1956: China opens a microbiology laboratory in Wuhan. It becomes the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 1978.
2003: Beijing doctor Jiang Yanyong speaks to Western reporters about China’s cover-up of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic.
2013: A U.S.-China-Australia-Singapore team, sponsored in part by a U.S. government grant to New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, provides genetic evidence that the SARS virus originated from horseshoe bats found at a cave in Yunnan (800 miles from Wuhan).
June 2014: The National Institutes of Health administers through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a 5-year grant (No. 5R01AI110964-03) to EcoHealth Alliance for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
October 2014: The Obama administration halts federal funding of gain-of-function research that alters viruses to make them more dangerous.
January 2015: China opens its first and only laboratory of the highest biosafety level (BSL-4) at the WIV.
December 2017: The NIH lifts the moratorium on funding of gain-of-function research but calls for a strict review of the risks and benefits associated with it.
January 2018: U.S. diplomats visit the WIV. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing warns the State Department about the risk of a pandemic from weaknesses of BSL-4 safety protocols in work related to bat coronaviruses.
December 2018: Shi Zhengli (the “bat woman”), lead researcher at the WIV, publishes a review article on the
“Origin and Evolution of Pathogenic Coronaviruses.” She acknowledges financial support from the NIH and NIAID under grant No. R01AI110964 and discusses future plans for manipulating the genome of coronaviruses to obtain data that “would help the prevention and control of emerging SARS-like or MERS-like diseases.”
July 2019: The U.S. government renews the grant for six more years.
November 2019: Staff members at the WIV are hospitalized after developing symptoms compatible with those caused by SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus.
December 2019: Li Wenliang, 35, a doctor at the Wuhan Central Hospital, posts an alert on the WeChat social media app about the growing number of patients with severe respiratory symptoms. He is warned by authorities about criminal liability for “making untrue statements on the internet.” Li contracts the virus and dies.
January 2020: China denies human-to-human transmission of the new virus, then admits the onset of a severe epidemic and begins to lock down domestic travel. The United States suspends travel from China.
February 2020: Chinese whistleblowers keep disappearing, while COVID-19 spreads to other countries. Scientists call for the open sharing of coronavirus genome data.
March 2020: The World Health Organization declares a worldwide pandemic. Lockdowns begin in the U.S. and the rest of the world. A growing number of politicians familiar with intelligence data begin to entertain the idea that the virus came from the WIV. The legacy media dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. An international team of experts publishes an article in Nature magazine asserting that the 4% genetic mismatch of SARS-CoV-2 and a bat coronavirus originated from natural mutation.
April-May 2020: China denies U.S. experts entry to the WIV. The Trump administration orders the NIH to ax the grant that funded joint coronavirus research. Science groups demand a review of the NIH decision and reinstatement of the grant.
January 2021: China allows an international team assembled by WHO to conduct an investigation of the origin of COVID-19. The WIV remains off-limits.
February 2021: The joint study conducted by WHO and China declares support for the natural origin of the virus.
May 2021: In a letter to Science magazine, 18 prominent biologists call for a balanced investigation that would address “the possibility of a laboratory accident.” The idea that the virus escaped from the WIV gains traction among former and present U.S. health officials, as well as with legacy media.
Epilogue: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” is the infamous quote of Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb as he watched the enormous fireball of the first nuclear explosion conducted in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan killed 200,000 people. To date, 3.5 million people have been killed by COVID-19.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and co-chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
