BACKGROUND “speculation about accidental laboratory escape will likely persist, given the large collections of bat virome samples stored in labs in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the facility’s proximity to the early outbreak, and the operating procedures at the facility (Zeng et al., 2016). Transparency and open scientific investigation will be essential to resolve this issue, noting that forensic evidence of natural escape is currently lacking, and other explanations remain reasonable” SARS-CoV-2: Combating Coronavirus Emergence (Graham & Baric, 2020) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7207110/

This is the fourth part of a series of reports based on previously unpublished investigations into the origins of SARS-COV-2 by William Bostickson and Yvette Ghannam, which took place in 2020. This report also contains novel insights from ongoing joint investigations with Gilles Demaneuf from the DRASTIC collective in 2021, but it is worth noting that the majority of the content was analysed in 2020.

An Analysis of the Project DEFUSE proposal submitted by EcoHealth Alliance [EHA] to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] on 3/27/2018; DARPA rejected the proposal, ultimately choosing 5 other groups for its PREEMPT initiative. The proposal describes, in great detail, experiments which could have directly resulted in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in Wuhan in the fall of 2019; elements of particular concern include the introduction of human proteolytic cleavage sites into SARS-like coronaviruses, the expressed interest in identifying viral strains which could exploit the DC-SIGN pathway, introduction of "key RBD residues" to test ACE2 affinity in humanized mice, and targeted "boosting" [suppression] of bat interferon responses. Given that the initial wild-type SARS-Cov-2 genome contained a Furin Cleavage Site, high hACE2 affinity, DC-SIGN receptors and several ORF components which degrade interferon responses, the existence of the DEFUSE proposal documents raises important questions about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic.