This post was published by Jon Fleetwood. Support him by subscribing at Substack and following at Instagram / X / Facebook.
The government-funded EcoHealth-Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)-Ralph Baric research network at the center of the COVID-19 origins controversy spent years before the pandemic helping build the SARS-related coronavirus reference space that would later be used to explain SARS-CoV-2’s supposed evolutionary history.
At the same time, the network was constructing experimental SARS-related coronaviruses and ultimately proposed creating SARS-CoV-2-like experimental systems in the 2018 DARPA proposal known as DEFUSE.
Then SARS-CoV-2 appeared.
The EcoHealth-WIV side of the collaborating network was heavily involved in building the digital coronavirus sequence reference space, while the Baric-UNC side supplied the reverse-genetics capability for turning selected digital sequences from that space into experimental outputs.
And the coronavirus landscape this network itself had spent years building became part of the “evidence” used to give the pandemic virus its evolutionary backstory.
This does not mean the network generated every coronavirus sequence in the global reference space.
It means the network deliberately helped build the SARS-related portion relevant to SARS-CoV-2 by discovering, sequencing, characterizing, and experimentally working with important members of that reference landscape.
Put simply: the government-funded network suspected of potentially having a role in SARS-CoV-2’s origin had spent years building both SARS-CoV-2-like experimental viruses and also the supposed natural-virus reference space later used to “explain” SARS-CoV-2.
- They deliberately built the sequence map before the pandemic.
- They also deliberately experimented with, and ultimately proposed creating, SARS-CoV-2 viruses inside the territory represented by that map.
- Then SARS-CoV-2 appeared, and their map was used to explain where it came from.
That creates a circularity problem.
The network’s own pre-pandemic reference space becomes evidence for SARS-CoV-2’s supposed natural history, while SARS-CoV-2’s apparent fit within that same reference space is then treated as validation of the history the network’s reference space supplied.
Put another way, the result is a self-reinforcing evidentiary loop.
Their reference space helps establish SARS-CoV-2’s supposed natural backstory, and SARS-CoV-2’s ability to fit within their reference space is then used as evidence that the backstory is true.
The circularity raises substantive methodological, transparency, and provenance questions.
They Built the SARS-Related Coronavirus Reference Space
Before COVID-19, WIV and EcoHealth researchers were actively discovering and sequencing SARS-related coronaviruses.
A 2017 WIV-EcoHealth study, for example, reported a “rich gene pool” of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and deposited 11 newly identified complete genomes into GenBank.
The work was funded in part by the NIAID (R01AI110964) and USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats (AID-OAA-A-14-00102) PREDICT program.
The study reads: “Based on the diversity of RBD sequences, 11 novel SARSr-CoV strains named by abbreviation of bat species and sample ID (Rs4081, Rs4084, Rs4231, Rs4237, Rs4247, Rs4255, Rs4874, Rs7327, Rs9401, Rf4092 and As6526) were selected for full-length genomic sequencing based on sample abundance, genotype of RBD as well as sampling time.”
These digital constructs helped define the known sequence universe against which future SARS-related coronaviruses could be compared.
That matters because scientists cannot directly observe SARS-CoV-2’s ancestry.
They infer it by comparing its sequence to earlier coronavirus sequences and constructing evolutionary relationships among them.
The reference space helps create the backstory.
The Same Network Was Building Experimental Viruses Inside That Space
The network was not merely cataloging natural coronavirus sequences.
In 2015, Baric, WIV’s Zhengli Shi and collaborators reported using the SHC014 spike in a SARS-CoV reverse-genetics system to create a chimeric virus.
The paper states that researchers “generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.”
The purported resulting virus was said to be able to use human ACE2 and replicate in primary human airway cells.
So by years before COVID-19, the same ecosystem was doing both:
- discover SARS-related viruses ? sequence them ? add them to the known coronavirus landscape
and
- take SARS-related sequences ? construct new experimental viruses.
The distinction between the reference space and the experimental space was therefore already blurred.
Then They Proposed SARS-CoV-2-Like Viruses in DEFUSE
By 2018, the overlap became even more striking.
That year, DARPA launched PREEMPT, a program designed to build the evolutionary and wildlife alibis of future pandemic pathogens before the pandemics occurred—predicting their alleged evolutionary trajectories, species-jump mutations, animal reservoirs, spillover pathways, and geographic origins in advance.
Then EcoHealth, WIV, Baric and collaborators submitted DEFUSE directly into PREEMPT.
The pre-COVID-19 pandemic proposal described coronavirus experiments specifically involving the same characteristics SARS-CoV-2 would have: receptor-binding domains, the introduction of proteolytic cleavage sites into spike proteins and 2P-stabilized spike vaccine constructs, along with synthetic reconstruction of SARS-related coronavirus genomes.
Then, less than two years later, SARS-CoV-2 appeared.
Its receptor-binding domain and furin cleavage site became central molecular features in the origins debate.
And the 2P spike construct became central to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine response.
The point is not that DEFUSE contained the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
The point is that the same network building the supposed natural evolutionary landscape of SARS-related coronaviruses was simultaneously proposing to create experimental SARS-CoV-2-like viruses with a combination of features that would shortly become conspicuous in SARS-CoV-2 and its countermeasures.
Then Their Reference Space Became SARS-CoV-2’s Backstory
The sequence of events is remarkably simple:
- Before COVID-19: The controversial network claims it spent years discovering and sequencing SARS-related coronaviruses, helping construct the reference space of allegedly known coronavirus sequences.
- At the same time: The network used those kinds of sequences to construct experimental SARS-CoV-2-like viruses said to be capable of infecting human cells.
- By 2018: The network proposed additional SARS-CoV-2-like coronavirus systems in DEFUSE specifically involving RBDs, cleavage sites, and 2P spike constructs.
- Then: SARS-CoV-2 appeared, containing RBDs, cleavage sites, and 2P spike constructs.
- Afterward: Scientists used the preexisting SARS-related coronavirus reference space to establish SARS-CoV-2’s supposed evolutionary alibi and natural backstory.
Bottom Line
The government-funded network at the center of the COVID-19 origins controversy spent years before the pandemic doing two things simultaneously:
building the SARS-related coronavirus reference space and building experimental SARS-related coronaviruses inside that same sequence space.
By 2018, members of that network were proposing SARS-CoV-2-like experimental systems in DEFUSE involving RBDs, inserted cleavage sites, and 2P spike constructs.
Then SARS-CoV-2 appeared, with those very features.
And the SARS-related coronavirus landscape this network had deliberately spent years constructing became part of the reference framework used to give SARS-CoV-2 its supposed natural evolutionary backstory.
That creates a self-reinforcing evidentiary loop: the network’s reference space is used to establish SARS-CoV-2’s supposed natural history, while SARS-CoV-2’s ability to fit within that reference space is then treated as evidence that the history is correct.
The question is therefore not whether this network helped construct SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary reference framework before the pandemic.
It did.
What remains unresolved is whether that reference-building program was genuinely independent of the experimental coronavirus program developing alongside it.
Or whether the two were connected in ways that have not been fully disclosed.
The people building SARS-CoV-2-like experimental viruses cannot have their own coronavirus reference space treated as independent evidence for SARS-CoV-2’s provenance without first establishing the provenance of that reference space itself.
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