On September 21st, drastic published a startling new revelation. In 2018, Daszak, at EcoHealth Alliance, in partnership with Shi, Baric, and Wang, had submitted a $14.2-million grant proposal to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (darpa). The proposal—which was obtained from an anonymous whistle-blower—detailed an ambitious plan to identify, model, and test the spillover risk of novel sars-related bat coronaviruses, then develop vaccines for the horseshoe bats themselves, to preëmpt viruses from jumping into other animals or people. What stood out was their plan to insert “human-specific” furin cleavage sites into sars-like bat coronaviruses. The furin cleavage site is the single most distinguishing feature of sars-CoV-2. It’s “the magic sauce of this virus,” Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, said recently. “Whether it’s natural or genetically modified, this is why this virus is circulating in humans.”