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So I've never seen any explanation of why you'd be interested in understanding this. So you know the perfect spike protein recipe to make a wicked bad cold virus. So what?

Is there a path to use that to make a 90% morality version/virus? Graft it on to something else? A great bioweapon? That seems the most likely motive.

If there's a benevolent reason, why the endless aggressive coverups?

my suspicion is this:

this was not a weapon nor intended to be. they were working on inoculants to possible emerging viruses by creating new pathogens.

but they got badly carried away. there was no reason to make a virus this potent, it's just hard to stop playing with exciting toys when they are yielding results.

the cover up is simple: this was illegal, immoral, and violated the terms of the grants. oh, and it kind of wrecked the whole world. not hard to imagine why they'd want to duck the blame.

Except once you get past the completely nuts project with the bats if you read the grant closely they are more interested that it would be difficult to produce an effective vaccine than actually trying to produce one in the mouse model after producing something similar to COVID.

they were working on inoculation strategies. some of it, particularly daszak's ideas about introducing GoF enhanced virus into wild bat colonies was barking mad, but it was about immunology, not weapons.

does not nesc make it any less dangerous, but that was the goal.