Modern biology lets people insert or delete genes, creating organisms or viruses that would otherwise never have existed.

This obviously is a dual-use technology. The two uses usually discussed are civilian and military, but the two uses that matter are commercial and government.

Commercial uses satisfy customers by doing good for very-many people. Government uses satisfy government people by building reputation and power for just a few government people.

For customers, when bacteria and yeast are engineered to efficiently produce human insulin, this improves and lengthens the lives of considerable numbers of people. For governments, when viruses are engineered to infect more harmfully, this worsens and shortens the lives of considerable numbers of people.

On the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the key functionality is examined in a detailed preprint by Li-Meng Yan and coworkers which is relied on below [6]. This functionality, all by itself, makes it beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 did not simply appear in nature as the product of natural processes but instead was engineered.

SARS-CoV-2 contains intricate functionality never observed in nature that makes this virus less infectious to the usual natural hosts and more infectious to humans, and that makes this virus cumulatively more lethal to humans. SARS-CoV-2 also contains the exact functionality that would make this virus the most suitable to be used in conjunction with defensive antivirals that, once developed, would protect its owners’ population when its owners deploy the virus as an offensive weapon against others.

This unique combination of functionality makes SARS-CoV-2 clearly suitable to be just the kind of offensive weapon that was envisioned in detail by Chinese military scientists in a book published in February 2015 [7].

SARS-CoV-2’s backbone was either the ZC45 bat coronavirus or the ZXC21 bat coronavirus that were co-discovered between July 2015 and February 2017 by two Chinese military research labs and that are co-owned these labs, or some similar bat coronavirus whose genome has not been published. Compared to SARS-CoV-2, ZC45 and ZXC21 each have nucleocapsid protein that’s 94% identical, ORF8 protein (which includes RdRp protein, discussed below) that’s 94.2% identical, a spike protein S2 portion that’s 95% identical, membrane protein that’s 98.6% identical, and E protein that’s 100% identical. The varying levels of identicality reflect that individual components were engineered separately and then were assembled to form the genome.

SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein was engineered by inserting two restriction sites that aren’t in ZC45, synthesizing various candidate S1 portion receptor binding motif segments, and selecting the segment that binds most strongly to the human ACE2 receptor.

The spike protein S1 portion, the portion which contains the receptor-binding motif, was certain to be closely examined, so the fact that it was based on the SARS-CoV-1 spike protein S1 portion was significantly camouflaged. Every sequence in the SARS-CoV-1 spike protein S1 portion that doesn’t bind to the human ACE2 receptor was changed. Every sequence that does bind to the receptor was retained, but with several substitutions that provided further camouflage and that potentially would make the binding stronger and therefore more damaging. Sure enough, compared to the SARS-CoV-1 spike protein S1 portion, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 portion does bind more strongly to the human ACE2 receptor [8]. This stronger binding is how the virus achieves a secure base of operations in the lungs, and is how from there the virus fans out and widely disrupts the inner walls of blood vessels [9], causing widespread serious disease manifestations and escalating to death.

The spike protein S1/S2 junction, which mediates the virus fusion with the cell membrane, was engineered so the virus will cleave when catalyzed by the body’s ubiquitous furin. The spike protein S1/S2 junction in SARS-CoV-2 has a sequence that has not been reported in the spike protein S1/S2 junctions in natural coronaviruses. Once the virus binds to a receptor, this S1/S2 junction that gets cleaved by furin greatly enhances the virus’s ability to breach the cell’s protective membrane and enter the cell, where the virus then hijacks the cell’s RNA-synthesis machinery to make virus copies, multiplying the quantity of virus in the body.

SARS-CoV-2’s RdRp protein, which the virus uses to facilitate virus replication by the body’s RNA-synthesis machinery, was taken from the bat coronavirus RaBtCoV/4991. The RaBtCoV/4991 RdRp protein has no homologs in human cells, so antiviral drugs would be able to not harm humans while targeting the virus. For this reason, the RaBtCoV/4991 RdRp protein was targeted by Gilead’s existing antiviral candidate remdesivir, which had already been trialed on Ebola and tested on animal models of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS [10].

Also, conveniently, the gene that codes for the RdRp protein is commonly used to categorize coronaviruses. So substituting in this short sequence from RaBtCoV/4991 also would camouflage that the backbone was either the Chinese-military-owned ZC45 or ZXC21 bat coronavirus or some similar bat coronavirus whose genome has not been published.

The spike protein S1 protein and the spike protein S1/S2 junction increased SARS-CoV-2’s cumulative lethality compared to natural viruses, so each clearly was a gain of function. The RdRp gene increased SARS-CoV-2’s suitability to be an offensive weapon once paired with proprietary weapon defenses, so this too clearly was a gain of function.

Gain-of-function research that might increase cumulative lethality above that of naturally-occurring viruses, and gain-of-function research that might increase suitability as an offensive weapon, would never be seen by any customer as a positive good that’s worth funding. Customers would shun producers that tried to persuade them that it would be humanitarian to perform such monstrous gain-of-function research.

Gain-of-function research, though, was championed for many years by many USA government people who were in a position to support it directly with funding. In particular, gain-of-function research was determinedly championed by Tony Fauci. He championed gain-of-function research in his words: even if it “triggers a pandemic”, “the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks” [11]. And he championed gain-of-function research in his actions.

The USA government support of this Chinese research is breathtakingly dug in, to an extent that calls to mind USA government people’s fierce determination to fund Planned Parenthood’s abortions that end lives on a massive scale.

Government people at the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency provided at least $37.5 million to EcoHealth Alliance, which then funded, among others, the Wuhan Institute of Virology [12].

These DoD DTRA grants to EcoHealth Alliance included $6,491,025 from 2017 to 2020 for “Understanding the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in Western Asia.” [13] It’s easy to imagine Tony Fauci having a hand in drafting this line, and then steering the funding to WIV, to further the gain-of-function research he so-ardently championed.

Government people in the HHS National Institutes of Health funded WIV both directly and through EcoHealth Alliance. Government people in the HHS NIH also funded WIV collaborators at the University of North Carolina.

Government people in the HHS Food and Drug Administration approved an FDA employee serving as a resource to WIV [14].

And Tony Fauci, head of the HHS NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded the WIV directly and through the University of Texas Medical Branch. Between fiscal years 2014 and 2019, Tony Fauci directly sent WIV $826,777 [15].