The tl;dr is that there is a group called EcoHealth Alliance that was working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) making novel coronaviruses by modifying the furin cleavage site of coronaviruses taken from bats. The WIV (along with EcoHealth Alliance and also potentially the Chinese military) was also making chimeric viruses from the viruses responsible for SARS and MERS. They were then using these viruses to infect "humanized" mice (mice with human lung tissue). The head of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, was one of the first to denounce the possibility of a lab leak (without disclosing the work he was doing at WIV of course). Daszak was later kicked off the Lancet’s COVID-19 commission because he refused to share old progress reports on the work he was funding at WIV.
All of this evidence is circumstantial, but it's really a bit suspicious that this outbreak started just a few kilometers where this exact type of virus was being created.
Thank you for the write up. I’ll add a funny line from Jon Stewart: if an outbreak of chocolate goodness happens outside Hershey, Pennsylvania you don’t need to search for the bat that ate the cocoa bean. It’s the factory, stupid.
The tl;dr is that there is a group called EcoHealth Alliance that was working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) making novel coronaviruses by modifying the furin cleavage site of coronaviruses taken from bats. The WIV (along with EcoHealth Alliance and also potentially the Chinese military) was also making chimeric viruses from the viruses responsible for SARS and MERS. They were then using these viruses to infect "humanized" mice (mice with human lung tissue). The head of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, was one of the first to denounce the possibility of a lab leak (without disclosing the work he was doing at WIV of course). Daszak was later kicked off the Lancet’s COVID-19 commission because he refused to share old progress reports on the work he was funding at WIV.
All of this evidence is circumstantial, but it's really a bit suspicious that this outbreak started just a few kilometers where this exact type of virus was being created.