The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682:

Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail.

From the article.

>Researchers at Boston University say they have developed a new COVID strain that has an 80% kill rate following a series of similar experiments first thought to have started the global pandemic that began in China.

>The variant, a combination of Omicron and the original virus in Wuhan, killed 80% of the mice infected with it, the university said. When mice were only exposed to Omicron, they experienced mild symptoms.

And.

>They extracted the spike protein from Omicron and attached it with the strain first detected at the onset of the pandemic that began in Wuhan, China. They then documented how the mice reacted to the hybrid strain.

>"In…mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent," they wrote in a research paper.

>The new strain has five times more infectious virus particles than the Omicron variant, researchers said.

As of the time of my posting this (2:29 AM CDT), this story is very recently released, only about 2 hours ago. So it is possible that this is false story or misleading information, but I got a feeling that it is not. Time will tell.

Anyway I wonder at the reasoning for attempting such "gain of function" in a clearly demonstrated highly contagious disease. At least it wasn't kept a secret, right? Or maybe it shoulda been...

You know why they allowed us to stop wearing masks in the US? Because the CDC said everybody in the US has already had it or is already vaccinated. Well, I was vaccinated with 2 damn shots and a booster and I still got it anyways in the last week of August this year. I was surprised and stunned. I totally thought I had dodged the bullet. My case was very mild with just some fever for few days and some cough and mild SOB. I was COVID positive for almost exactly 14 days. I'm age 62. Now I got my 2nd booster and I hope I'll be better off. (lol! Who am I kidding?)

Not to get too "tin-hatty" but it seems to me this would be a terrific way to clean the world up in a jiffy if the societal SHTF. And not leave everything all radioactive, if you take my meaning.

You might find this essay I wrote in 2018, interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/8sa5cy/my_commentary_about_this_article_serving_the_2/

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y6zw1j/boston_university_researchers_claim_to_have/isrzkg2/