There's a bizarre story out recently about a new virus created at Boston University.

Indeed the origingal story appears to be taken out of context. Here's the headline:

EXCLUSIVE: 'This is playing with fire - it could spark a lab-generated pandemic': Experts slam Boston lab where scientists have created a new deadly Covid strain with an 80% kill rate

What we have seen since that misleading, sensationalist headline has been clarifications that are still misleading.

You can easily search this story, but the Boston.com take seems to be the most objective, where's the beef version I've come across:

BU researchers create hybrid COVID virus, causing friction with the government

The lab-made virus combined elements of the omicron variant with the original virus. The results were more deadly to mice than omicron, but less deadly than the original virus.

...

This work, conducted at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, revolves around the creation of a chimeric, or hybrid virus.

Scientists took the spike protein of an omicron variant of the virus and attached it to a virus of the original strain that spread around the world in 2020. The goal was to study why omicron has a lower rate of severe infections.

The new, fused virus was then compared to naturally-occurring omicron virus samples. This was done to determine whether the mutations in the omicron spike protein were what caused omicron’s lower levels of severity and increased ability to evade immunity.

However, the hybrid virus created by BU’s researchers still killed 80% of the lab mice infected with it, making it more deadly than the natural omicron variants. It is crucial to note that the original virus killed 100% of the lab mice exposed to it.

In the end, researchers concluded that the mutations of the omicron spike protein allow the variant to evade immunity, but are not the cause of omicron’s decreased severity.

...

BU pushed back against media reports that characterized this work as making COVID-19 more deadly.

“First, this research is not gain-of-function research, meaning it did not amplify the Washington state SARS-COV-2 virus strain (original virus from 2020) or make it more dangerous,” the university said in a statement to The Boston Herald. “In fact, this research made the virus replicate less dangerous.”

But here's the thing. First, they did create a completely new virus. Thanks for that! All we need!

Second, although it may be less deadly than the original strain, they can't say that it's not more transmissible than Omicron. And if it's 20% less deadly, but 50% more transmissable, then it's more deadly, right? But, oops! They weren't testing for that, were they.

And, again, thank you science for creating a completely new virus that nature did not create and that is now part of our biosphere. Thank you very much.