by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2024
(Dec. 3, 2024) — The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped global public health and economic systems and ignited a contentious debate regarding its origins. While initial theories centered on zoonotic spillover from the Huanan Seafood Market, subsequent investigations increasingly pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a likely source of a lab-related incident. This timeline, which traces pivotal moments from late 2019 to late 2024, highlights emerging evidence supporting the lab-leak hypothesis, the manipulation of public narratives, and the obfuscation of critical data. It underscores the growing call for accountability and transparency as a foundation for rebuilding public trust and preparing for future pandemics.
Here is a timeline that includes key events missed by the Select Subcommittee:
- 2008: Sequences with SARS-Cov-2-like functional features are published in Genbank (NCBI’s Nucelotide database). The viruses were isolated from the anus of a bat in Hong Kong. Ralph Baric and colleagues downloaded the sequence, and brought is to life in the lab with a distinct method of reverse-engineering a functional mRNA sequence from the consensus amino acid sequence from four SARS-like viruses. The virus could be replicate well in hACE2 cells, so they modified in the lab to allow it to be better able to replicate in those cells.
- Pre-Autumn 2019:
- Researchers at Nanjiang Command (NJC) or Wuhan Institute for Virology (WIV) leave fingerprints in a genetic sequence of a virus (restriction enzyme sites) that should not be there. The virus has features of SARS-CoV-2 not found in SARS-CoV-1. One institution passes the modified virus to the other, but we do not know which; the fact that they failed to use Baric’s no-see-ums method to cover their tracks suggests it was not WIV, but rather, NJC. (This is known due to sequence analysis conducted by IPAK in early 2020).
- Autumn 2019:
- Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) reportedly fell ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or a seasonal illness. One master’s degree-level worker’s picture went missing from the website.
- December 2019:
- Early cases of COVID-19 emerge in Wuhan. No infected animals are found at the Huanan Seafood Market, undermining zoonotic origin hypotheses.
- January 30, 2020:
- Dr. James Lyons-Weiler publishes an analysis suggesting SARS-CoV-2’s lab origin, noting, among other indicators, a unique 1378 bp sequence similar to pShuttle-SN, a vector widely used in research. He noted that Nanjiang Command has a sequence very similar to SARS-CoV-2.
- February 1, 2020:
- Fauci Phone Call: Dr. Anthony Fauci organizes a teleconference. The call included Dr. Francis Collins, then Director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust. Other participants were leading virologists and infectious disease experts, such as Dr. Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, Dr. Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney and Dr. Andrew Rambaut, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, to discuss the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 being engineered. Participants initially expressed concerns about features of the virus that appear inconsistent with natural evolution. This meeting sets the stage for the eventual “dismissal” of lab-leak theories without generating or finding any new evidence.
- In private communications dated February 2, 2020, Dr. Rambaut expressed apprehension about the political ramifications of suggesting a lab origin, stating: “Given the s*** show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release…”
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