A U.S.-funded laboratory origin of Covid-19 would certainly constitute the most significant case of governmental gross negligence in history, writes Jeffrey Sachs.
Gravediggers bury the body of a man suspected of having died of Covid-19 in the cemetery of Vila Alpina, east side of São Paulo, Brazil, on April 3, 2020. That morning alone, five similar burials were held while about 150 graves were open in expectation of more victims of the new coronavirus. (Gustavo Basso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams
The U.S. government funded and supported a program of dangerous laboratory research that may have resulted in the creation and accidental laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
Following the outbreak, the U.S. government lied in order to cover up its possible role. It should correct the lies, find the facts, and make amends with the rest of the world.
A group of intrepid truth-seekers — journalists, scientists, whistleblowers — have uncovered a vast amount of information pointing to the likely laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Most important has been the intrepid work of the The Intercept and U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), especially investigative reporter Emily Kopp at USRTK.
Based on this investigative work, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is now carrying out an important investigation in a Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
In the Senate, the leading voice for transparency, honesty, and reason in investigating the origin of SARS-Cov-2 has been Republican Sen. Rand Paul.
The evidence of a possible laboratory creation revolves around a multi-year U.S.-led research program that involved U.S. and Chinese scientists.
The research was designed by U.S. scientists, funded mainly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense, and administered by a U.S. organization, the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), with much of the work taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Here are facts that we know as of today.
First, the NIH became the home for biodefense research starting in 2001. In other words, the NIH became a research arm of the military and intelligence communities. Biodefense funding from the Defense Department budget went to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division, the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
C.W. Bill Young Center laboratory complex for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. (NIH, Public domain)
Second, NIAID and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, (in the Defense Department) supported extensive research on potential pathogens for biowarfare and biodefense, and for the design of vaccines to protect against biowarfare or accidental laboratory releases of natural or manipulated pathogens.
Some of the work was carried out at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the NIH, which manipulated and tested viruses using its in-house bat colony.
NIH’s Rocky Mountain Labs campus in Hamilton, Montana, 2021. (NIH Image Gallery, Flickr, Public domain)
Third, NIAID became a large-scale financial supporter of Gain of Function (GoF) research, meaning laboratory experiments designed to genetically alter pathogens to make them even more pathogenic, such as viruses that are easier to transmit and/or more likely to kill infected individuals.
This kind of research is inherently dangerous, both because it aims to create more dangerous pathogens and because those new pathogens can escape from the laboratory, either accidentally or deliberately (e.g., as an act of biowarfare or terrorism).
Fourth, many leading U.S. scientists opposed GoF research. One of the leading opponents inside the government was Dr. Robert Redfield, an Army virologist who would later be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the start of the pandemic.
Redfield suspected from the start that the pandemic resulted from NIH-supported research, but says that he was sidelined by Fauci.
Redfield during a Coronavirus briefing at the White House on Jan. 31, 2020. (White House, Keegan Barber)
Fifth, because of the very high risks associated with GoF research, the U.S. government added additional biosafety regulations in 2017.
GoF research would have to be carried out in highly secure laboratories, meaning at Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) or Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4). Work in a BSL-3 or 4 facility is more expensive and time-consuming than work in a BSL-2 facility because of the added controls against an escape of the pathogen from the facility.
Sixth, one NIH-backed research group, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), proposed to move some of its GoF research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). In 2017, EHA submitted a proposal to the U.S. Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) for GoF work at WIV.
The proposal, named DEFUSE, was a veritable “cookbook” for making viruses like SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory. The DEFUSE plan was to investigate more than 180 previously unreported strains of Betacoronavirus that had been collected by the Wuhan institute and to use GoF techniques to make these viruses more dangerous.
Specifically, the project proposed to add protease sites like the furin cleavage site (FCS) to natural viruses in order to enhance the infectivity and transmissibility of the virus.
Fauci giving a coronavirus update at a White House briefing on April 16, 2020. President Trump on left, Vice President Mike Pence on right. (Trump White House/Flickr/Public domain)
Seventh, in the draft proposal, the EHA director boasted that “the BSL2 nature of work on SARSr-CoVs makes our system highly cost effective relative to other bat-virus systems,” prompting the lead scientist on the EHA proposal to comment that U.S. scientists would “freak out” if they learned of U.S. government support for GoF research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in a BSL2 facility.
Eighth, the Defense Department rejected the DEFUSE proposal in 2018, yet NIAID funding for EHA covered the key scientists of the DEFUSE project. EHA therefore had ongoing NIH funding to carry out the DEFUSE research program.
Ninth, when the outbreak was first noted in Wuhan in late 2019 and January 2020, key U.S. virologists associated with NIH believed that the SARS-CoV-2 had most likely emerged from GoF research, and said so on a phone call with Fauci on Feb. 1, 2020.
The most striking clue for these scientists was the presence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2, with the FCS appearing at exactly the location in the virus (the S1/S2 junction) that had been proposed in the DEFUSE program.
Tenth, the top NIH officials, including Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Fauci, tried to hide the NIH-supported GoF research, and promoted the publication of a scientific paper (“The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”) in March 2020 declaring a natural origin of the virus. The paper completely ignored the DEFUSE proposal.
Eleventh, some U.S. officials began to point their fingers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of the laboratory leak while hiding the NIH-funding and EHA-led research program that may have led to the virus.
Wuhan Institute of Virology in Hubei province, China. (Ureem2805/Wikimedia Commons)
Twelfth, the above facts have come to light only as a result of intrepid investigative reporting, whistleblowers, and leaks from inside the U.S. Government, including the leak of the DEFUSE proposal. The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services determined in 2023 that NIH did not adequately oversee the EHA grants.
Thirteenth, investigators have also realized in retrospect that researchers at Rocky Mountain Labs, together with key scientists associated with EcoHealth Alliance, were infecting the RML Egyptian fruit bats with SARS-like viruses in experiments closely linked to those proposed in DEFUSE.
Fourteenth, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy have reported their assessments that the laboratory escape of SARS-CoV-2 is the most likely explanation of the virus.
Fifteenth, a whistleblower from inside the C.I.A. has recently charged that the C.I.A. team investigating the outbreak concluded that SARS-CoV-2 most likely emerged from the laboratory, but that senior C.I.A. officials bribed the team to report a natural origin of the virus.
The sum of the evidence — and the absence of reliable evidence pointing to a natural origin (see here and here) — adds up to the possibility that the U.S. funded and implemented a dangerous GoF research program that led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and then to a worldwide pandemic.
A powerful recent assessment by mathematical biologist Alex Washburne reaches the conclusion “beyond reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab…” He also notes that the collaborators “proceeded to mount what can legitimately be called a disinformation campaign” to hide the laboratory origin.
A U.S.-funded laboratory origin of Covid-19 would certainly constitute the most significant case of governmental gross negligence in world history. Moreover, there is a high likelihood that the U.S. government continues to this day to fund dangerous GoF work as part of its biodefense program.
The U.S. owes the full truth, and perhaps ample financial compensation, to the rest of the world, depending on what the facts ultimately reveal.
We need three urgent actions. The first is an independent scientific investigation in which all laboratories involved in the EHA research program in the U.S. and China fully open their books and records to the independent investigators.
The second is a worldwide halt on GoF research until an independent global scientific body sets ground rules for biosafety.
The third is for the U.N. General Assembly to establish rigorous legal and financial accountability for governments that violate international safety norms through dangerous research activities that threaten the health and security of the rest of the world.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Furin cleavage sites have been found in at least six other betacoronaviruses, and there are thousands of these viruses still undiscovered.
‘Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses’ – Science Direct
Not much new here to anyone who’s followed this closely but good to see that Professor Sachs is onto it. I hope that he will take a look at Event 201 to see how that ties in, and at the individuals and corporations whose wealth and profits went through the ceiling when the ‘pandemic’ was announced.
There were dozens of pandemic simulations in the years before COVID. It’s hardly surprising that some had a coronavirus as the culprit, and several key features of COVID didn’t show up in Event 201.
Isn’t it odd that US led ‘gain of function’ laboratory testing on weapons for biological warfare mostly killed American?
Was this in fact a covert domestic C.I.A ‘black-op’ test?
“But that’s illegal!”
Just posing a question!
“Less than 2 miles off the east end of Long Island sits Plum Island, where the U.S. government makes or at least made biological weapons, including weapons consisting of diseased insects that can be dropped from airplanes on a (presumably foreign) population. One such insect is the deer tick, pursued as a germ weapon by the Nazis, the Japanese, the Soviets, and the Americans.
Deer swim to Plum Island. Birds fly to Plum Island. The island lies in the middle of the Atlantic migration route for numerous species.
[…]
In July of 1975 a new or very rare disease appeared in Old Lyme, Connecticut, just north of Plum Island. And what was on Plum Island? A germ warfare lab to which the U.S. government had brought former Nazi germ warfare scientists in the 1940s to work on the same evil work for a different employer. […] On Plum Island was a germ warfare lab that frequently conducted its experiments out of doors. After all, it was on an island. What could go wrong?”
Source:
David Swanson, “Where Lyme Disease Came From and Why It Eludes Treatment,” Counterpunch, May 17, 2019
—
“The Washington Post reports that Department of Homeland Security is relying on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate the $700 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas. A GAO report says that it is not ‘scientifically defensible’ to conclude that lab can safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas. Such research has been conducted up to now on a remote island on the northern tip of Long Island, NY.”
Source:
“DHS Pathogen Lab To Be Built In ‘Tornado Alley,'” Slashdot, July 27, 2009
—
“As the U.S. hurricane season begins in the midst of a pandemic, we republish this article about a Bio-Safety Level 4 lab built on sand and seashells in a major storm zone while containing the world’s most dangerous microbes.
[…]
Special Report: During Hurricane Harvey, a story questioning the wisdom of putting a biocontainment lab on vulnerable Galveston island revealed not only that public hazard but the failure of today’s corporate media, reports Joe Lauria.”
Source:
Joe Lauria, “25 YEARS OF CN: ‘Galveston’s BioLab Amid Global Warming’ — Oct. 2, 2017,” Consortium News, July 29, 2020
The patriot Act was a government power grab facilitated by a specious 911 event that should never of happened had government been doing it’s job! The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. intelligence apparatus took charge and turned the event into a massive plan to advance authoritarian rule in this country.
It is way past time to rid ourselves of it. It should never be made permanent Never!
Dr Fauci should be prosecuted for mass murder. Why Trump and Pence just looked on? USA to compensate the world for the mass-murder!
All fair enough as so far where and why the monster was created.
But trying to explain the release as being accidental doesnt tell the full story, does it?
Taking in account Event 201 which was an almost 100% precise simulation of the following pandemic just a few weeks later, with most of the profiteers participating in this event, a coincidence is extremely unlikely.
Event 201 was one of many pandemic simulation exercises in the years prior to COVID, and it got quite a lot of things wrong:
“[T]hey underestimated the significance of masking policies, the speed at which vaccines would be developed, and the politicized backlash to those interventions. They also failed to account for cascading viral evolution, and did not grasp how long such a crisis could last.”
‘What the Pandemic Simulations Missed’ – The Atlantic
Wow, thanks for this reporting. This report succinctly pulls together some threads that I have been thinking were connected but was never able to see it all side by side. The evidence is stacking up against the US on this one. If proven true, neither capitalist party candidate should be in the white house again.
Gee, I’m shocked. The US government lied to us?
Thank you Jeffrey, I wish more people would pursue this story. I also wonder about the biolabs in Ukraine that Russia discovered during the SMO, and what they were involved in. Our government seems to have decided some time ago that there are too many people in the world, and they are working hard to “remedy” the problem.
Yes, John Moffett, the “bio labs” in Ukraine.
First, you might recall, it was denied that such labs existed, then “Toria” Nuland expressed concerns that the labs might fall into Russia’s hands.
Col. Douglas Macgregor, on “Judging Freedom”, suggested that the labs were seeking biological agents that would specifically kill human beings of Slavic descent.
Given what is becoming known, such speculation may well be neither idle nor wild.
I have considerable areas of difference with Macgregor, yet the last thirty years have made clear that those who once might have been leery of the views of certain others, have come to discern a commonality of consideration and conscience, even perhaps, shared principles, in a time when principles, far too often bow to loyalty to money, even as Craig Murray suggests regarding principled sensibility in the UN, as being far below greed and the fear of losing great wealth should one dare stand for truth and for justice.
It’s not possible to develop “biological agents that would specifically kill human beings of Slavic descent.” And even if it were, they’d attack people like Zbigniew Brzezinski – hardly something the US ruling class would want – and, if they were viruses, fungi, or bacteria, they’d mutate and kill non-Slavic people. Altogether a total non-starter, whatever Macgregor may fantasise.
I hope that you are correct in your certainty, svay, and quite possibly the “biological Agent” used against Russia was merely Ukraine itself.
However, are you totally sanguine that there are not those who would look for any possibility of killing others?
The past 500 years has witnessed technological advantage, in the form of superior lethality – with no compunction against its use.
In order to plunder and steal resources and subjugate millions.
Genocides galore.
Brutal “modern” empire premised on the “cutting edge”, from swords to drones.
The entire U$ Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex, in Eisenhower’s original words is now but a vast complex of grift and corruption, second only, apparently, to AIPAC in “political” influence, not forgetting the roles of the Justice Department, the M$M, and academia in
“selling” perpetual war as the economic engine that propels the U$ economy, such as it is.
You may well be correct about the field of biological “agent” discovery and weaponization.
However, you might, or might not, be surprised to discover how many engineering graduates flock to the “defense” industry, which industry is doing so well that Stock buy-backs are all the rage.
As others, on this thread have pointed out, the release of “biological agents” has a long, if less than proud history in the U$.
As Carlin remarked: “Germany may have been defeated, but the Nazis won.”
“Our” time, now, must make that abundantly clear.
Consider, as well, how much closer everything is drifting (if not being driven) to nuclear confrontation.
Insanity, at the level we witness it, is manifest in many things, especially in terms of Full Spectrum Dominance.
I do hope that there are limits, in terms of what may actually be done, as there seem previous few, when considering the efforts to up the slaughter to destroying most all of life on this planet, to satisfy the delusions and madness of a few very sick beings, relatively speaking.
I’m quite certain there are those who would look for any possibility of killing others, and virologists and similar scientists would be among them. Which is precisely why the military wouldn’t engineer a highly infectious virus for use as a bioweapon – their scientists would tell them it’d infect both sides and everyone else, mutating as it went, even if their common sense didn’t.
(Biological agents such as anthrax have been investigated for military use; these are basically not transmitted between people at all, and hence wouldn’t spread beyond the area attacked.)
It is possible, but not the way you’re thinking. To specifically target specific populations all you need to do is incorporate an isolated vector, by food, water, or environmental means (a vaccine is the best direct method). Then have an agent that specifically targets said vector. When I was in the military, biological weapons expert, they explained it as a lock and key mechanism test that if a population were exposed to a specific vector that would target receptor sites, certain populations would be given the “key” through a vaccine, etc. which would trigger infection/disease. The key is usually a protein that is introduced. I have long left the military so some of my terms are pretty rusty, but it is possible.
I think you’re basically saying a virus, bacterium, or whatever could be developed along with a vaccine. That would work in terms of biology, but manufacturing and deploying enough vaccine for the military alone, let alone an entire population, would be noticed by an ‘enemy’, and then there’s the possibility of the thing mutating so the vaccine no longer works. The idea might be viable with something like anthrax, which is basically not transmissible between people, but not with an infectious virus given to mutating rapidly. In any case, unless you subscribe to some of the truly wackiest conspiracy theories, there were no vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 when it first appeared. Would even a mad general release an infectious virus for which there was no cure, treatment or defence?
Would a “mad general” contemplate a nuclear exchange in which “only” 150 million Americans died, the cost of “victory” over Russia?
If you think they would not authorize work on a virus that would (supposedly) preferentially kill Slavs” then you give them way too much credit.
And the US owes the world A LOT MORE too for many other things.
Thank you for your postings. Peace needs to come up the agenda.
Excellent, much needed article. And spot on commentary by DW Bartoo.
Fort Detrick had the steam based effluent treatment system destroyed in floods in 2019, was shut down but reopened with chemical treatment of effluent. This lower level of treatment makes a case for a possible escape vector and the timing fits with the earlier California cases and the Wuhan Military Games
Another question to make you pause is why are giant pharmaceutical companies buying up cancer treatment centers for billions of dollars?
But to answer Jeffrey Sachs point on the urgency in getting answers about these questions, it is more likely that the US will just divide the world into two halves and tell those of us behind the barbed wire to shut up.
GoF (Gain of Function) means to weaponize.
I have been concerned that Covid-19 was precisely an example of that.
However, it is (in Russiagate jargon) “most likely ” (this next to uttered in flat, extremely nasal tones) ” … that, we will never know.”
This is standard “democratic” fare.
It “answers” all questions about assassinations from Lunumba to JFK, to Malcolm X and beyond.
It answers Nord Stream.
It answers Building Seven.
It answers everything and anything that the U$A does not want known.
Yet it is accepted, this ubiquitous “unknown” by U$ society with no doubts, wonderment, or qualm.
Obviously, the U$, for example could end the genocide in Gaza, and the destruction of Ukraine, the U$ could cease “Full Spectrum Dominance” of the rest of the world.
Again, obviously, none of any of this should ever be discussed.
The M$M will not venture into that realm, and U$ institutions avoid it like the plague – even when the plague may very well have been (whoops!) engineered BY the U$.
People generally, in the indispensable nation seem to prefer to not understand.
Could that be because their comfort and sinecure require that they say nothing?
Is the purpose of “education” now, about being “smart enough” to keep your thoughts to yourself and your mouth shut unless you are mouthing whatever the current inanity requires?
When does inanity morph into collective insanity
Consider Israel, where seventy percent of the civilian Israeli population, we are told, fully supports genocide, including starvation.
Frankly, U$ policies, foreign and domestic are simply facilitating a murderous “drift”, on many levels, toward catastrophe and calamity
Thank you, Jeffery Sachs and Consortium News, for daring to bring important consideration to the conscious awareness of those human beings still willing to dare to understand the hidden currents of the mindless drift to war and to societal predation.
War crimes and crimes against humanity are not petty or little things, they reflect insanity, inhumanity, and depraved indifference.
“War crimes and crimes against humanity are not petty or little things, they reflect insanity, inhumanity, and depraved indifference.” and normally, purpose.
Indeed. I think Jeffrey is dreaming if he thinks the US, fully complicit in Israel’s Genocide, will suddenly do the right thing. The US has NEVER done the right thing, and in its current iteration (what amounts to the only iteration) never will.
And then there was the group of sleuths, with scientific / non-scientific backgrounds, operating with the real names or pseudonyms, under the rubric of the DRASTIC group. They dug up all kinds of stuff from Chinese web sites.
In terms of culpability, the US has the probable release of its virus, but also the fast-tracking of mRNA treatments as documentation of the medical fallout slowly accumulates.
Worse, this is not going to be a one-off problem. A few factors should probably be obvious:
a) Like in the nuclear industries, leaks are routine
b) For politics and security, operations are opaque
c) The industry has the usual behavioral problems that derive from labor|management discord
d) Like any other armament, gain of function viruses exist to be used
e) Release of a virus can be done with stealth
f) However deliberately, Covid19 was an extensive experiment in responses to viral release.
Were Covid19 itself a weaponized gain-of-function virus, it would have killed more people. But we really did not know this to begin with. Given that this was a virus that our government had in labs, someone should have been able to publish fairly accurate assessments of its actions fairly early on. This never came, and non-conforming discussions of the matter were aggressively suppressed.
What might people managing a program of bioweapons observe about social response to a viral plague?–hopefully, something that would discourage them from releasing a plague, but I can’t say I see that.
No matter where it came from – and there has been, and no doubt is, ongoing research, funded here and abroad on corona viruses that are known to be “potentially” pathogenic – this research ought to be banned, period, not “halted until an independent global scientific body sets ground rules for biosafety. ” quite simple because it CANNOT be made “safe” – it is the height of human hubris and arrogance to think it can, this stuff is opening Pandora’s Box and who knows what will fly out until it is forbidden – even now, people are fooling around with a highly lethal H5N1 “bird flu” which as been found in a bunch of dead – mammals ….
When will we learn to “Just say NO!”
Consider, Bardamu, that in the discussion at Naked Capitalism,
between Radhika Desai, Michael Hudson, and Mick Dunford, Hudson pointed out that the U$ lost some 4000 (four thousand) lives per million, while China lost 142 (one and forty-two)lives per million, and that the death rate among all those over the age of sixty-five, in the U$ was very beneificiak to various States (New York was mentioned, specifically) and to the U$ Social Security $y$tem.
Consider Governor Coumo ‘s action of placing Covid patients in facilities caring for the aged.
Most likely (though we will never know) the “release” was not intentional.
However, evidence has come to light showing the virus was found to exist in sewage treatment plants some months before it was officially recognized as “out there”
As well, “Long Covid” suggests a serious and ongoing effect that will “very likely” continue to plague the wellbeing of many.
One notes, as well, that there has been a notable upsurge in Covid cases even though the Feds have downplayed this and done little to inform the U$ public.
Ponder the 88% increase in the wealth of the U$ billionaire class arising from the pandemic – incidentally, Naked Capitalism has an article specifically detailing that happy occurrence, today, March 19, 2024.
Do I read this correctly as an argument for a possible US lab (Rocky Mountains Labs) origin of the pandemic? In case this is correct, I have suspected this for almost four years already!
Our tax $ @ work.
We need a much better method of assessing mental health than the psychopharmacological alliance.
Fourth: Is this, coupled with its ongoing support of the Zionists, be what will finally bring the U.S. to its knees? The U.S. needs to realize that like Rome its destruction is possible.
I admire Prof Sachs immensely but I wonder why Fort Detrick wasn’t listed here.
Specifically, in relation to the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan. There were many reports of military individuals getting odd respiratory conditions while still in the US before they traveled to Wuhan. Some were even buried, with their conditions listed as ‘pneumonia’.
Maybe this aspect is just conspiratorial rumblings but Detrick is known for accidental bio leaks. I know the funding was stopped for Detrick due to groundwater contaminates and two senators went on site to examine why. The funding for Detrick was pulled for awhile and then reestablished, also in 2019.
“Remember “vaping disease?” A July-August 2019 outbreak in four states surrounding Fort Detrick? Funny (not) how the sands shift and what was becomes “it never happened.”
The other possibility is that US military personnel deliberately released the virus in order to cripple China’s economy.
In other words, the worldwide spread of Covid is attributable to action by the US government.
Perhaps the virus got out of hand.
As a layman my understanding is that that’s what viruses do.
Any virologist would have the same understanding, i.e. viruses can easily get out of hand, which is why I very much doubt anyone deliberately released SARS-CoV-2. Some nutters in the military might have thought it a wonderful idea, but any scientist capable of making this virus would have told them there was no guarantee whatsoever it would stay put in China.
“Any virologist would have the same understanding” … but not necessarily the same purpose.
A virologist working for the military (and they’d need some if they wanted to develop viruses as weapons) would probably share the military’s purposes, ie. defeating ‘the enemy’ without too much ‘collateral damage’. A military scientist and a mad general might both think it a great idea to develop a virus to wipe out, say, the Chinese; the scientist would point out that it’d be just as likely to wipe out USAmericans.
I wouldn’t put anything past the US since it is doing an excellent job of proving to the world just how evil and untrustworthy it really is as a state.
It has become the ‘default’ position of many people to assume the worst when it comes to US involvement in pretty much anything. It always seems to have ulterior motives, always trying to expolit any given situation to its advantage regardless of cost or harm to others, and always trying to pin the blame on its favourite enemies (usually Russia, China, Iran & N.Korea).
Lying and deception are also its ‘default’ approach, except in the rare instances when the truth actually serves its interests. It is a master of mis/disinformation.
Personally, I would be extremely surprised if it turned out that the US wasn’t directly responsbile for the virus release.
That’s exactly what happened. The smoking gun is the secret Defense Intelligence Agency report of Nov 2019 warning of a catastrophic respiratory disease outbreak in Wuhan, before anyone was noticeably sick. The report was leaked around April 2020. That foreknowledge proves culpability.
Enlightening article.