Covid DID come from Wuhan lab, says new analysis of patients, records and ... trends now
After being denounced as a conspiracy for years, the Covid lab leak hypothesis is now considered the most likely origin of the virus, according to a new analysis.
Researchers from Australia and Arizona used a risk analysis tool- which they described as the most comprehensive yet - to determine the chances the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of 'unnatural' or 'natural' origin.
The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic to 11 criteria that analyzed things like the rarity of a virus, the timing of a pandemic, the population infected, the spread of a virus and the unexpected symptoms of a virus.
Based on the nature of Covid, researchers assigned a score to each category - less than 50 percent meant the pandemic would be classified as a natural outbreak, but 50 or more percent would mean the pandemic was an unnatural outbreak.
Covid received a score of 68 percent.
Shi Zhengli - dubbed the 'Bat Lady' or 'Bat Woman' for her work on bat coronaviruses - investigated the possibility Covid could have emerged from her lab back in 2020, according to colleagues
Between 2015 and 2023, at least seven US entities supplied NIH grant money to labs in China performing animal experiments, totaling $3,306,061
The study said: 'The origin of [Covid] is contentious. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediary animal host is lacking.'
However, just because Covid received a higher score, the researchers said the 'risk assessment cannot prove the origin of [Covid], but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.'
In the study, the virus and pandemic scored the maximum number of points in three categories.
The first was the 'existence of a biological risk,' which is considered to be a geopolitical environment from which a biological threat could originate.
With the pandemic, a biological risk was present in an area where dangerous pathogens were researched and where poor lab security could allow a pathogen to be released.
Covid scored nine out of nine.
Researchers said the score was high because WIV was located just 1,000 feet from the wet market believed to have been the site of the first cases of Covid and because Chinese researchers were experimenting with dangerous pathogens under lax protocols.
In the 'unusual strain' category, Covid also scored a nine out
