STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- According to new research, the chance of SARS-CoV-2 having a natural origin is less than 1 in 100 million. SARS-CoV-2 has a telltale signature of genetic engineering, not previously identified
- That genetic fingerprint suggests the work of Ralph Baric, Ph.D., was used in the creation of the virus. There’s a direct match between Baric’s published research — which describes how to hide telltale signs of genetic engineering — and the genetics found in SARS-CoV-2
- In 2002, Baric invented a technique called seamless ligation, which conceals all evidence of genetic engineering in lab-created pathogens. Baric’s nickname for this technique is the “no-see’m method.” Baric taught the method to Shi Zhengli in 2016, and Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) demonstrated mastery of Baric’s technique in a series of gain-of-function experiments
- However, while seamless ligation conceals human tampering in lab-created pathogens, the method leaves a signature of its own, and that’s the signature discovered in SARS-CoV-2
- The findings raise the possibility of liability for the University of North Carolina where Baric works, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded Baric, the WIV and other parties
According to new research, the chance of SARS-CoV-2 having a natural origin is less than 1 in 100 million.1,2 The paper3 was posted on the preprint server BioRxiv October 20, 2022.
One of its authors, mathematical biologist Alex Washburn, also summarizes the work in a Substack article,4 posted that same day. The other two authors are Valentin Bruttel, a molecular immunologist, and Antonius VanDongen, a pharmacologist. There are two key take-homes from this paper:
- SARS-CoV-2 has a telltale signature of genetic engineering, not previously identified
- That genetic fingerprint also suggests the work of Ralph Baric, Ph.D., was used in the creation of the virus. There’s a direct match between Baric’s published research — in which he describes how to hide telltale signs of genetic engineering — and the genetics found in SARS-CoV-2
Seamless Ligation Conceals Genetic Tampering
In 2002, Baric and three other researchers published a paper5 in the Journal of Virology titled “Systematic Assembly of a Full-Length Infectious cDNA of Mouse Hepatitis Virus Strain A59.” In it, they describe a technique called “seamless ligation,” which conceals all evidence of genetic engineering in lab-created pathogens. Baric’s nickname for this technique is the “no-see’m method.”
The research was funded by two National Institutes of Health grants6 — AI 23946, for studies into the mechanism of MHV (mouse hepatitis virus) replication and SARS reverse genetics,7 and GM 63228, for reverse genetics with a coronavirus infectious cDNA construct.8
Seamless Litigation Leaves Signature of Its Own
However, while seamless ligation conceals human tampering in lab-created pathogens, it turns out the method leaves a signature of its own in the amino acid code, and that’s the signature Washburn and his coauthors discovered in SARS-CoV-2.
In summary, the telltale signature left behind by the no-see’m method are unique and odd “spellings” in the “genetic vocabulary” that you normally do not find in the genome of a natural virus. The lay summary in the paper describes it like this:9
“To construct synthetic variants of natural coronaviruses in the lab, researchers often use a method called in vitro genome assembly. This method utilizes special enzymes called restriction enzymes to generate DNA building blocks that then can be ‘stitched’ together in the correct order of the viral genome.
To make a virus in the lab, researchers usually engineer the viral genome to add and remove stitching sites, called restriction sites. The ways researchers modify these sites can serve as fingerprints of in vitro genome assembly.”
In an October 21, 2022, Defender article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jay Couey, Ph.D., and Charles Rixey clarified the findings as follows:10
“The magic of Baric’s ‘no-see’m’ technique is to invisibly weave these telltale ‘spelling’ changes into the viral sequence between relevant genes without altering the viral protein. This is like changing the ‘spelling’ of the word without changing its meaning; the casual listener will never notice the difference.
The research team used forensic tools to drill down on minute ‘spelling differences’ in the SARS-CoV2 genome that betray laboratory tampering using the ‘no-see’m’ technique.
Consider how a Brit would spell ‘colour,’ ‘manoeuvre’ or ‘paediatric.’ The choice to spell a word in a certain way can reveal your nation of origin. Similarly, these nearly imperceptible changes in the viral sequence give away the laboratory origins of this virus.”
Regularly Spaced Cutting Sites Reveal Manipulation
They were able to identify the signature left behind by seamless ligation by plotting the distribution of cutting sites on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and then comparing it to the distribution of cutting sites on wild-type SARS viruses and other lab-created SARS viruses.
Wild-type SARS viruses had cutting sites that were randomly distributed. Lab-created SARS viruses, on the other hand — and SARS-CoV-2 — had regularly spaced cutting sites. According to the authors, that’s a clear indication that SARS-CoV-2 was manipulated in the lab using Baric’s no-see’m technique.
Another telltale sign of human manipulation is the length between the cutting sites. The longest segments found in wild-type viruses were found to be far longer than those found in lab-made viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.
The reason for this is because lab-made viruses are stitched together from smaller pieces, so the genetic segments tend to be short. In nature, however, the lengths of the segments are completely random and include both very short, medium and very long segments.
The types of mutations in SARS-CoV-2 also didn’t conform to what you see in wild-type, naturally evolved viruses. So, SARS-CoV-2 looks like a lab creation in more ways than one. As noted in their lay summary:11
“We found that SARS-CoV has the restriction site fingerprint that is typical for synthetic viruses. The synthetic fingerprint of SARS-CoV-2 is anomalous in wild coronaviruses, and common in lab-assembled viruses.
The type of mutations (synonymous or silent mutations) that differentiate the restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 are characteristic of engineering, and the concentration of these silent mutations in the restriction sites is extremely unlikely to have arisen by random evolution.
Both the restriction site fingerprint and the pattern of mutations generating them are extremely unlikely in wild coronaviruses and nearly universal in synthetic viruses. Our findings strongly suggest a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2.”
Genetic Fingerprints Point Directly at Baric, Fauci and the WIV
According to Washburn and his coauthors, this artifact in the amino acid code of SARS-CoV-2 could only have emerged through the use of Baric’s seamless ligation (no see’m) method.
That’s bad news for Baric, who created the method, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who funded the development of the technique through the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It also incriminates Shi Zhengli, aka “the Bat Lady” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As reported by Kennedy:12
“Baric taught his ‘no-see’m’ method to … Shi Zhengli in 2016. In return, Baric received Chinese coronaviruses collected by Shi from bats in Yunnan province. (Scientists have linked the COVID-19 genome’s pedigree to closely related bats.)
Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute subsequently demonstrated their mastery of Baric’s high-risk technique in a series of published — and highly controversial — gain-of-function experiments13,14 at the Wuhan lab …
Experts say that the implications of this new study could be far-reaching. By pointing the finger at Baric, the study raises the possibility of potentially devastating liability for the NIAID and the University of North Carolina and other parties …
The closest known coronavirus relative — a coronavirus from the Wuhan lab — is 96.2% identical15 to SARS-CoV-2. The peculiar spike accounts almost completely for the entire 3.8% difference. Oddly, there are multiple novel mutations in the spike and almost none in the rest of the genome.
Natural evolution would be expected to leave mutations distributed evenly across the genome. The fact that virtually all the mutations occur on the spike led these scientists to suspect that that particular Wuhan lab coronavirus collected by Shi Zhengli is the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 and that its new spike was implanted through engineering.
However, the unmistakable fingerprints of lab engineering were absent — leaving many experts wondering whether Baric’s technique was used to assemble a novel coronavirus with the engineered spike while removing the evidence of lab generation.
This new study16 connects the biological breadcrumbs that link federally funded research to a global pandemic. That trail leads directly to UNC and NIAID … In an interview last spring, Baric himself confessed, that at the time the pandemic began, only two or three labs in the world were using his protocol — including his UNC lab and the WIV.”
A Big, Risky Research Agenda
Jeffrey Sachs, chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, whose taskforce tried, unsuccessfully, to investigate the origins of COVID-19, commented on these latest findings:17
“Baric’s technique has long been controversial. ‘It’s the artist that doesn’t sign his name to the painting; the virologist that doesn’t put his signature into the virus to let us know whether or not it is emerging naturally or whether it is produced in a laboratory. All of it says … there was really a big, very risky research agenda underway.’”
Incidentally, Baric’s research was also the basis for Moderna’s mRNA shot for COVID,18 and he’s been involved in the development of COVID drugs as well. As reported by The News & Observer19 in December 2021, Baric’s team “conducted the preclinical development for the only approved direct-acting antiviral drug, Remdesivir,” and “studied Molnupiravir, which is the first antiviral pill shown to treat COVID-19 …”
Other Incriminating Evidence Involving Seamless Ligation
Incidentally, Baric’s seamless ligation method was also detailed in the now-infamous DEFUSE proposal20 submitted by the EcoHealth Alliance to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018. DARPA rejected the proposal, reportedly because it had “several weaknesses.”21
The research EcoHealth Alliance proposed involved inserting human-specific cleavage sites into SARS-related bat coronaviruses — the same puzzling cleavage sites found in SARS-CoV-2 that make it so well-adapted to human lung cells. As the Daily Mail put it:22
“The $14.2 million (£10.5 million) grant bid was rejected. But did another funder pick up the proposal? At the very least, this proves the researchers were toying with precisely the sort of risky science that could have cooked up a virus eerily similar to the one behind the pandemic.”
Was There Nefarious Intent Behind Creation of SARS-CoV-2?
While Washburn, Bruttel and VanDongen are clear about SARS-CoV-2 being a lab creation, they don’t want people to assume there’s anything nefarious about the virus. In his Substack article, Washburne writes:23
“… our use of the word ‘synthetic’ derives from ‘synthesis.’ There are methods to synthesize viruses in the lab, and we study those methods. In talking with friends & family, I learned that ‘synthetic’ can have a more nefarious connotation, so I want to clarify that we find no evidence of anything nefarious.
We find no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 being a bioweapon (on the contrary, this looks like an accident) or any gain of function work. We find evidence suggesting SARS-CoV-2 may have been synthesized in the lab with known methods, probably for normal pre-COVID research purposes.”
While I can certainly understand their desire to avoid the conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon, I disagree with their assumption that it wasn’t intended as such. Too many geopolitical agendas point toward COVID being intentionally used for global wealth transfer and the implementation of The Great Reset.
But even if there was no nefarious intent behind its creation, the end results remain the same. The global economy is crashing, wealth has been stolen from the lower and middle classes, fear of the virus has been used to force us to not only surrender our rights and freedoms but also to submit to medical experimentation under duress, and much more. If there was no nefarious intent, governments’ reaction to the virus would likely have been saner.
The Smoking Gun
What’s more, even if the virus was intended as a bioweapon or not, and whether it got out by accident or intentional release, we need to hold people accountable for its creation in the first place. Unless we ban the creation of Frankenstein viruses, we’ll never be safe. Another lab creation could slip through the doors of a lab on any given day. As noted by Kennedy:24
“The world now has proof positive that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered laboratory creation generated with technology developed by Ralph Baric with U.S. government funding.
Prosecutors and private attorneys representing clients injured by the COVID-19 pandemic now have a smoking gun … Forensic scientists have now successfully lifted faint but precise fingerprints from the lethal pistol’s grip and trigger. Those fingerprints belong to the NIAID and the University of North Carolina …
UNC’s role in enabling [Baric’s] questionable conduct may have precipitated a global pandemic that could easily give rise to liability for negligence.
UNC and NIAID’s liability is now clear. But do we have positive proof that the Wuhan lab created the monstrosity that caused COVID-19? The cumulative evidence strongly suggests that the Wuhan lab used Baric’s methodologies to cobble together the chimeric virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
But a few missing puzzle pieces still prevent us from definitively proving that this dangerous construction project occurred at the Wuhan lab. Stay tuned!”
Lastly, Twitter user Justin B. Kinney makes a very good point:25
“Bioweapons are more likely to be used post-COVID-19, in part because bad actors now know that virologists and biosecurity experts will cover for them by reflexively insisting the attack was a zoonotic spillover.”
- 1 Epoch Times October 23, 2022, Updated October 24, 2022
- 2, 10, 12, 17, 24 The Defender October 21, 2022
- 3, 16 BioRxiv October 20, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.10.18.512756
- 4, 23 Alex Washburne Substack October 20, 2022
- 5 Journal of Virology November 2002; 76(21): 11065-11078
- 6 Journal of Virology November 2002; 76(21): 11065-11078, Acknowledgments
- 7 CV Ralph Baric item 25 and 26
- 8 CV Ralph Baric item 22
- 9, 11 BioRxiv October 20, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.10.18.512756, Lay Summary
- 13 Journal of Virology September 2015;89(17):9119-23
- 14 Nature Medicine December 2015;21(12):1508-13
- 15 Emerging Microbes and Infections December 2021; 10(1): 1507-1514
- 18, 19 The News & Observer December 26, 2021 (Archived)
- 20 The Intercept September 23, 2021
- 21 Newsweek September 22, 2021
- 22 Daily Mail October 2, 2021
- 25 Twitter Justin Kinney October 25, 2022
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
