Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
A potentially deadly new strain of COVID has been created in a University lab in London, according to a report.
The Daily Mail reports that researchers at Imperial College London have hybridised the original Wuhan strain of the disease with both the Omicron or Delta variants separately.
The College is yet to reveal how effective the strain they have created is, and has denied that the work constitutes gain of function, the process now widely believed to have been responsible for the original strain in Wuhan.
Molecular biology expert Dr. Richard Ebright warned that the new mutant strain, which was injected into hamsters in London, “is insanity, both in terms of the redundancy and waste,” and that it has zero “foreseeable practical applications.”
At least four labs on two continents now have constructed non-natural, lab-generated viruses that retain the high immune escape of Omicron and acquire higher severity than Omicron and that, as such, are reasonably expected to increase transmission or pathogenicity in humans. https://t.co/jKeDXXNY2G
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022
“This should be a wake-up call,” the biologist urged, adding “If the world wishes to avoid new pandemic waves and pandemics caused by lab-generated enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict senseless high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement effective national oversight, with force of law, on such research.”
This should be a wake-up call.
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022
Dr. Ebright further warned that the development is huge “especially, in terms of the risk of triggering a new pandemic wave upon accidental or deliberate release of the laboratory-generated viruses.”
If the world wishes to avoid new new pandemics caused by lab-generated pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement effective national oversight with force of law."
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022
"[T]here is no justification for intentionally making potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The consequences of an accident could be too horrific, and such engineered viruses are not needed for vaccines."
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 30, 2022
A Plea for Making Virus Research Safer https://t.co/orioZLXQm8
The development comes after Boston University created a new strain with an 80 percent KILL RATE in a similar fashion.
NEW: After Boston University created a new COVID with an 80% kill rate, it’s now been revealed Imperial College London has done nearly the same thing, merging the deadly original virus with the highly contagious Omicron. Critics are calling it “insanity” and “playing with fire.”
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 29, 2022
A former director of the Israeli Government’s Institute for Biological Research, Professor Shmuel Shapira, described the research as “playing with fire.”
This should be totally forbbiden, Its playing with fire.
— Prof Shmuel C. Shapira MD MPH (@shmuelcshapira) October 17, 2022
Boston University CREATES new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate https://t.co/4zSmwcsjmi
Last week, a new interim report released by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions concluded that the origins of Covid-19 more likely than not came from a “research-related incident,” rather than “natural zoonotic spillover.”
“While precedent of previous outbreaks of human infections from contact with animals favors the hypothesis that a natural zoonotic spillover is responsible for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident,” the report states, while conceding that “This conclusion is not intended to be dispositive.”
