https://twitter.com/r_h_ebright/status/1405239078698815489?s...
> The Wuhan lab constructed novel chimeric viruses that combined spike genes from new bat SARS-related coronaviruses with the genomic backbone of another bat SARS-related coronavirus.
> These were viruses that were novel, not viruses that were present in nature.
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
And your citation is to:
> Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus
Yes. There is a massive amount that we still don't know about the genoomic diversity of sarbecoviruses in bats in and around China. This is the kind of study that we need a whole lot more of. No idea what your point is.
2) You only read the title of the article I linked that was in sub-tweets. See the following tweet:
https://mobile.twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/14052391926286...
> The construction of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses able to infect human cells and lab animals at WIV (1) was published with acknowledgment to NIH grant AI110964 (https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...) and (2) was reported to NIH under NIH grant AI110964 (https://reporter.nih.gov/search/0dVX_GElSEGDOsNMZq7qaQ/proje...)
So, yes, gain of function research was happening at WIV.
You can debate if that's a good idea or not, but SARS-CoV-2 is way too distant from WIV1/SARS-CoV-1 to arise from any lab experiment with chimeric viruses. And its also too far away from RaTG13, which still needs decades of evolution to turn into SARS-CoV-2.
> The work met--unequivocally--the definition of gain-of-function research of concern under the 2014 Pause.
> The work met--unequivocally--the definition of potential pandemic pathogen enhancement under the 2017 HHS Potential Pandemic Pathogen Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework.