One Giant Experiment? Were ALL the SARS-CoV-2 Variants Artificially Generated? If So, For What Reason?

Mathew Crawford alerted me to a new preprint in his most recent post:

New Research: Omicron Was Not Likely an Escape Variant

The abstract:

Over the past three years, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has repeatedly experienced pandemics, generating various mutated variants ranging from Alpha to Omicron. In this study, we aimed to clarify the evolutionary processes leading to the formation of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, focusing on Omicron variants with many amino acid mutations in the spike protein among SARS-CoV-2 isolates. To determine the order in which the mutations leading to the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, we compared the sequences of 129 Omicron BA.1-related isolates, 141 BA.1.1-related isolates, and 122 BA.2-related isolates, and tried to dissolve the evolutionary processes of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, including the order of mutations leading to the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants and the occurrence of homologous recombination. As a result, we concluded that the formations of a part of Omicron isolates BA.1, BA.1.1, and BA.2 were not the products of genome evolution as is commonly observed in nature, such as the accumulation of mutations and homologous recombinations. Furthermore, the study of 35 recombinant isolates of Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2, confirmed that Omicron variants were already present in 2020. The analysis we have shown here is that the Omicron variants are formed by an entirely new mechanism that cannot be explained by previous biology, and knowing the way how the SARS-CoV-2 variants were formed prompts a reconsideration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

It’s always a good idea to read the actual paper and it turns out that an alternative to the hypothesis that Omicron variants were formed by an ‘entirely new mechanism’ unknown to biology is that all of the variants of concern (VOC) which emerged during the pandemic were artificially created and intentionally allowed to spread across the globe. That is a mind-blowing hypothesis. I was always suspicious about the origin of Alpha in England, which I wrote about at the time, so maybe Hancock et al did actually ‘deploy the new variant’, not just email about it! This is what the authors of the new study say [my bold]:

One idea, the hypothesis that these viruses were artificially generated, is more reasonable than proposing a novel mutation acquisition mechanism. However, is there any reason to artificially create these mutants, which are unlikely to have occurred naturally, given the current SARS-CoV-2 epidemic?

Suppose the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and its one amino acid reversion mutants were artificially and systematically generated. In that case, we should suspect that the other variants (Alpha to Delta) may also be artificially generated viruses. Indeed, the lack of findings to date that many of the various mutations seen, especially in the early variants, are indeed associated with increased viral infection supports the hypothesis that each variant was artificially synthesized to identify the amino acids of the S protein responsible for infectivity and pathogenicity. The possibility that the set of mutants was artificially generated to identify amino acids of the S protein involved in the infectivity and virulence is supported. Reverse genetics experiments are an essential part of virus research, and it is inimical to virus research to consider that artificially synthesized viruses were deliberately spread throughout the world. However, now that reverse genetics has become common in virus research, we believe it is not scientific to discuss the mutation process of SARS-CoV-2 without excluding the possibility of artificially synthesized viruses.

Finally, we would like to add that while artificially synthesized viruses may have spread, we are not criticizing reverse genetics technology, as reverse genetics technology has made tremendous advances in virology. In addition, our analysis uses databases with a limited number of viral sequences, and we cannot deny the possibility that unreliable data may have been registered due to technical problems in sequencing or some malicious intent. Furthermore, we do not conclude that these viruses were artificially synthesized and distributed based on malicious intent. This paper aims to point out that SARS-CoV-2 has undergone unthinkable mutations under conventional coronavirus mutation mechanisms, and we hope that the possibility of artificial theory should be included in the discussion seriously as to the formation of SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Those are mind-blowing speculations. The authors basically tell us that the variants of concern, especially Omicron, could not possibly have emerged naturally and thus, either a new evolutionary mechanism previously unknown to biology is at work, or they were all artificially engineered for purposes unknown, not ruling out malicious intent.