At what point can we arrest these sociopaths?
#^omicron gain of function researchit appears that, not content with one global disaster, a group of researchers from boston university, the cleveland clinic, brigham hospital, and harvard (there is a strong boston slant here) are hotwiring omicron to (wait for it) see if they can make it much more deadly.
and guess what? they did!
THIS STUDY is simply terrifying.
We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor-binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells. In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%.
