recombination cannot take place. “A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.”

For a number of reasons, CGG is perfect for laboratory work, however.

The doctors write:

Now the damning fact. It was this exact sequence that appears in CoV-2. Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.

When Dr. Shi and her colleagues of Wuhan lab published her paper in February 2020, they failed to mention the special sequence.

“But in a matter of weeks virologists Bruno Coutard and colleagues published their discovery of the sequence in CoV-2 and its novel supercharged site. Double CGG is there; you only have to look.”

Unlike other viruses, COV-19 began as an already contagious version.

“Such early optimization is unprecedented, and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread.” In other words, gain-of-function.

The authors conclude: The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration. The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.

Dr. Quay is founder of Atossa Therapeutics and author of “Stay Safe: A Physician’s Guide to Survive Coronavirus.” Mr. Muller is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California Berkeley and a former senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

SIDE NOTE

Yesterday, we posted the information about the now-missing CCP military scientist who filed a patent for a vaccine for COV in February 2020. That does suggest the virus had been around for some time.

The Daily Wire reports: David Asher, who led the Trump administration’s investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, told Fox News during the last week in May that he had U.S. government biostatisticians calculate the probability that the coronavirus developed evolved in nature and that they concluded that it was “about one in 13 billion.”

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