This is Damage Control. They didn't create anything but...
[Once researchers in the BU lab developed the combined COVID-19 strain, they injected large amounts of it into mice, to determine how deadly each version of the virus is and again, what part of the virus causes this severity level.
With the original strain of COVID-19, 100% of the mice died. With Omicron, none of the mice died. And with the combined strain, about 80% of the mice died.
That data is where viral news reports got their headlines about an "80% kill rate."
"It's not like they made this monster virus. That is a complete misinterpretation," Dr. Kuritzkes explained. Also, "what we see in animal models does not directly translate to what happens in humans," he added.
The director of the NEIDL lab released a statement in response to the reports, calling them false and inaccurate. "They've sensationalized the message, they misrepresent the study and its goals in its entirety," says Ronald B. Corley, NEIDL director and BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine chair of microbiology, of the news reports.
In addition, there is no concern that the virus being tested in the lab could leak into the public, another claim promulgated by initial reports. "There is no risk to doing these experiments in the city of Boston because these are being done under the highest level of containment to ensure that there is no release of any materials at all from the lab into the environment," Dr. Kuritzkes explained.
"[In the US,] we are much more careful, much more cautious than basically anywhere else in the world about this kind of work," Dr. Caplan added. ]
You're just supposed to believe them because..."They are the Science!" 🤣
