A top Russian scientist claimed on October 20 that researchers at Boston University had “weaponized” the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic.
On his , the country's former health minister, Gennady Onischenko, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , cited a study that created a hybrid of the original virus and its highly contagious variant, Omicron. He said:
False claims about purported U.S. bioweapon labs in Ukraine have been a , and they have been , including by .
That hasn’t stopped the Kremlin's propagandists from rolling out fresh versions whenever an opportunity arises. And they got a new one with pre-release of the on the internet October 14 before it was peer-reviewed.
As the described it, the goal of the research was to understand what makes the Omicron variant less deadly (though more transmissible) than the original strain:
“When researchers at Boston University (BU) in Massachusetts inserted a gene from the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 into a strain of the virus from the beginning of the pandemic, they were trying to understand why Omicron causes mild disease.”
Problem is, it was easy to sensationalize the study results. Enter the British tabloid, , which published a predictably tabloidish story with a ghoulish (and long) headline:
This was picked up by other media, including .
In Russia, the state-owned channel reported that the United States under the pretense of medical research had created a new biological weapon.
The reports from other Russian state news agencies and TV channels spread the same narrative. The popular spun a conspiracy about the financial windfall the U.S. would reap from “yet another even more horrible” coronavirus.
In the U.S., , saying it was cleared by biosafety reviewers and conducted in high-containment BSL-3 facilities at the school’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.
The school pointedly emphasized that the study did not constitute so-called “gain-of-function” research, a controversial approach that can make viruses more pathogenic as a way to explore potential defenses in advance of an outbreak.
The that the hybrid virus killed 8 of 10 infected mice, while the original strain killed all 8 infected mice. None of the mice infected with the Omicron strain died.
Ronald B. Corley, director of the NEIDL, said news reports seized on that 80 percent mortality statistic. “This was a statement taken out of context for the purposes of sensationalism, and it totally misrepresents not only the findings but [also] the purpose of the study,” he said.
The university’s refutation didn’t prevent a , with some questioning both the study and the way it was released prior to peer review. Others noted that prior studies had created similar viruses, and so had nature.
“Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, believes the experiment is less concerning because similar hybrid SARS-CoV-2 variants have already emerged naturally and later faded into the background,” . “‘Mother Nature did it already a while ago IN HUMANS and nobody cared,’” he .