Is Coronavirus a Chinese Bioweapon?

Over the past few days, state-backed Chinese media has made wild accusations that COVID-19 is a U.S. bioweapon. The accusation is absolutely groundless, so it’s just more misinformation from the Chinese Communist Party. However, there’s a surprising amount of evidence that points to the virus being a Chinese bioweapon.

It might sound like a Tom Clancy novel, but it’s painfully real.

Bioresearch facilities are classified according to their biosafety level (BSL) with ratings ranging from 1 to 4. Facilities that conduct the most dangerous research are designated as BSL-4 facilities. BSL-4 facilities work with dangerous and exotic agents that pose a risk of life-threatening disease, like ebola, smallpox, and other dangerous pathogens.

There are only 52 BSL-4 facilities on the face of the earth, and 15 of them are in the United States.

China has only one BSL-4. The facility was previously classified as BSL-3 but it was upgraded to a BSL-4 in 2015.

The lab conducts research on dangerous pathogens. Some experts speculate that this facility is also used to research bioweapons, even though such research is not permissible under international law. However, the Chinese government’s track record shows that they don’t hold such regulations in very high regard, so the claim isn’t that far-fetched. The lab is housed at the Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China’s only BSL-4 facility is located in the city of Wuhan, just seven miles from the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The highly coincidental placement of the China’s only level-4 research facility is only the beginning of the case against the Chinese government. There are indications that this facility has been researching a virus that has the very same characteristics and biological lineage as COVID-19.

COVID-19 originated from a bat-borne strain of the coronavirus. According to the official story, it was passed to humans from an animal intermediary that was sold at a meat market in Wuhan. One prominent study indicated that the coronavirus passed from a bat to an animal called a pangolin, where it mutated into a form that’s transmittable to humans. Chinese eat pangolins, so the theory says that the outbreak began when someone in Wuhan ate the infected animal.

However, there are piles of circumstantial evidence that implicate the Wuhan facility as the source of the outbreak.

In 2010, Nature, a highly-regarded international science journal, released an article that raised concerned over a research project being conducted at the Wuhan facility. Chinese scientists modified a bat-borne coronavirus by combining it with a SARS protein in order to make in transmittable to humans. The study was highly criticized at the time for having no scientific benefit and, it could be argued, that this type of research is more conducive to bioweapon development than virology. At the time, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefense expert at Rutgers University, said, “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk.” Another virologist, Simon Wain-Hobson from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, noted that the virus “grows remarkably well” in human cells and warned that “if the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.”

The outcry from virology experts didn’t stop the Chinese from furthering their coronavirus research. In 2015, they modified the bat coronavirus again to make a version that specifically attaches to the ACE2 protein. The official story from the Wuhan lab is that this virus was developed to  “to maximize the opportunity for pathogenesis and vaccine studies in mice”.

However, recent research has indicated that COVID-19 uses the exact same mechanism to infect human hosts. A researcher from Westlake University described the interaction between the virus and the ACE-2 protein as such, “If we think of the human body as a house and 2019-nCoV [COVID-19] as a robber, then ACE2 would be the doorknob of the house's door. Once the S-protein grabs it, the virus can enter the house.”

Furthermore, China’s BSL facilities have a well-known history of viral outbreaks. In 2004, three separate SARS outbreaks originated from Chinese biological research facilities.

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois and he previously served on the board of directors at Amnesty International and the Advisory Board for the Council for Responsible Genetics. Boyle literally wrote the U.S. legislation for the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, so he is a leading expert in bioweapons. During a recent interview, he said he believes that the virus is man-made.

Boyle claims to have found the “smoking gun” that links COVID-19 to the Wuhan BSL-4 facility. He pointed to a research paper published on ScienceDirect earlier this month that identifies mutations in COVID-19 that allows it to better adapt to human hosts. “It was published on antiviral research February 10, 2020, I read this over the weekend, now I’m not going to go through this whole study, but they did a genetic analysis of the Wuhan coronavirus,” Boyle said, “Let me just conclude, the critical part here where it says: ‘And may provide a gain of function to the 2019 nCoV for efficient spreading in the human population compared to other beta coronaviruses.’

This isn’t coming from some wing-nut conspiracy theorist, Boyle is one of the world’s leading biological weapons researchers.

Several prominent political figures agree. US Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) made a statement earlier this month that he believes the Chinese made the virus. In Iran, one of the countries that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released a statement that said, “It is clear to the world that the mutate coronavirus was produced in a lab.”

Despite the hard facts that give this story credence, this angle is getting next to no coverage in the mainstream media. In addition, social media platforms are reportedly censoring any kind of content that claims the virus was man-made. While the evidence is mostly circumstantial at this point, there is a legitimate case that COVID-19 could’ve been the product of Chinese bioweapons research, yet there seems to be a coordinated effort to suppress this narrative.

It’s painfully ironic that the Chinese are accusing the U.S. of creating the coronavirus because there is overwhelming evidence that points to Chinese bioweapons research. The Chinese Communist Party seems to be spreading disinformation in order to dilute the actual facts.

The global community needs to wake up to the reality of the situation and at least consider that the Chinese manufactured this virus. Time and time again, the Chinese Communist Party has proven itself to be subversive and malicious, and it’s painfully possible that they developed this virus. There are simply too many coincidences. The case, albeit circumstantial, is strong enough to warrant serious consideration on all levels.