"I dare not speak much further: But cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves, when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear"

We've mentioned many times about how the Wuhan Virus was Chairman Xi's incompetant bioweapon.

That would be a variant of the "lab leak" theory for those keeping track. That would be the lab leak theory that conservatives have been telling you since April of 2020 was a valid theory despite the supposed "experts" saying otherwise, and indeed getting social media to ban as "disinformation" when the correct term was "different hypothesis neither of which has been disproven". Many of course have been tracking the evolution of "this virus was engineered by Chairman Xi's highly skilled advanced scientific employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology" from a somehow 'racist' dogwhistle theory (no no, it's those disgusting dirty Chinese and their backwards primitive wet markets where they swim in disease, this theory is much less racist use it) to one that got you lifetime bans from social media for even suggesting, to begrudging remote possibility (promotion of which could still get you banned), to potentially valid theory (now you can say it), to its current state of "the current consensus hypothesis which, while neither can still yet to be proven, seems to be on balance of probability the correct one".

Oh, and during this process it turns out Chairman Xi's bioweapons team was also being funded by Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak, and in fact possibly directed to perform the same "gain of function" research that would in theory have at least made an effective bioweapon.

Anyways, that's all old hat now.

Yes that's right, Mark Steyn tells the tale:

How long is it since you've heard anyone even on MSNBC or Facebook say the word "pangolin" with a straight face? But Messrs Tanaka and Miyazawa have taken it to the next level:

In this study, we aimed to clarify the evolutionary processes leading to the formation of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, focusing on Omicron variants with many amino acid mutations in the spike protein among SARS-CoV-2 isolates. To determine the order in which the mutations leading to the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, we compared the sequences of 129 Omicron BA.1-related isolates, 141 BA.1.1-related isolates, and 122 BA.2-related isolates, and tried to dissolve the evolutionary processes of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, including the order of mutations leading to the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants and the occurrence of homologous recombination. As a result, we concluded that the formations of a part of Omicron isolates BA.1, BA.1.1, and BA.2 were not the products of genome evolution as is commonly observed in nature... [EMPHASIS ADDED]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up there. What exactly does that last sentence mean?

The analysis we have shown here is that the Omicron variants are formed by an entirely new mechanism that cannot be explained by previous biology.

Er, okay. But again, what are you really trying to say?

In the genetic variation in the S protein in these variants, most of the mutations were non-synonymous (Fig. 1). There were no synonymous mutations in the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Mu variants, but only one each in the Lambda and Omicron variants. Among these variants, the Omicron variant (BA.1 lineage), which shows the greatest accumulation of mutations in the S protein, is primarily non-synonymous in the S protein and has only one synonymous mutation at c25000u. The synonymous/non-synonymous ratio is abnormal, given how human coronaviruses have mutated.

What "synonymous" means in this context is that normally, when something mutates naturally, it does so mostly in ways that don't change the nature of the original: hence, such mutations are merely synonymous. When you have a "synonymous/non-synonymous ratio" as "abnormal" as that of the Covid variants, that means they are not occurring naturally:

The fact that most of these mutations occurred without synonymous mutations (Fig. 2) suggests that none of these mutations arose as a result of trial-and-error random mutations in nature.

In other words, not only did the Covid come from a lab, but so did the variants:

Suppose the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and its one amino acid reversion mutants were artificially and systematically generated. In that case, we should suspect that the other variants (Alpha to Delta) may also be artificially generated viruses.

Is it possible the conclusions drawn are (legitimately) flawed? Sure. Is it possible that the design of the study is inherently (and again, legitimately) flawed? Sure, it happens. Did they have the wrong data, or fudged the whole thing? Maybe.

However you'd think this would deserve some sort of press. Steyn agrees:

The analysis we have shown here concludes that the Omicron variants are formed by a completely new mechanism that cannot be explained by previous biology.

That's pretty interesting, isn't it? Particularly if you're one of these politico-media zombies droning "Follow the science... Must follow the science" thirty times a day. Well, for eleven years I've been stuck in the dank toilet of the DC Superior Court for being a soi-disant "science denier". Yet I managed to "follow the science" all the way to Osaka and Kyoto and I was discombobulated by what I found there. Why is it only psmi and a couple of others and not the science and health correspondents of the BBC and The New York Times that are interested in the ostensibly startling revelation that all the major Covid "variants" are also lab creations?

Which is where we came in, with my modification of the "lab leak" theory. As you might think as you read this, the 'traditional' lab leak theory implies some sort of leak, similar to the 2007 foot-and-mouth-disease example from the Matt Ridley article linked earlier. Like you turn on your faucet, but the gasket gave out and now the water is leaking onto your floor. When multiple faucets in your house start all leaking consecutively, you might be inclined to think that a simple failure in equipment or process has stopped being the best explanation for what is happening.

It's just about possible to believe that the original strain escaped from the lab accidentally. But is it possible to believe that every artificially created variant from Alpha to Omicron also escaped from the lab accidentally whenever the Covid showed signs of flagging? (Including presumably the incoming referenced at the top.) You'll recall Boris Johnson as late as December 2021 insisting that the impending Omicron made it more urgent than ever that you get your booster, or he might have to cancel Christmas. Norman Fenton links to a Substack by a bloke called "psmi" that concludes:

Someone, somewhere, really is doing all this deliberately.

Shakespeare, with great apologies to the title of this post, got it wrong. We don't believe rumours because of what we fear, we fear rumours because it might break apart that which we believe. Like the furin cleavages of Chairman Xi's bioweapon.