Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 3:25 a.m. No.18949781   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9783

>>18949774

Declaration of Independence, in U.S. history, document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday—the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 3:45 a.m. No.18949833   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>18949823

>https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12155711/Jill-Biden-tours-Egypt-birthday-attending-Jordans-royal-wedding.html

Egyptian policeman had entered Israel in pursuit of drug smugglers and that the three IDF troops were killed in a gunfight resulting from chasing the drug smugglers.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:10 a.m. No.18949895   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9896 >>9910

The indiscriminant sequencing of all nucleic acid sequences present in a sample by metagenomics does pose the risk of attributing biological significance to contaminating sequences as well as biasing the biological signal through a technical signal. Thus research conclusions and clinical decisions may be misguided significantly. We found that background plasmid sequences are present in every biological sample and have been erroneously interpreted as clinically significant biological differences previously.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:39 a.m. No.18949926   🗄️.is 🔗kun

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/technology/konnech-election-conspiracy-theories.html

How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target

Election deniers catapulted a Michigan firm with just 21 U.S. employees to the center of unfounded voter fraud claims, exposing it to vicious threats.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:44 a.m. No.18949936   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9947

https://twitter.com/saggiori/status/1660093879566102528

International Covid Summit III - part 1 - European Parliament, Brussels - David Martin

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:48 a.m. No.18949940   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/bye-bye-mosquitoes-these-nyc-neighborhoods-will-be-sprayed-next-week/4390717/

Bye, Bye Mosquitoes: These NYC Neighborhoods Will Be Sprayed Next Week

The best way to avoid mosquitoes is to clear any standing water around your home - and failure to do so is actually a violation of NYC health code

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:49 a.m. No.18949941   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0049 >>0483 >>0495

Kings 10:14 says, "the weight of gold which Solomon received every year was 666 talents of gold, besides what came from tradesmen, from the traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the regions."

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 4:54 a.m. No.18949952   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Concern has continued to grow over a small, but growing number of cases of a rare, but serious blood clotting disorders associated with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine. In May, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put new restrictions on who can get the J&J vaccine, based on a fresh review of data on the life-threatening blood clots that have been associated with the vaccine. This was five months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorsed a decision to give a preferential recommendation to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

The clotting disorder is called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), and it is rare—an updated safety analysis showed that, as of March 18, out of more than 18 million people who got J&J, 60 cases of TTS were reported and nine people died. The analysis was based on suspected cases of TTS reported to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The risk appears to be greatest—1 in 100,000—in women ages 30 to 49.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 5:49 a.m. No.18950050   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0054

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.86.16.6077

R W Malone, 1989

We have developed an efficient and reproducible method for RNA transfection, using a synthetic cationic lipid, N-[1-(2,3-dioleyloxy)propyl]-N,N,N-trimethylammonium chloride (DOTMA), incorporated into a liposome (lipofectin). Transfection of 10 ng to 5 micrograms of Photinus pyralis luciferase mRNA synthesized in vitro into NIH 3T3 mouse cells yields a linear response of luciferase activity. The procedure can be used to efficiently transfect RNA into human, rat, mouse, Xenopus, and Drosophila cells. Using the RNA/lipofectin transfection procedure, we have analyzed the role of capping and beta-globin 5' and 3' untranslated sequences on the translation efficiency of luciferase RNA synthesized in vitro. Following transfection of NIH 3T3 cells, capped mRNAs with beta-globin untranslated sequences produced at least 1000-fold more luciferase protein than mRNAs lacking these elements.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 5:55 a.m. No.18950064   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0067

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26976607/

SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence

2016

Outbreaks from zoonotic sources represent a threat to both human disease as well as the global economy. Despite a wealth of metagenomics studies, methods to leverage these datasets to identify future threats are underdeveloped. In this study, we describe an approach that combines existing metagenomics data with reverse genetics to engineer reagents to evaluate emergence and pathogenic potential of circulating zoonotic viruses. Focusing on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like viruses, the results indicate that the WIV1-coronavirus (CoV) cluster has the ability to directly infect and may undergo limited transmission in human populations. However, in vivo attenuation suggests additional adaptation is required for epidemic disease. Importantly, available SARS monoclonal antibodies offered success in limiting viral infection absent from available vaccine approaches. Together, the data highlight the utility of a platform to identify and prioritize prepandemic strains harbored in animal reservoirs and document the threat posed by WIV1-CoV for emergence in human populations.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:01 a.m. No.18950078   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0082

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389864/

2013 Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:02 a.m. No.18950082   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>18950078

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095448/

The species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2

 

The present outbreak of a coronavirus-associated acute respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is the third documented spillover of an animal coronavirus to humans in only two decades that has resulted in a major epidemic.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:03 a.m. No.18950086   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0090

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1517719113

We thank Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for access to bat CoV sequences and plasmid of WIV1-CoV spike protein.Research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the NIH under Awards U19AI109761 and U19AI107810 (to R.S.B.), AI1085524 (to W.A.M.), and F32AI102561 and K99AG049092 (to V.D.M.). Human airway epithelial cell cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease under Award NIH DK065988 (to S.H.R.). Support for the generation of the mice expressing human ACE2 was provided by NIH Grants AI076159 and AI079521 (to A.C.S.).

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:05 a.m. No.18950090   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>18950086

>https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1517719113

https://www.pnas.org/authored-by/Baric/Ralph+S

Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599;

Division of Microbiology, National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, AR 72079;

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:07 a.m. No.18950098   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol: project title: Generating infectious clones of Bat SARS-like CoVs; lab safety plan ID: 20145741; schedule G ID: 12279. These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain of Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses (www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf), and the current paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Continuation of these studies has been requested and approved by the NIH.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:08 a.m. No.18950101   🗄️.is 🔗kun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMapp

The ZMapp cocktail was assessed by the World Health Organization for emergency use under the MEURI ethical protocol. The panel agreed that "the benefits of ZMapp outweigh its risks" while noting that it presented logistical challenges, particularly that of requiring a cold chain for distribution and storage. Four alternative therapies (remdesivir, the Regeneron product atoltivimab/maftivimab/odesivimab, favipiravir, and ansuvimab) were also considered for use, but they were at earlier stages of development. In August 2019, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's national health authorities, the World Health Organization, and the National Institutes of Health announced that they would stop using ZMapp, along with all other Ebola treatments except atoltivimab/maftivimab/odesivimab and ansuvimab, in their ongoing clinical trials, citing the higher mortality rates of patients not treated with atoltivimab/maftivimab/odesivimab and ansuvimab.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:16 a.m. No.18950124   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0125

>>18950107

https://web.archive.org/web/20181211162731/https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1130938.shtml

Dai Xu, President of the Institute of Marine Safety and Cooperation, said he didn't understand why some people were afraid when Chinese warships intercepted US warships. "If the US warships break into Chinese waters again, I suggest that two warships should be sent: one to stop it, and another one to ram it," Dai said during the panel discussions.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:45 a.m. No.18950188   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0189 >>0202 >>0363 >>0468 >>0477 >>0543

Concealed Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) folder and massive trove of new data introduced as NEW EVIDENCE in Spanish case concerning illegal spying on Assange and his lawyers

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-06-04/police-omitted-folder-called-cia-from-the-computer-of-spaniard-who-allegedly-spied-on-julian-assange.html

Police omitted folder called ‘CIA’ from the computer of Spaniard who allegedly spied on Julian Assange

In a recent document dump delivered to the presiding judge, more than 250 extra gigabytes of files related to the surveillance of the founder of WikiLeaks were included — far more than what was initially presented by police

David Morales — the owner of the Spanish security company that spied on Julian Assange during his prolonged stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — kept the work he did for the CIA on his laptop. It was all marked under the initials of the U.S. intelligence agency, according to a new examination of his MacBook, to which EL PAÍS has had access to. The word “CIA” appears several times on a Western Digital-branded external hard drive, on which Morales kept the projects and operations that his company — UC Global, S.L. — was contracted to deliver.

Morales’ personal files, which were previously unknown to investigators, builds on the allegations and evidence that Morales — a former Spanish soldier — spied on the meetings that the WikiLeaks founder and his lawyers held at the Embassy of Ecuador to the United Kingdom, and sent that information to the U.S. intelligence agency. These files were stored on a number of folders marked with the terms “CIA,” “Embassy” and “Videos,” along with other labels.

The appearance of this new evidence has been a surprise in the case against Morales in Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional. None of these computer records previously appeared in the initial copy made by the police, when officers categorized the material seized from the security contractor when he was arrested in September 2019. All of this material was uploaded to a cloud storage system within the judicial systems, so that all parties involved in the case could review it. The arrest and indictment of Morales took place weeks after an investigation by EL PAÍS revealed the videos and audios that UC Global employees had recorded while the Australian was preparing his defense with his lawyers.

The discovery of these new clues about the CIA’s spying on the cyberactivist — who remains imprisoned in a London jail — is no accident. Assange’s lawyers found problems when downloading the records uploaded to the cloud. They managed to get Judge Santiago Pedraz — who is overseeing the case — to authorize a second copy of the material seized by the agents. A new digital document dump offered a clear picture that the police had not pieced together. Now, a report by the experts called by Assange’s lawyers credits the appearance of “a very relevant volume of material, which was not included in the original [police] copy.” Forensic analysis describes the copy of the hard drive as containing “multiple pieces of evidence.” In this second dump, the mentioned folders have appeared, including the one that UC Global labelled as “CIA.”

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:45 a.m. No.18950189   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

>>18950188

Hidden microphones

The difference in the size or volume of the two copies is substantial. The document dump from Morales’ computers, flash drives and electronic devices provided by police was 254.5 GB less than the one recently obtained by Assange’s defense — an equivalent of 551.61 files and 973 email files. Among the new files, a folder titled “Operations & Projects” was saved, containing directories organized according to geographical area. Each region or country is specified, along with the details of the services to be provided.

In the area corresponding to North America — within the “USA” directory — there is a file called “CIA.” Inside — in a folder marked “Videos” — images of recordings are stored. These were obtained via the hidden cameras and microphones that UC Global installed in the Embassy of Ecuador in London to surveil the WikiLeaks founder. Each recording is dated and titled. Some examples are “Pamela Anderson” — which contains the meetings with the actress, a friend of Assange — “Guest,” being the name that Morales’ employees used to refer to the Australian; “Ladies toilet,” a place where Assange held meetings with his lawyers for fear of being spied on; and “Fidel,” the Ecuadorian consul who tried to get Assange out of the U.K. with a diplomatic passport.

The video files were transferred to a commercial format and renamed with references to their contents, in order to make them visible and accessible to the final user. In this case — and according to what appears on Morales’ own computer — said user, or client, was the CIA. The new evidence seized from the ex-soldier coincides with the material delivered to the judge by a former UC Global worker, who has been granted the status of protected witness.

Until now, the suspicions that the owner of UC Global sent the material obtained during the espionage operation at the Ecuadorian Embassy to the CIA was based on the evidence provided by EL PAÍS, as well as on statements made by several former employees of the security company. Also, there were emails from Morales, in which he claimed to be working for “the American client” and that he had “gone over to the dark side” by collaborating with “American intelligence.” To his trusted employees, he once wrote that “those in control are the friends of the USA.”

The data provided by Morales to the CIA resulted in the plan to remove Assange from the embassy (during Christmas of 2017) to be aborted, as revealed by EL PAÍS. The United States has requested Assange’s extradition, and the United Kingdom has granted it. But the case is still pending, as there are several judicial appeals that can be made.

Very relevant” folders that were not copied

The report by Assange’s experts — Manuel Huerta and José Manuel Martínez — highlights that “very relevant” folders for the investigation, such as those from Morales’ desktop, were not copied in the police dump. The expert analysis highlights the appearance of “deleted folders with information,” among which are several marked with the word “hotel” — the name Morales used to refer to the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where Assange took refuge and where he was spied on. “There’s an abysmal loss of files and folders,” the experts conclude.

Aitor Martínez — Assange’s lawyer — highlighted in a letter addressed to the judge that there is an “enormous disparity” between the evidence that appears in the original copy made by the police and the document dump that the cyberactivist’s experts have just obtained from the same source. “To this is the added inactivity of the police unit, which, until now, hasn’t submitted any official letter or report about the initial copies, which, as we now know, were biased and did not reflect the reality of the material of interest to this case,” the lawyer notes. He has requested a six-month extension to the investigation into Morales. Following these criticisms, the police officials have submitted a report to the judge, in which they attempt to establish all the commonalities between the digital material delivered by a protected witness and what was found on the computer.

Former marine David Morales is on provisional release. He is being investigated for crimes against privacy, violation of the confidentiality of attorney-client communications, misappropriation and money-laundering.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:52 a.m. No.18950208   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0211 >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/26/1030043/gain-of-function-research-coronavirus-ralph-baric-vaccines/

Did gain-of-function research create covid-19? We asked Ralph Baric

“We never created a supervirus.” Ralph Baric explains gain-of-function research

The work has helped in the development of mRNA coronavirus vaccines and the first approved covid drug.

 

In May, the longtime coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric found himself at the center of the swirling debate over gain-of-function research, in which scientists engineer new properties into existing viruses. And during a congressional hearing, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky implied that the National Institutes of Health had been funding such research at both the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Baric’s University of North Carolina lab, and that the two labs had been collaborating to make “superviruses.”

Baric released a statement clarifying that according to the NIH, the research in question did not qualify as gain-of-function, none of the SARS-like coronaviruses he’d used in the experiments were closely related to SARS-CoV-2 (the original virus behind the covid pandemic), and his collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been minimal.

Yet that did little to quell questions about the role Baric’s research may have played in furthering scientists’ ability to modify coronaviruses in potentially dangerous ways. Such questions have dogged Baric since 2014, when he became the reluctant spokesperson for gain-of-function research after the NIH declared a moratorium on such experiments until their safety could be assessed, temporarily halting his work.

Baric believes such research is essential to the development of vaccines and other countermeasures against emerging viruses, a project he has been engaged in for more than 20 years. That work has made him the country’s foremost expert on coronaviruses, and his high-security UNC lab has been a center of the US response to the pandemic, testing numerous drug candidates for other labs that lack the biosafety clearance or the expertise.

His research laid the groundwork for the first approved anti-covid drug and helped speed the development of the mRNA vaccines that have proved so pivotal. Recently, his lab announced the creation of the world’s first pan-coronavirus mRNA vaccine.

Yet Baric also pioneered the reverse-genetics techniques that have allowed other researchers, including those at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to engineer viruses with altered functions. Some scientists fear that the technique, which allow coronaviruses to be recreated from their genetic code, could engender a future pandemic, and other critics, like Senator Paul, imply they might have led to the creation or release of SARS-CoV-2.

MIT Technology Review recently asked Baric to explain what constitutes a gain-of-function experiment, why such research exists, and whether it could have played any role in the pandemic. The interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:54 a.m. No.18950211   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0215 >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

>>18950208

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was making chimeric coronaviruses, using techniques similar to yours, right?

 

Let me make it clear that we never sent any of our molecular clones or any chimeric viruses to China. They developed their own molecular clone, based on WIV1, which is a bat coronavirus. And into that backbone they shuffled in the spike genes of other bat coronaviruses, to learn how well the spike genes of these strains can promote infection in human cells.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:55 a.m. No.18950215   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0216 >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

>>18950211

How did that chimeric work on coronaviruses begin?

 

Around 2012 or 2013, I heard Dr. Shi present at a meeting. [Shi’s team had recently discovered two new coronaviruses in a bat cave, which they named SHC014 and WIV1.] We talked after the meeting. I asked her whether she’d be willing to make the sequences to either the SHC014 or the WIV1 spike available after she published.

And she was gracious enough to send us those sequences almost immediately—in fact, before she’d published. That was her major contribution to the paper. And when a colleague gives you sequences beforehand, coauthorship on the paper is appropriate.

That was the basis of that collaboration. We never provided the chimeric virus sequence, clones, or viruses to researchers at the WIV; and Dr. Shi, or members of her research team, never worked in our laboratory at UNC. No one from my group has worked in WIV laboratories.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 6:55 a.m. No.18950216   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

>>18950215

Around 2018 to 2019, the Vaccine Research Center at NIH contacted us to begin testing a messenger-RNA-based vaccine against MERS-CoV [a coronavirus that sometimes spreads from camels to humans]. MERS-CoV has been an ongoing problem since 2012, with a 35% mortality rate, so it has real global-health-threat potential.

By early 2020, we had a tremendous amount of data showing that in the mouse model that we had developed, these mRNA spike vaccines were really efficacious in protecting against lethal MERS-CoV infection. If designed against the original 2003 SARS strain, it was also very effective. So I think it was a no-brainer for NIH to consider mRNA-based vaccines as a safe and robust platform against SARS-CoV-2 and to give them a high priority moving forward.

Most recently, we published a paper showing that multiplexed, chimeric spike mRNA vaccines protect against all known SARS-like virus infections in mice. Global efforts to develop pan-sarbecoronavirus vaccines [sarbecoronavirus is the subgenus to which SARS and SARS-CoV-2 belong] will require us to make viruses like those described in the 2015 paper.

So I would argue that anyone saying there was no justification to do the work in 2015 is simply not acknowledging the infrastructure that contributed to therapeutics and vaccines for covid-19 and future coronaviruses.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 7:01 a.m. No.18950241   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0250 >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389864/

SL-CoV Rs3367 was the first bat SARS-like coronavirus shown to directly infect a human cell line.

The line of Rs3367 that infected human cells was named Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787

In 2013, bat SARS-like coronavirus Rs3367 was shown to be able to directly infect the human HeLa cell line. It was the first time that human cells had been infected with a bat SARS-like coronavirus in the lab. The strain of Rs3367 that infected the human cells was named “Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV”.

In 2015, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted research showing that SHC014 could be made to infect the human HeLa cell line, through the use of reverse genetics to create a chimeric virus consisting of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS coronavirus.

Anonymous ID: 02fc12 June 4, 2023, 7:03 a.m. No.18950250   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0363 >>0468 >>0543

>>18950241

>https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787

An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.

In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.

Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population2.

The findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say.

But other virologists question whether the information gleaned from the experiment justifies the potential risk. Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says.