Covid-19 lab leak evidence ‘overwhelming’, experts say
Scientists say the chance that Covid-19 emerged naturally in animals at the Wuhan wet market is “one in a million”.
Frank Chung
June 18, 20212:34pm
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavir ... 88b0459e3a
There is now “overwhelming” evidence that Covid-19 was created in a Wuhan lab, according top scientists, who say the chance that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally in animals in China is “one in a million”.
Steven Quay and Richard Muller, who earlier this month published an explosive opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal laying out the scientific case for the lab-leak theory, have told an online conference that the world risks a biological world war if so-called “gain of function” research is not shut down immediately.
Dr Quay, chief executive of pharmaceutical company Atossa Therapeutics, told the Washington DC-based Hudson Institute that advances in virus and vaccine research had “opened the floodgates where you can have a bioweapon in the morning and have a vaccine in the afternoon”, The Australian first reported.
In his presentation, Dr Quay said a key piece of evidence pointing to a lab leak was the fact that when the virus first appeared, it was already extremely contagious, unlike other viruses which can be observed evolving as they spread through a population until the most contagious form dominates.
“Covid-19 wasn’t smouldering in the community before the pandemic began, as was observed with previous coronavirus epidemics,” he said.