On Monday, the Daily Mail broke the news that researchers at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) created a chimeric virus using the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and the original spike protein from the Wuhan variant that kicked off a global pandemic sometime in 2019.
The researchers are explicit about the methods they used to create a new virus in the preprint study:
We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant.
They are also clear that the purpose was to assess the differences in virulence between the Omicron variant and the Frankenstein virus they created. While they noted the Omicron variant causes mild illness despite its high transmissibility, they engineered a far more virulent variant when tested on mice:
The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor-binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells. In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%. This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.
The researchers’ description of the experiments meets the classic definition of gain-of-function research. They combined an attenuated strain that causes a mild infection and turned it into something akin to Captain Tripps in mice. To summarize, the newly created virus not only escapes the immunity provided by vaccines as Omicron does. It also goes deep into the lung tissue as the original Wuhan and Delta variants did.
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The bad news is this monstrosity may also cause severe disease in humans. The researchers used K18-hACE2 mice, according to the summary. According to the Jackson Laboratory and the NIH, these mice are genetically modified. In this case, the mice express human ACE2, the receptor used by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) to gain entry into the cells in the body to replicate. The Wuhan lab used similar humanized mice in the 2015 experiments highlighted as gain-of-function by Sen. Rand Paul.
Omi-S, the lab-created chimera, had the following characteristics:
- It infected 80% of ACE-2-expressing cells in culture compared with 48% for Omicron.
- It produced viral titers between 5.1 and 5.5-fold higher than Omicron.
- It produced plaques twice the size of those produced by Omicron.
- Omi-S yielded an approximately 5-fold higher titer in human lung cell cultures.
- It caused 80% of humanized mice to lose 20% of their body weight in 9 days, while Omicron-infected mice displayed little to no symptoms of clinical illness.
- Omi-S inoculation ended in an 80% fatality rate for humanized mice, while none infected with Omicron died.
- Omi-S Demonstrated a 30-fold increase in viral replication in the lungs of humanized mice.
- It caused significant damage to the bronchioles in the lungs, while Omicron caused none.
The new chimeric virus is not likely to kill 80% of humans. The original Wuhan strain used in the experiment killed 100% of the humanized mice. Even in the early pandemic, experts predicted SARS-CoV-2 would have a mortality rate between 0.5% and 1%. However, it is unclear why any lab must be handling the Wuhan variant or a chimeric with similar infection patterns. The lab leak is a leading theory about the emergence of COVID-19. Why on earth is any research institution risking a repeat performance?
The team then created additional chimeric viruses to determine why Omicron was capable of evading the protection provided by the mRNA vaccines. It is not at all clear why this information was important. No one ever expected a vaccine against the common cold. Researchers early in the pandemic predicted that SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, would mutate to become less virulent over time and become one of the circulating coronaviruses that cause common cold symptoms.
According to all available data, including the findings in this study, the early researcher’s predictions were correct. Omicron stays out of the lungs and does not cause serious illness in mice or most humans.
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When world-renowned Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote about the draconian policies put in place with questionable data in March 2020, he noted the following about existing coronaviruses:
However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.
These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.
Research published in January 2022 confirmed that Omicron did not attack the lungs. The advent of Omicron was good news. The highly transmissible variant supplanted the more virulent strains on a population basis globally. Now there is a lab-created virus somewhat less awful than the original Wuhan variant and much more virulent than Omicron without any clear benefit from the knowledge gained.
Currently, there is no signal that a more lethal strain is in danger of emerging or capable of overcoming Omicron’s transmissibility advantage. The NEIDL is supposed to focus on emerging and re-emerging illnesses. SARS-Cov-2 appeared about three years ago and is not posing a significant threat to public health unless there is something the public health experts are not telling us.
The NEIDL consistently received funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in large administrative and smaller project-based amounts beginning in 2016. A total of $11.5 million was budgeted for June 2020 to July 2021. An additional $1,916,66 was provided for July 2021 to June 2022, with project funding committed through June 2026. The newest research at NEIDL provides a Republican Senate with more questions when it calls Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify. Paging Dr. Rand Paul…
Update: Boston University says that what they’re doing isn’t gain-of-function research. The Brink reports:
Boston University is refuting a series of misleading claims about research at the University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). The reports, which first appeared on Monday in the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, claimed researchers at the lab had “created a new deadly COVID strain.” In a statement Monday afternoon, BU called the reporting, which was picked up by other outlets, including Fox News, “false and inaccurate,” and said this research made the virus less dangerous.
The University also noted that the research was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which consists of scientists as well as local community members, and that the Boston Public Health Commission had approved the research.
“They’ve sensationalized the message, they misrepresent the study and its goals in its entirety,” says Ronald B. Corley, NEIDL director and BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine chair of microbiology, of the news reports.
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