What scientists now say on Covid origin in Wuhan

lab and what they dismissed prematurely

Wuhan lab researchers created new viruses by using reverse genetics
on bat coronaviruses. Some of this research was funded by the US.

Tom Kertscher and Noah Y Kim 25 May, 2021 9:32 am IST

Fil
e photo of the Wuhan Institute of Virology | Representational image | Commons
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Confronting Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate committee hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic, Sen. Rand Paul
argued that the United States collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to make a more deadly
coronavirus.

The Kentucky Republican made the explosive allegation the day after Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson
made another far-reaching accusation, stating that a recent article “makes it clear that, more than any other
single living American, Tony Fauci is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Dr. Fauci, we don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally, but we should
want to know,” Paul said in a Senate hearing. “To arrive at the truth, the U.S. government should admit that the
Wuhan Virology Institute was experimenting to enhance the coronavirus’ ability to infect humans.

“Juicing up super-viruses is not new,” Paul continued. “Scientists in the U.S. have long known how to mutate
animal viruses to infect humans. For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with
Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super-viruses. This
gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH.”

Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the federal government’s
leading voice on COVID-19, rebutted Paul by saying: “The NIH and NIAID categorically have not funded
gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

In an interview with PolitiFact at United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking shortly after the
hearing, Fauci called Paul’s accusation “preposterous.”

“He was saying we funded a kind of research in China that could lead to dangerous research; that’s not the case.
So, what he was saying was just absolutely not true,” Fauci said.

Fauci added: “So, in a very minor collaboration, as part of a subcontract of a grant, we had a collaboration with
some Chinese scientists. And what he conflated is that therefore we were involved in creating the virus, which
is the most ridiculous, majestic leap I’ve ever heard of.”

Asked if he was confident the virus developed naturally, Fauci said, “I think that we should continue to
investigate what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, exactly what happened. … I’m
perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.”

While there is no hard evidence that the COVID-19 virus was developed in a lab, the Wuhan lab did use reverse
genetics on bat coronaviruses, which some scientists believe fits the definition of gain-of-function research.

Proponents of this form of study, which involves forcing the evolution of a pathogen, sometimes to boost its
infectivity and lethality, say it helps researchers spot potential threats to human health and allows them to figure
out ways to tackle a new virus. Critics claim that the practice constitutes a massive biosafety risk.

The conversation around gain-of-function gathered new momentum from an 11,000-word article, posted on
Medium on May 2, by Nicholas Wade, a former science writer and editor for the New York Times. It argues
that evidence is stronger that the virus leaked from a lab than that it occurred naturally.

Officials and researchers are also paying more attention to the possibility that the virus somehow leaked from
the lab. But there’s still nothing conclusive.

“Ultimately, without any proper and thorough investigation having been conducted, the origins of COVID-19
remain a completely open question,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, director of endocrinology at Flinders Medical
Centre and professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia.

Here’s a look at what we know and don’t know about the origin of the virus that produced COVID-19.

Also read:  As world debates Covid origin, here is a list of viruses that leaked from labs in past
US funded 2014 Wuhan research

The basis for Paul’s attack is federal funding for a 2014 project at the lab in Wuhan, the city where the
coronavirus outbreak was first documented. PolitiFact has previously looked into unproven claims about U.S.
research funding and the lab.

In 2014, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the NIH arm that Fauci heads, awarded a $3.4
million grant to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which aims to protect people from viruses that jump
from species to species. The alliance has projects across 30 countries, including Thailand, Vietnam and China.

The group hired the virology lab in Wuhan to conduct genetic analyses of bat coronaviruses collected in
Yunnan province, about 800 miles southwest of Wuhan. The research was considered crucial in part because
coronaviruses had previously emerged in China and begun to spread among humans. EcoHealth Alliance paid
the lab $598,500 over five years. The lab had secured approval from both the U.S. State Department and the
NIH.

Fauci has advocated for gain-of-function research in the past. In a 2011 article he co-wrote for the Washington
Post, he promoted it as a means to study influenza viruses.

All parties involved in the grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have denied that it involved gain-of-
function research. The grant was approved in May 2014. Five months later, the Obama administration
announced it would not fund new projects that involved gain-of-function research, citing safety and security
risks, though there’s an exception in the moratorium that allows it for research “urgently necessary to protect
public health or national security.”

Early in the pandemic, the consensus among public health experts was that the COVID-19 coronavirus evolved
naturally in a bat and jumped to humans through an intermediary species. But since then, amid calls by Fauci
and others for deeper investigation of what happened in China, scientists have publicly raised questions about
whether a virus was collected at the Wuhan lab and then escaped. Those questions remain unanswered.

More attention is being paid to two key questions about the origin of this coronavirus:

 Could the virus have leaked from a lab?

 Did gain-of-function research create SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19?

Also read: What is gain of function? Research field back in focus as Covid linked to China ‘lab accident’

Natural origin or lab-leak? Neither is proven

So far, there is no hard proof to support either the theory that the virus had natural origins or the theory that it
leaked from a lab, said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University,
who has frequently been cited by proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis, including Paul.

“At this point in time, all scientific data related to the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and the epidemiology
of COVID-19 are equally consistent with a natural-accident origin or a laboratory-accident origin,” he told
PolitiFact.
Scientists open to the lab-leak theory have cited three pieces of circumstantial evidence in support of the
hypothesis:

The first is simply the site of the outbreak. The city of Wuhan is, according to Ebright, “tens of kilometers from,
and outside the flight range of, the nearest known horseshoe bat colonies.” Furthermore, the first cases of the
coronavirus occurred in September when cold temperatures drive horseshoe bats into hibernation.

Second, the first outbreak occurred close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers studied bat
coronaviruses, including the world’s closest relative to SARS-CoV-2. The laboratory searched for horseshoe bat
colonies in caves in Yunnan province, and then brought those viruses back to Wuhan, where they were mass-
produced, genetically manipulated and studied.

Third, Ebright says, some of the bat-SARS-related coronavirus projects at the Wuhan Institute were conducted
at biosafety standards that would pose a potentially high risk of infection if laboratory staff were to come in
contact with the virus.

Skeptics of the lab-leak theory, however, have argued that an alternate explanation is better founded in
evidence. In their view, it’s more likely that the coronavirus evolved naturally in bats and then jumped to
humans either directly or by way of an intermediary species such as pangolins or raccoon dogs. Past diseases,
including SARS, a similar coronavirus, have infected humans through intermediaries.

An intermediary species could have been brought to Wuhan and infected a human at a wildlife market. The first
cases of SARS-CoV-2 “were connected to not one but several markets where (people) sold wildlife or wildlife
products,” said Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane Medical School. In fact, two different genetic lineages of
SARS-CoV-2 were circulating early — both linked to wildlife markets, he said.

It seems unlikely, Garry said, that two distinct strains of a new virus leaked from the Wuhan lab and made their
way to two different places that sold animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

However, it’s still not obvious that the pandemic began in a wildlife market. An early and massive outbreak of
the coronavirus did occur at Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which was previously speculated to be the
origin site of the pandemic. But a team of investigators from the World Health Organization sent to dig into the
pandemic’s origins did not find any animals infected with the coronavirus at a market, and neither have Chinese
researchers who have tested tens of thousands of specimens. This means that there’s no proof of animal-to-
human transmission at Huanan or at other markets.

“To my knowledge, no one has reported finding the virus in a live animal (or a frozen body part of an animal) in
even one market, whether in Wuhan, elsewhere in Hubei province, or south in Kunming city, or elsewhere in
Yunnan province or anywhere else in China or outside China,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious-disease
specialist at Georgetown University.

Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California San Diego and proponent of the
naturally-occurring theory, acknowledged that this theory leaves unanswered questions about the virus’ origins,
such as the missing intermediary species and the route the virus took to Wuhan.

“But not having answers to difficult scientific questions shouldn’t force us to default to conspiracy theories,” he
said. “It took scientists decades of research to find the chimpanzee host populations for the HIV/AIDS
pandemic.”

Also read: Why the suspicion on China’s Wuhan lab virus is growing. Read these new analyses
Did scientific tampering cause Covid?

The lab leak theory is distinct from the hypothesis that gain-of-function research created the new coronavirus,
said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

The lab leak theory “can be as simple as a researcher being infected by an animal or even another infected
person in remote areas, and then bringing it into one of the most densely populated cities on Earth.” The gain-
of-function hypothesis supposes both that a virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute and that scientists there
tampered with it in ways that could have made it more infective or deadly.

This isn’t to say that scientists believe that the new coronavirus is a bioweapon designed to wreak havoc on
human society. But some have entertained the possibility that a virus, modified through well-intentioned but
risky experiments, escaped its enclosure and had the same effect.

The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is a bat coronavirus called RaTG13, which was discovered after
miners cleaning bat guano in Yunnan Province developed pneumonia. RaTG13 was collected and sequenced by
researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The genetic makeup of RaTG13 is 96% similar to that of the
new coronavirus.

“While 96% sounds close, in evolutionary terms, it is quite distant, and it would take decades of evolution for
the genome of RaTG13 to resemble that of SARS-CoV-2,” Garry told Health Feedback in March 2021. “The
difference is about 1,200 bases or 400 amino acids. Gain-of-function research cannot close that gap. This would
require a virus much closer than RaTG13, at least 99% similar or more likely 99.9% similar.”

Lab-leak-theory proponents have alleged that gain-of-function research was conducted on RaTG13 or one of
eight SARS-like coronaviruses collected in Yunnan to create the new coronavirus at the Wuhan lab.

There’s no hard evidence that research of this kind created the novel coronavirus. Even scientists relatively
open to the theory have been restrained in their speculation and have pushed back on those who have claimed
that some “smoking gun” proves that the virus was manipulated.

However, some scientists told PolitiFact that the Wuhan lab did conduct gain-of-function research on bat
viruses, some of which was funded by the Ecohealth Alliance grant.

MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt reviewed a paper that was published with financial assistance from the grant for
PolitiFact in February. According to Esvelt, certain techniques that the researchers used seemed to meet the
definition of gain-of-function research, but their work was not related to the virus that causes COVID-19. Esvelt
told PolitiFact that “the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-
CoV-2,” because the genetic sequences of the virus studied in the paper differ from that of the new coronavirus.

Ebright, the Rutgers biologist, also said that the work described in the paper met several definitions of gain-of-
function research. “The work is far outside the bounds of normal biomedical research,” he added.

On the other hand, Wertheim and Garry said they didn’t believe the paper referenced gain-of-function
experiments. “Although this study uses recombinant RNA technology, I would not consider it a gain-of-
function study,” said Wertheim. The researchers “did not continue to let these viruses propagate in cell lines to
adapt and enhance their pathogenicity or transmissibility.”
It might seem strange that scientists could disagree over a question as seemingly clear-cut as whether or not a
specific experiment involved gain-of-function research. However, the term “gain-of-function” refers to a wide
variety of interventions, and the definition has shifted over time, making it easy for scientists to talk past one
another.

The original definition of gain-of-function included “any selection process involving an alteration of genotypes
and their resulting phenotypes,” which, according to Alina Chan, “covers a ton of research that doesn’t even
come close to risky pathogen research.” Subsequent definitions have narrowly targeted obviously dangerous
experiments that would enhance the transmissibility and deadliness of “potential pandemic pathogens.”

What the paper shows is that the researchers at the Wuhan Institute used reverse genetics to create
coronaviruses that do not exist in nature and then tested whether they could replicate in human cells. However,
Wertheim said, “similar recombinant RNA approaches — inserting virus surface proteins into the backbone of
other viruses” are used in other scientific methods, such as generating vaccines. “I wouldn’t qualify these … as
gain-of-function, either,” he said.

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, said that the investigators in the paper did not appear to
be motivated by the deliberate goal of making a more deadly virus; however, he still viewed the research as
“highly risky.”

According to Relman, “the general technique is frequently used and not necessarily problematic. But this
particular application of it is problematic,” because of the distinct possibility that the researchers could have
made a virus more dangerous for humans.

Another point of debate among scientists is whether unusual aspects of the virus leave open the possibility that
the virus was artificially manipulated. Scientists have generally agreed that the virus doesn’t show clear signs of
tampering. However, some argue that extremely competent forms of gain-of-function research wouldn’t
necessarily leave telltale signs of manipulation, making it hard to rule out the claim that the virus was somehow
engineered.

One strange feature of the virus — called the furin cleavage site — has been the focus of lab-leak proponents,
including Wade. Gain-of-function researchers have added furin cleavage sites to viruses in the past, and the
coronavirus’s site is unusual. But Kristian G. Andersen, a microbiologist at the Scripps Research Institute, has
pointed out that furin cleavage sites are also found in distantly related coronaviruses.

Petrovsky, the Australian expert, believes that SARS-CoV-2 was unusual among pandemic viruses in that it was
“already very well adapted to human infection and human transmission … This raised questions of whether this
could have happened by rare chance, in an unrecognised host species or whether this adaptation might have
occurred due to natural selection or genetic engineering in a laboratory environment.”

Wertheim, on the other hand, told us that the virus’s genome doesn’t bear any marks of human intervention,
genetic manipulation or laboratory passage. “SARS-CoV-2 was not supremely adapted to humans, (or)
guaranteed to cause a pandemic, when it first showed up in Wuhan. In fact, we’ve seen this virus adapt to
infecting and transmission among humans again and again throughout this pandemic.”

Relman offered perhaps the most definitive answer to the question of whether gain-of-function had been
performed on the virus:

“I have no idea. Nor does anyone else. We don’t have the needed data to be able to say.”

We asked Baric, a professor in epidemiology, microbiology and immunology at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and a top authority on coronaviruses, about Paul’s characterization of his work during
the Senate hearing. Baric’s response said that his work involved a very different strain of coronavirus than the
one that causes COVID-19, and that the study followed all safety protocols and was considered low risk.

Fauci told Paul at the hearing: “Dr. Baric does not do gain-of-function research, and if it is, it’s according to the
guidelines, and it is being conducted in North Carolina and not China.”

Baric told PolitiFact in a statement that he believed that “SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic virus that passed from bats
to humans based on the primary sequence of the virus, its phylogeny and relationship to other bat strains,
historic precedent and its incredibly complex disease mechanisms. Consequently, I do not believe it was
generated from gain of function research,” while also noting that “many independent research groups have
demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 is distinct from any of the recombinant coronaviruses being studied prior to
2020.”

Baric has said he thought the virus came from bats in southern China, perhaps directly or possibly via an
intermediate host, and that he suspected the disease evolved in humans over time without being noticed.
Eventually a person carried it to Wuhan “and the pandemic took off,” Baric told New York magazine in
January. “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.”

Baric, Chan and Relman are among 18 prominent biologists who signed a letter published May 14 in the journal
Science stating that “greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve,” and
that an investigation that considers “both natural and laboratory spillovers” should be done.

Also read: WHO and China probed coronavirus origin. And neither of them liked the results

What we know and don’t

Much uncertainty remains about the origins of COVID-19. For those who encounter conspiracy theories about
the disease, it’s best to keep the following (fairly nuanced) points in mind:

 SARS-CoV-2 was first noticed in Wuhan, close to a lab where bat coronaviruses were being studied and
far from the location where naturally occurring relatives of the virus were found. However, there are
other plausible explanations of how the virus could have made its way to Wuhan besides a lab leak.
 Researchers at the Wuhan lab used reverse genetics on bat coronaviruses to create viruses not found in
nature. Some of this research was funded by a grant provided by the National Institutes of Health.
However, there’s no evidence that this research led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
 Scientists who have studied the coronavirus have generally concluded that it resembles naturally
occurring viruses. However, we can’t completely rule out that the virus was somehow manipulated.
Some extremely competent forms of gain-of-function research don’t leave signatures or telltale signs of
manipulation.
 The early outbreak of the coronavirus was linked to various wildlife markets, which lends support to the
claim that the virus jumped from animals to humans. However, scientists haven’t yet identified an
intermediate host animal that could have incubated the virus before it jumped to humans.

In any event, none of this amounts to hard proof of either theory. Some scientists have argued that the lab-leak
hypothesis deserves to be taken much more seriously than it was earlier in the pandemic, and that dismissals of
it as conspiracy theory were premature. Claims of complete certainty on either side remain unfounded.
Tom Kertscher is a contributing writer for PolitiFact. Previously, he was a fact-checker for PolitiFact
Wisconsin. 

Noah Y. Kim is a PolitiFact contributing writer. Previously, he was an editorial fellow at The Atlantic.

This article was first published by Politifact, part of The Poynter Institute. 

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May 20, 2021,02:00am EDT|109,753 views

No, Science Clearly Shows That COVID-19 Wasn’t

Leaked From A Wuhan Lab

Ethan Siegel
Senior Contributor
Starts With A Bang
Contributor Group
Science
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.


 

A new conspiracy theory, promoted by Sen. Rand Paul, vilifies Dr. Fauci and attempts to tie him to ... [+]

Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images

Starting in late 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began infecting human beings for the very
first time. Discovered in samples of patients that were reporting pneumonia-like symptoms in late 2019 but
without an identifiable origin, no human had ever reported knowledge of or contact with the novel coronavirus
SARS-CoV-2: the virus behind COVID-19. Subsequently, outbreaks, epidemics, and eventually an entire global
pandemic ensued; at present, over 165 million people have been infected worldwide, resulting in nearly 3.5
million confirmed deaths thus far.

For many years, virologists, disease ecologists, and many other medical and biological researchers had been
predicting that it was only a matter of time before the next pandemic arrived, including details such as how it
would arise and what the most effective strategies for combating it would be. Despite the enormous scientific
knowledge humanity has gained, however, an unfounded conspiracy theory about the virus’s origin has gained a
lot of traction: that it was genetically engineered with the purpose of infecting humans, that it was leaked from
the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that’s where it came from. Most recently, disgraced journalist Nicholas
Wade has penned an error-filled, misleading piece promoting this nonsense, but the science tells a different
story.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, shown as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team ... [+]

AFP via Getty Images

The conspiracy, of course, is that China, and specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology, genetically
engineered this novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, to specifically wreak havoc on human populations.
Depending on which particular incarnation of this conspiracy you listen to, it can involve:

 Dr. Fauci was behind it all, using NIAID to fund EcoHealth Alliance, which then funded Wuhan, which
then created SARS-CoV-2,
 that secret documents from the Chinese government dating back to 2015 indicate a plan to engineer a
virus that could launch a global pandemic,
 that Dr. Zhengli Shi, the chief scientist for emerging disease at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
engineered this virus with a furin-like cleavage site, in order to be specifically infectious to human
ACE2 receptors,
  or that the specific mutations that encode arginine (instead of the more typical tyrosine in this instance)
in coronaviruses are a "smoking gun" for the engineered hypothesis.

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Those are the claims — some with a grain of truth behind them, others which are completely bogus — being
made against the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Now that we know what’s
being claimed, let’s take a look at the actual truth.
It doesn't take a lot of contact between households, once an initial infection occurs, for a disease ... [+]

Goodreau SM et al., on behalf of the Statnet Development Team (2020)

For more than a decade, virologists, immunologists, and infectious disease specialists have been writing — in
field-standard textbooks on the subject — about how the next global pandemic will likely occur. As the human
population continues to grow, humans will continue to encroach on territory previously inhabited solely by
animals. Now operating within these shared spaces, animal-human contact is inevitable, and that leads to the
potential of disease transmission between animals and humans.

Given that mutations occur, it's only a matter of time before a disease that's catastrophic for humanity leapt from
animals to humans, and then it would be up to humanity to mitigate the spread and severity of the outbreaks,
epidemics, and pandemics that would ensue. These events, known as zoonotic events, have happened countless
times over human history. Contact between humans and chimpanzees is what led to HIV first appearing in
humans. Animal farming with pigs and birds has led to the pandemics of swine and bird influenzas. The idea
that SARS-CoV-2 originated in animals and then leapt to humans isn't an exotic explanation; it should be the
default hypothesis.
When an animal has contact with a human, or when a human eats an animal (or an animal bites or ... [+]

Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The alternative consideration is that this virus was created. This has a germ of truth, in the sense that humans
have been "creating" novel organisms through genetic engineering for many years. Typically, this involves
inserting genetic sequences that encode some structure, function, or protein into an organism, or otherwise
altering its genome to produce a desired result. There’s even the prominent ability to reverse-engineer a deadly
disease from pandemics past, like the 1918 “Spanish flu,” which was the last pandemic to infect over 100
million people in such a short time period. (Despite the scientific benefits of learning how flu viruses adapt to
humans and cause pandemics, as well as the potential of increasing vaccine stockpiles, this research has been
highly controversial for fear of weaponization.)
The science of what can be done in virology, with modern techniques, is quite impressive. But what the
conspiracy attests must have happened reaches far beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced research
teams in the world.

The first red flag that should leap out at you, but perhaps only if you have some knowledge of virology to begin
with, is the very idea that you could "know" what certain mutations would do — i.e., that you'd know what
you'd create and what effect it would have on humans — without extensive testing in humans themselves.

The SARS virus (orange) has a crown-like structure, meaning that its part of the coronavirus family ... [+]

NIH

For COVID-19, for example, we know that:

 among the infected, asymptomatic cases represent a significant percentage of total cases,
 while severe cases are relatively rare: 14% of total cases,
  and critical cases, where respiratory failure, shock, or multi-organ dysfunction occurs, represent just
~5% of total cases,
 and that only 2.3% of total cases are fatal, with every single documented fatality occurring among the
critical case population.

This means, right off the bat, that if SARS-CoV-2 were engineered for the purpose of infecting and severely
harming humans, it would have had to have been tested in at least hundreds of human subjects in order for
scientists to know how effective it was. While we do have the ability to manipulate the genomes of viruses, or
any other organism, for that matter, what we don't have the ability to do is to know how that will translate into
effects of the virus in human (or any living) subjects.

Nobel prize winner Dr. Paul Nurse poses with a DNA molecule and a genetic sequence. The fact that we ... [+]

PA Images via Getty Images

Imagine that you have the tools, technology, and capability to change which amino acids are encoded by a
genetic sequence. The entire SARS-CoV-2 genome, for example, has about 30,000 base pairs in it, and it only
takes 3 consecutive base pairs to encode a single amino acid. There are 20 amino acids used in life processes on
Earth, and there are typically two-to-four combinations of possible base pairs that can encode one of these
amino acids.

There’s no technological reason why a researcher couldn’t have switched the codons for one amino acid, like
tyrosine, into the codons for another one, like alanine. But then what? You can't make a virus more deadly —
or, at the very least, you have no way of knowing what that switch would do to the virus — by switching out
one amino acid for another. No virologist living today has that knowledge; that's not how this scientific field
works. Without intensive and extensive studies of the virus in human beings, which we know we need because
of the inherent genetic variabilities in human populations, we cannot predict what the resultant effects in
humans will be.

India's total number of COVID cases has now crested 25 million, with many cities such as Kolkata ... [+]
NurPhoto via Getty Images

Genetically, there are many reasons to think that SARS-CoV-2 occurred naturally.

 The Wuhan Institute for Virology was studying bat viruses: RaTG13, to be specific. This bat virus is not
a direct ancestor of SARS-CoV-2.
 The first cases of COVID-19 in humans occurred in two places: linked to a wet market near the Wuhan
Institute, and in more distant, rural areas where contact between humans and wild animals are common.
 None of the staff at the Wuhan Institute were infected with SARS-CoV-2; they were PCR/antibody
negative, which should be disqualifying for the lab leak hypothesis.
 And, perhaps most importantly, the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was "perfectly adapted to humans" on first
emergence is untrue; this variant appears to be a "generalist" virus.

The thing is this: there are all sorts of reasons behind why mutations occur. There are very common ones, like
point mutations, deletions, or insertion mutations. But there are other types of mutations that occur as well:
duplications, inversions, deletion-insertion combinations, and repeat expansions, among others. Finding an
uncommon type of mutation in SARS-CoV-2 is no more evidence that a human intervened than it is to claim
divine intervention for a human born with six digits on their hands and/or feet.
A sequenced genetic analysis of the UK variant of the novel coronavirus. The location of the change ... [+]

dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

Many of the other “points” that lab-leak advocates bring up in a Gish Gallop of arguments are easily refuted by
actual scientific studies.

What about the fact that they didn’t find the intermediary host that enabled the jump to humans? It’s
true, they found the original intermediary for SARS after just 4 months, and the intermediary for MERS after 9
months. But finding intermediary hosts for most viruses, even most pandemic viruses, are often unsuccessful.
SARS-CoV-2 is nothing special in this regard.

What about the fact that this virus, unique among viruses in this particular genus, possesses a furin-like
cleavage site? Furin cleavage is critical to many viral diseases: HIV, Ebola, and Influenzas H5 and H7. These
sites occur in many genera of coronavirus, and in betacoronavirus (which SARS-CoV-2 is) in general. A recent
study shows that these sites occur naturally in coronaviruses.
What about China’s plan to “unleash the coronavirus” on the world? In 2015, a conspiracy theory was
published, in Chinese, claiming that the United States genetically engineered the original SARS virus as a
biological weapon against China. This conspiracy has morphed through a network of Rupert Murdoch-owned
publications to reverse the perpetrator and the victim, but there’s no story there at all.

This figure shows the structure of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2. Panel A shows the spike ... [+]

Walls et al., Cell, 181 (2) (2020), pp. 281-292 e6

It might seem like there’s no harm to claim, as some scientists have done, that we ought to be more fully
investigating SARS-CoV-2 to determine its origin, and that means not ruling out the possibility that it was
created in a lab and leaked out. But the downside to performing that sort of investigation is twofold.
First, seriously considering this shocking, ill-founded accusation serves to further undermine the autonomy and
academic freedom of researchers around the world who work in highly specialized fields. As Zhengli Shi, the
chief scientist for emerging disease at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, wrote, "The hypothesis of a lab leaking
is just based on the expertise of a lab which has long been working on bat coronaviruses which are
phylogenetically related to SARS-CoV-2. This kind of claim will definitely damage the reputation and
enthusiasm of scientists who are dedicated to work on the novel animal viruses which have potential spillover
risk to human populations and eventually weaken the ability of humans to prevent the next pandemic."

But the second reason is truly chilling: the reason so many people have died is because of a global political
failure to respond appropriately. Attempting to shift the blame onto the very scientists who have been
instrumental in understanding and combating the virus is a tactic straight out of Operation Himmler, and must
be opposed by the entire scientific community in full force.

Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan in this 2017 photo. The ... [+]

AFP via Getty Images

One of the most challenging obstacles that scientists face in trying to communicate what they do is people’s
stubborn resistance to a basic truth about the natural world: no one is in charge. There is no one at the controls;
no one responsible for what nature does; no one in charge of mutation or natural selection in this world. Nature
simply does what it does according to the physical laws that govern it, and all we can do to help navigate the
human enterprise through it is to understand it and act according to the best recommendations that human
knowledge has to offer.

Conspiracy theories like the lab leak hypothesis might sound compelling and inviting to us. After all, how much
more comforting would it be to know that just a handful of evil people — not the politicians who sacrificed
their constituents, but rather some imaginary “mad scientists” laughing maniacally in their lair — were
ultimately responsible for the tragedies of the past 18 months? Fortunately, as scientists, we are not guided by
comfort, but rather by the pursuit of truth and accuracy, based on the best knowledge we can obtain. Despite
what many prominent voices would have you believe, the virology is open-and-shut: there is no compelling
reason to believe that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here. 

Ethan Siegel

I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various
colleges. I have won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for my blog, Starts With A Bang,
including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. My two books, Treknology: The Science
of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive, Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way
and discovered the entire Universe, are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow me on Twitter
@startswithabang.

The Wuhan lab-leak theory is getting more

attention. That’s because key evidence is still
missing.

By
Adam Taylor
Reporter
May 27, 2021|Updated May 27, 2021 at 9:48 a.m. EDT

You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest, including news from
around the globe, interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.
Workers inside a laboratory in Wuhan, China, in 2017. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

A new surge of interest has revived the lab-leak theory. Well over a year since a novel coronavirus began to
spread in Wuhan, the idea that the deadly outbreak could be linked to a virus research center in the Chinese city
has lingered, unproven but not eliminated.

Although the resurgent chatter may suggest new clues or proof, the inverse is in fact true. It is the persistent
absence of any convincing evidence either for or against the theory that has prompted calls for more
investigation.

President Biden said Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community does “not believe there is sufficient
information” to fully understand the likelihood of different scenarios for explaining the origin of the virus that
causes covid-19.

At least publicly, the evidence in favor of a link between the outbreak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV) has not changed significantly in months, and many virologists still have persistent doubts that such a link
exists.

What has clearly changed, however, is the political debate. Most obviously, a new U.S. administration that is
not so openly anti-China has led some former skeptics to reconsider the existing evidence. And public health
experts — most of whom never ruled out the lab theory outright — have expressed disappointment with a
World Health Organization-backed investigation that dismissed a link between WIV and the outbreak.

Did coronavirus accidentally escape from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful. | The Fact Checker
In the absence of crucial evidence of how the new coronavirus began comes many theories — one is that the
virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. (Sarah Cahlan, Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
The annual World Health Assembly this week brought new calls to significantly expand upon the WHO-backed
investigation, which concluded in March. Biden on Wednesday announced that he was asking the U.S.
intelligence community to “redouble its efforts” to collect information about the coronavirus’s origin.

The United States would continue to partner with “like-minded partners around the world to press China to
participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation,” Biden said.

So far, though, there is certainly no smoking gun. Here’s where things stand:

The public evidence for or against the lab leak is nowhere near decisive.

The lab-leak theory emerged in January 2020, when the virus was still mostly confined to China and had killed
hundreds, rather than millions.

Links between WIV and the virus were floated in right-wing news organizations like the Washington Times,
while former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon questioned whether there was a link between the virus
and “bioweapons research” in China.

Experts quickly dismissed the idea that the coronavirus was intentionally developed as a bioweapon, but vaguer
questions about the link between WIV and the virus, including those asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in
February 2020, were harder to answer.

In April 2020, journalists including The Washington Post’s David Ignatius and Josh Rogin suggested that a bat
virus being studied in potentially risky experiments could have escaped the lab.

For example, “gain-of-function” experiments examining how viruses found in animals can infect humans are
noble in aim and designed to prevent future pandemics. But Rogin reported that U.S. officials had raised
concerns about safety at WIV in 2018. “Whether the staff are interacting with bats in the wild or in the lab, they
are routinely putting themselves at risk of infection,” one unnamed U.S. scientist told a team of Post reporters
for an April 30 report.

Most pandemics, however, have emerged via a simpler route: passing from an animal to a human through
“zoonotic” infection. Plenty of virologists still argue that this was the most likely path of the novel coronavirus.

But there is still a dearth of evidence about this coronavirus’s origins. Without full cooperation from Chinese
authorities, clues have primarily come out in dribs and drabs from intelligence leaks or complicated analyses of
genetic code.

Some analysts have complained about the unproved provenance of leaked intelligence, including the detail in a
recent Wall Street Journal report that WIV staff may have fallen ill in 2019 with covid-like symptoms.

The WHO-led investigation into the virus’s origins only spurred interest in the lab-leak
theory.

Prominent virologists, many of whom had been hesitant to speak out publicly before, are now openly calling for
a broader investigation.

Eighteen prominent scientists on May 14 published a letter in the journal Science arguing that “theories of
accidental release” remained “viable.” Among them was Ralph Baric, a virologist who worked with Shi
Zhengli, a renowned expert on bat coronaviruses based in Wuhan, who is central to many lab-leak hypotheses.
Their timing was motivated by this week’s World Health Assembly and a desire to point out the perceived
weaknesses of the WHO-backed investigation.

That probe saw a team of 17 international experts fly to Wuhan to visit WIV themselves. It found that a “very
likely” scenario involved an unknown animal passing the virus to humans.

The WHO team dismissed the lab-leak idea as “extremely unlikely.” Indeed, its report spends considerably
more time discussing a theory that the virus was imported on frozen food, an idea pushed by Beijing that has
little international support.

Even to the leak theory’s skeptics, that was a stretch.

The dismissive attitude to the lab-leak theory furthered criticisms that the WHO team was too close to Chinese
experts: Peter Daszak, head of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, had been a colleague of Shi, the Wuhan
coronavirus expert, for 15 years. The team only got three hours to visit the lab.

“At the end of the day, they show us what they show,” Hung Nguyen-Viet, a Vietnamese expert on livestock
and human health who joined the trip, told The Post.

Speaking at a news conference in March, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the
lab-leak theory “requires further investigation” and that he was ready to deploy specialists on additional
missions.

It is still not clear what the endgame is.

Biden’s announcement on Wednesday lent credence to the lab-leak theory: Some Democrats are now backing
calls for a congressional inquiry. The president set a 90-day deadline for the intelligence community to come
“closer to a definitive conclusion” and pushed for more international pressure on China.

Yet Biden also admitted that the intelligence community so far only had “low or moderate confidence” in its
assessments. Without Chinese cooperation, it is unclear how these bodies would be able to reach new
conclusions within a three-month period.

Broader international pressure could well stumble against China, which wields veto power not only at the
World Health Assembly, but also at the U.N. Security Council. Plus, it isn’t clear what standard of evidence
would satisfy partisans on either side of the divide on the lab-leak theory, if any.

We may never know exactly how the coronavirus that causes covid-19 spread to humans. Scientists still haven’t
pinpointed the origin of the influenza strain that killed millions in 1918. Although civet cats were speculated
within months to be the intermediate host in a 2003 SARS outbreak, it took years to confirm it.

It wasn’t until 2017 that that virus was finally traced back to bats. The lab that solved the mystery? The Wuhan
Institute of Virology.

The superspreaders behind top COVID-19

conspiracy theories
 AP
February 15, 2021 12:06 IST
Updated: February 15, 2021 13:01 IST
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This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February
2020 shows the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S.   | Photo
Credit: AP

Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for

conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, guesswork and
propaganda flourished.
As the coronavirus spread across the globe, so too did speculation about its origins. Perhaps the virus escaped
from a lab. Maybe it was engineered as a bioweapon.

Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of
knowledge, guesswork and propaganda flourished.

College professors with no evidence or training in virology were touted as experts. Anonymous social media
users posed as high-level intelligence officials. And from China to Iran to Russia to the United States,
governments amplified claims for their own motives.

The Associated Press collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab on a nine-month
investigation to identify the people and organisations behind some of the most viral misinformation about the
origins of the coronavirus.

Their claims were explosive. Their evidence was weak. These are the superspreaders.

Francis Boyle
Who is he?

A Harvard trained law professor at the University of Illinois, Mr. Boyle drafted a 1989 law banning biological
weapons and has advised the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Boyle has no academic degree in virology or biology but is a long-standing critic of research on pathogens.
He has claimed Israeli intelligence was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; that SARS, the
swine flu and Ebola have been genetically modified; and that West Nile virus and Lyme disease escaped from a
U.S. bio-warfare lab. He has also claimed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates “was involved” in the spread of
Zika.

COVID-19 claim

Mr. Boyle says the coronavirus is a genetically engineered bio-weapon that escaped from a high-level lab in
Wuhan, China. He maintains it shows signs of nanotechnological tinkering and the insertion of proteins from
HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. He alleges that U.S. researchers helped create it, and that thousands
of doctors, scientists, and elected leaders are conspiring to hide the truth.

Mr. Boyle promoted his claim in an email to a list of news organisations and personal contacts on January 24,
2020. That same day, he was interviewed on a podcast called Geopolitics and Empire. That podcast was cited
by a little-known Indian website, GreatGameIndia, and went viral, with Mr. Boyle’s comments picked up and
featured in Iranian-state TV, Russian state media, and fringe websites in the U.S. and around the world. He’s
since repeated his claims on Alex Jones’ show Infowars.

Evidence?

Mr. Boyle bases his argument on circumstantial evidence: the presence of a Biosafety Level 4 lab in Wuhan, the
fact that other viruses have escaped from other labs in the past, and his belief that governments around the
world are engaged in a secret arms race over biological weapons.

Biosafety Level 4 labs — or BSL4 labs — have the highest level of bio-safety precautions.

“It seemed to me that obviously, this came out of the Wuhan BSL 4,” Mr. Boyle told The Associated Press,
dismissing the accepted explanation that the virus emerged from the Wuhan market as “completely
preposterous.”

A World Heath Organisation team concluded it was extremely unlikely the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab,
and other experts have said the virus shows no signs of genetic manipulation.

GreatGameIndia
What is it?

A website that was an early promoter of the theory that the coronavirus was engineered.

Its January 26, 2020, story on ‘Coronavirus bioweapon-How China Stole the Coronavirus From Canada and
Weaponised It’ was picked up by far-right financial blog Zero Hedge and shared to thousands of social media
users before it was promoted by conservative website RedStateWatcher and received more than 6 million
engagements.

COVID Claim:

GreatGameIndia claims that the virus, which has now killed more than 2 million people worldwide, was first
found in the lungs of a Saudi man and then sent to labs in the Netherlands and then Canada, where it was stolen
by Chinese scientists. The article relies in part on speculation from Dany Shoham, a virologist and former
lieutenant colonel in Israeli military intelligence.
Mr. Shoham was quoted discussing the possibility that COVID is linked to bio-weapon research in a January
26, 2020, article in the conservative U.S. newspaper The Washington Times. In that article, Mr. Shoham was
quoted saying there was no evidence to support the idea that the virus has escaped from a lab, but
GreatGameIndia did not include that context in its piece.

“We do stand by our report,” said website co-founder Shelley Kasli wrote in an email. “In fact, recently
Canadians released documents which corroborated our findings with Chinese scientists... A lot of information is
still classified.”

Evidence?

The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a World Health
Organisation panel announced this month, saying an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab
was unlikely.

America’s top scientists have likewise concluded the virus is of natural origin, citing clues in its genome and its
similarity to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and
immunology at Columbia University, who has been studying the virus since its genome was first recorded, has
said it is clear that the virus was not engineered or accidentally released.

“It is something that is clearly selected in nature,” Mr. Racaniello said. “There are two examples where the
sequence tells us that humans had no hand in making this virus because they would not have known to do these
things.”

The Centre for Research on Globalisation

What is it?

The Montreal-based centre publishes articles on global politics and policy, including a healthy dose of
conspiracy theories on vaccines and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It’s led by Michel Chossudovsky,
a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and a conspiracy theorist who has argued the
U.S. military can control the weather.

The centre publishes authors from around the world — many of whom have advanced baseless claims about the
origins of the outbreak. In February, for instance, the center published an interview with Igor Nikulin
suggesting the coronavirus was a U.S. bio-weapon created to target Chinese people.

The centre’s website, globalresearch.ca., “has become deeply enmeshed in Russia’s broader disinformation and
propaganda ecosystem” by peddling anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, according to a 2020 U.S. State Department
report which found that seven of its supposed writers do not even exist but were created by Russian military
intelligence.

COVID Claim

While the centre has published several articles about the virus, one suggesting it originated in the U.S. caught
the attention of top Chinese officials.

On March 12, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian retweeted an article published by the centre
titled: ‘China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?’
“This article is very much important to each and every one of us,” he posted in English on Twitter. “Please read
and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US.”

He also tweeted: “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your
data! US owe us an explanation.”

The story by Larry Romanoff, a regular author at the centre, cites several debunked theories, including one that
members of the U.S. military brought the virus to China during the Military World Games in fall 2019. Mr.
Romanoff concludes that it has now “been proven” that the virus originated from outside of China, despite
scientific consensus that it did.

Evidence?

The World Health Organisation has concluded that the coronavirus emerged in China, where the first cases and
deaths were reported. No evidence has surfaced to suggest the virus was imported into China by the U.S.

Mr. Chossudovsky and Mr. Romanoff did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. Mr. Romanoff’s
biography lists him as a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, but he is not listed among the
university’s faculty. The university did not respond to an email asking about Mr. Romanoff’s employment.

Mr. Romanoff’s original article was taken down in the spring, but Mr. Zhao’s tweet remains up.

Igor Nikulin
Who is he?

A four-time failed political candidate, Mr. Nikulin is prominently quoted in Russian state media and fringe
publications in the west as a biologist and former weapons inspector in Iraq who served on a U.N. commission
on biological and chemical weapons in the 1990s.

COVID Claim

Mr. Nikulin argues the U.S. created the virus and used it to attack China. He first voiced the belief in a January
20, 2020, story by Zvezda, a state media outlet tied to the Russian military. He appeared on Russian state TV at
least 18 times between January 27, 2020, and late April of that year.

Once the virus reached the U.S., Mr. Nikulin changed his theory, saying “globalists” were using the virus to
depopulate the earth.

Mr. Nikulin has expressed support for weaponising misinformation to hurt the U.S. in the past. On his website,
he suggests claiming the U.S. created HIV as a way to weaken America from within. Russian intelligence
mounted a similar 1980s disinformation campaign dubbed “Operation INFEKTION.”

“If you prove and declare... that the virus was bred in American laboratories, the American economy will
collapse under the onslaught of billions of lawsuits by millions of AIDS carriers around the world,” Mr. Nikulin
wrote on his website.

Evidence?

Mr. Nikulin offered no evidence to support his assertions, and there are reasons to doubt his veracity.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler, for whom Mr. Nikulin claims to have worked, said he had no
memory of Mr. Nikulin, and that his story sounded “sloppily fabricated, and not credible.”

No U.N. records could be found to confirm his employment.

In an exchange with the AP over Facebook, Mr. Nikulin insisted his claims and background are accurate,
though he said some records from U.N. work were destroyed in an American bombing during the Iraq invasion.

When told that Mr. Butler didn't know him, Mr. Nikulin responded “This is his opinion.”

Greg Rubini
Who is he?

Greg Rubini is the name of an internet conspiracy theorist who claims to have high-level contacts in intelligence
and listed his location on Twitter as “classified,” until he was kicked off the platform. His posts have been
retweeted thousands of times by supporters of QAnon, a conspiracy theory centered on the baseless belief that
former U.S. President Donald Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a
secret sect of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

COVID Claim

Mr. Rubini has tweeted that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus and that it was used as a bio-weapon to
reduce the world’s population and undermine Mr. Trump.

Evidence?

Mr. Rubini doesn’t appear to be the intelligence insider that he pretends to be.

Buzzfeed attempted to track down Mr. Rubini last year and determined it is the alias of a 61-year-old Italian man
who has worked in marketing and music promotions. A previous version of his Twitter bio indicates he is a fan
of classic rock and the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Attempts to reach Mr. Rubini online and through business contacts were unsuccessful.

Mr. Rubini has bristled at efforts to verify his claims. When a social media user asked: “My question to you
@GregRubini is, ‘Where and what is your proof?’ Mr. Rubini responded curtly: “And my question is: why
should I give it to you?”

Twitter suspended Mr. Rubini’s account in November 2020 for repeated violations of its policies.

Kevin Barrett
Who is he?

A former lecturer on Islam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. Barrett left the university amid
criticism for his claims that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were orchestrated by people linked to the
U.S. and Israeli governments.
Mr. Barrett calls himself “a professional conspiracy theorist, for want of a better term” and has argued
government conspiracies were behind the 2004 Madrid bombing, the 2005 London bombing, the 2013 Boston
Marathon bombing and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

COVID Claim

Mr. Barrett said he is “80%” sure coronavirus was created by elements within the U.S. government as a bio-
weapon and used to attack China.

Iran was a secondary target, he has argued. Writing for Iran’s PressTV, he said the early outbreak in that
country “suggests that the Americans and/or their partners the Israelis... may have deliberately attacked Iran.”

Mr. Barrett further detailed his views during an interview with the AP.

“It seemed fairly obvious to me that the first hypothesis one would look at when something as extraordinary as
this COVID pandemic hits, is that it would be a U.S. bio-war strike,” he said.

Evidence?

Mr. Barrett cited reports that the U.S. warned its allies in November 2019 about a dangerous virus emerging
from China. Mr. Barrett said that’s long before authorities in China knew about the severity of the outbreak.

Official sources have denied issuing any warning. If the U.S. did know about the virus that soon, it was likely
thanks to intelligence sources within China, which may have known about the virus as early as November 2019,
according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Luc Montagnier
Who is he?

Mr. Montagnier is a world-renowned virologist who won the Nobel prize in 2008 for discovering HIV.

COVID Claim

During an April interview with the French news channel CNews, Mr. Montagnier claimed that the coronavirus
did not originate in nature and was manipulated. Mr. Montagnier said that in the process of making the vaccine
for AIDS, someone took the genetic material and added it to the coronavirus. Mr. Montagnier cites a retracted
paper published in January from Indian scientists who had said they had found sequences of HIV in the
coronavirus. AP made multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Mr. Montagnier.

Evidence

Experts who have looked at the genome sequence of the virus have said it has no HIV-1 sequences. In January,
Indian scientists published a paper on bioRXIV, a repository for scientific papers that have not yet been peer-
reviewed or published in a traditional scientific journal. The paper said that the scientists had found “uncanny
similarity of unique inserts” in COVID-19 and HIV. Social media users picked up the paper as proof that the
virus was engineered. As soon as it was published, the scientific community widely debunked the paper on
social media. It was later withdrawn.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Hossein Salami

Who are they?

Mr. Khamenei is the second and current Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has the final say
on all matters of state, including the economy, military and health divisions.

Since being elected to office in 1981, Mr. Khamenei has maintained his skeptical view of the U.S. as Iran’s
foremost enemy. The tensions between the two countries boiled over in 2018 when Mr. Trump pulled the U.S.
out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions. At the time, Mr. Khamenei remarked, “I said
from the first day: Don’t trust America.”

Hossein Salami was appointed by Khamenei as commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in April 2019. He
leads the country’s paramilitary force that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program and responds to threats from
both inside and outside the country.

COVID Claim

Mr. Salami declared on March 5, 2020, that Iran was engaged in a fight against a virus that might be the product
of an American biological attack. On those grounds, Mr. Salami ordered a Ground Force Biological Defense
Maneuver to test the country’s ability to combat a biological attack. Beginning March 16, the Ground Force, in
close collaboration with the Health Ministry, began holding nationwide bio-defense drills.

Mr. Khamenei was among the first and most powerful world leaders to suggest the coronavirus could be a
biological weapon created by the U.S. During his annual address on March 22 to millions of Iranians for the
Persian New Year, Khamenei questioned why the U.S. would offer aid to countries like Iran if they themselves
were suffering and accused of making the virus.

Mr. Khamenei went on to refuse U.S. assistance, saying “possibly (U.S.) medicine is a way to spread the virus
more.” Last month, he refused to accept coronavirus vaccines manufactured in Britain and the U.S., calling
them “forbidden.” The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to multiple requests
for comment.

Evidence

There is no evidence that the U.S. created the virus or used it as a weapon to attack Iran.