A look at unsafe lab operations

One of the most dramatic accidental releases occurred in a military research laboratory in Sverdlovsk, Russia in 1979. Anthrax spores were accidentally released killing at least 100 people.

Russia denied the outbreak for years blaming it on the consumption of anthrax contaminated meat.

Laboratory biosecurity procedures and oversights at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, MD, a top echelon world class laboratory before and during the anthrax letters make keen reading and offer clues regarding unsafe biological laboratory operations.

The evidence to date, from a variety of reliable studies, is that there are a high percentage of asymptomatic carries of COVID-19 who readily shed the coronavirus. A laboratory worker at WIV or WCDC could have been accidentally exposed, especially if working at the low BSL-2 level, was asymptomatic, and departed the laboratory unknowingly carrying the virus with them and shedding it among the community.

Likewise, a laboratory connected worker collecting field samples from far off bat caves may have been asymptomatically infected and acted as a viral carrier and shedder. A very plausible scenario compounded by human error.

Short of the declassification of a classified report, most likely we will never know the origin with any certainty.

— Terrance Wilson, Chico