The South African doctor who discovered it says it is milder – and the US says no more lockdowns.
Zoom call with "Viral" author Matt Ridley on the origins of Covid-19
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
The virus has never been found in any animal at the "wet market." But enhanced versions have been in the lab for almost a decade.
Update to Strategic View
Thanks to the detective work of a global network of independent Internet sleuths, it has been established beyond doubt that three Chinese laboratories in Wuhan have been experimenting with bat-borne coronaviruses since a 2012 lethal outbreak in Yunnan. Direct animal origin can be ruled out because none from the "wet market" blocks away from the China CDC lab have ever tested positive, yet the first human cases clustered there, and there are traces of the virus on environmental surfaces. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has a published record of experimenting with modifications, especially to the furin cleft, which determines the virus's ability to infect human cells. Such experiments were being conducted under low levels of bio-security, not the much-vaunted Level 4 of which the Institute is capable. There is a documented history of leaks, as there is from many laboratories world-wide.