A very long and detailed and yet most-mportant CoVid history here from an excellent FORBES article with this title:
“No, Science Clearly Shows That COVID-19
Wasn’t Leaked From a Wuhan China Lab”
First watch this excellent
11:30 YouTube video and then the “rest of the story” that follows. It is both startling
and eye-popping to say the least – enjoy (formatted to fit the blog – the
medical facts are intact):
As clearly explained in
the video, this massive conspiracy (which still lingers today) morphed through
a network of Rupert Murdoch-owned publications to reverse the perpetrator and
the victim, but there’s no story there at all to support this wild conspiracy of
massive mis- and disinformation – that is fact most prominent today.
Starting in late 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus,
SARS-CoV-2, began infecting human beings for the very first time. Discovered in
samples of patients that were reporting pneumonia-like symptoms in late 2019 but without
an identifiable origin, no human had ever reported knowledge of or contact with
the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2: the virus behind COVID-19. Subsequently,
outbreaks, epidemics, and eventually an entire global pandemic ensued; at present,
over 165 million people have been infected worldwide, resulting in nearly 3.5
million confirmed deaths thus far and growing.
For many years, virologists, disease ecologists, and many
other medical and biological researchers had been predicting that it was only a
matter of time before the next pandemic arrived, including details such as how
it would arise and what the most effective strategies for combating it would
be. Despite the enormous scientific knowledge humanity has gained, however, an
unfounded conspiracy theory about the virus’s origin has gained a lot of
traction: that it was genetically engineered with the purpose of infecting
humans that it was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that’s
where it came from.
The conspiracy, of course,
is that China, and specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology, genetically
engineered this novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, to specifically wreak
havoc on human populations.
Depending on which
particular incarnation of this conspiracy you listen to, it can involve thusly:
· Dr. Fauci was behind it all, using NIAID to fund
EcoHealth Alliance, which then funded Wuhan, which then created SARS-CoV-2.
· That secret documents from the Chinese
government dating back to 2015 indicate a plan to engineer a virus that could
launch a global pandemic.
· That Dr. Zhengli Shi, the chief scientist for
emerging disease at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, engineered this virus with
a Furin-like cleavage site, in order to be specifically infectious to human
ACE2 receptors.
· That the specific mutations that encode arginine (instead of the more typical tyrosine in this instance) in coronaviruses are a “smoking gun” for the engineered hypothesis.
Those are the claims —
some with a grain of truth behind them, others which are completely bogus —
being made against the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes
COVID-19. Now that we know what’s being claimed, let’s take a look at the
actual truth.
For more than a decade, virologists, immunologists, and
infectious disease specialists have been writing about how the next global
pandemic would likely occur.
As the human population continues to grow, humans will
continue to encroach on territory previously inhabited solely by animals. Now
operating within these shared spaces, animal-human contact is inevitable, and
that leads to the potential of disease transmission between animals and humans.
Given that mutations
occur, it's only a matter of time before a disease that's catastrophic for
humanity leapt from animals to humans, and then it would be up to humanity to
mitigate the spread and severity of the outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics
that would ensue.
These events, known as zoonotic events, have happened countless times
over human history.
1. Contact
between humans and chimpanzees is what led to HIV first appearing in humans.
2. Animal
farming with pigs and birds has led to the pandemics of swine and bird flus.
3. The
idea that SARS-CoV-2 originated in animals and then leapt to humans isn't an
exotic explanation; it should be the default hypothesis.
The alternative
consideration is that this virus was created.
This has a germ of truth,
in the sense that humans have been “creating novel organisms through genetic
engineering for many years.”
Typically, this involves inserting genetic sequences that
encode some structure, function, or protein into an organism, or otherwise
altering its genome to produce a desired result.
There’s even the prominent ability to reverse-engineer
a deadly disease from pandemics past, like “the 1918 Spanish flu,” which
was the last pandemic to infect over 100 million people in such a short time
period.
Despite the scientific
benefits of learning how flu viruses adapt to humans and cause pandemics, as
well as the potential of increasing vaccine stockpiles, this research has been
highly controversial for fear of weaponization.
The science of what can be
done in virology, with modern techniques, is quite impressive. But what the
conspiracy attests must have happened reaches far beyond the capabilities of
even the most advanced research teams in the world.
The first red flag that
should leap out at you, but perhaps only if you have some knowledge of virology
to begin with, is the very idea that “you could know what certain
mutations would do” — i.e., you'd know what you'd create and what effect it
would have on humans — without extensive testing in humans themselves.
For COVID-19, for
example, we know that:
· Among the infected, asymptomatic cases represent
a significant percentage of total cases.
· Severe cases are relatively rare: 14% of total
cases.
· Critical cases, where respiratory failure,
shock, or multi-organ dysfunction occurs, represent just ~5% of total cases.
· Only 2.3% of total cases are fatal, with every
single documented fatality occurring among the critical case population.
This means, right up front
that if SARS-CoV-2 were engineered for the purpose of infecting and severely
harming humans, it would have had to have been tested in at least hundreds of
human subjects in order for scientists to know how effective it was.
While we do have the
ability to manipulate the genomes of viruses, or any other organism, for that
matter, what we don't have the ability to do is to know how that will translate
into effects of the virus in human (or any living) subjects.
Imagine that you have the tools, technology, and capability
to change which amino acids are encoded by a genetic sequence.
The entire SARS-CoV-2 genome, for example, has about 30,000
base pairs in it, and it only takes 3 consecutive base pairs to encode a single
amino acid.
There are 20 amino acids used in life processes on Earth,
and there are typically two-to-four combinations of possible base pairs that
can encode one of these amino acids.
There’s no technological reason why a researcher couldn’t
have switched the codons for one amino acid, like tyrosine, into the codons for
another one, like alanine. But then what?
You can't make a virus
more deadly — or, at the very least, you have no way of knowing what that
switch would do to the virus — by switching out one amino acid for another.
No virologist living today
has that knowledge; that's not how this scientific field works. Without
intensive and extensive studies of the virus in human beings, which we know we
need because of the inherent genetic variabilities in human populations, we
cannot predict what the resultant effects in humans will be.
Genetically, there
are many reasons to think that SARS-CoV-2 occurred naturally.
· The Wuhan Institute for Virology was studying
bat viruses: RaTG13, to be specific. This bat virus is not a direct ancestor of
SARS-CoV-2.
· The first cases of COVID-19 in humans occurred
in two places: linked to a wet market near the Wuhan Institute, and in more
distant, rural areas where contact between humans and wild animals are common.
· None of the staff at the Wuhan Institute were
infected with SARS-CoV-2; they were PCR/antibody negative, which should be
disqualifying for the lab leak hypothesis.
· And, perhaps most importantly, the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was “perfectly adapted to humans” on first emergence is untrue; this variant appears to be a generalist virus.
There are all sorts
of reasons behind why mutations occur:
(1) There are
very common ones, like point mutations, deletions, or insertion mutations; and (2)
there are other types of mutations that occur as well: duplications,
inversions, deletion-insertion combinations, and repeat expansions, among
others.
Finding an uncommon type of mutation in SARS-CoV-2 is no
more evidence that a human intervened than it is to claim divine intervention
for a human born with six digits on their hands and/or feet.
Many of the other “points that lab-leak advocates bring up” in their Gish Gallop (e.g., A rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments) which are arguments easily refuted by actual scientific studies.
What about the fact that they didn’t find the intermediary
host that enabled the jump to humans? It’s true, they found the original
intermediary for SARS after just 4 months, and the intermediary for MERS after
9 months.
But finding intermediary hosts for most viruses, even most
pandemic viruses, are often unsuccessful. SARS-CoV-2 is nothing special in this regard.
What about the fact that
this virus, unique among viruses in this particular genus, possesses a
furin-like cleavage site? Furin cleavage is critical to many viral
diseases: HIV, Ebola, and Influenzas H5 and H7. These sites occur in many
genera of coronavirus, and in beta-coronavirus (which SARS-CoV-2 is) in
general. A recent
study shows that these sites occur naturally in coronaviruses.
It might seem like there’s no harm to claim, as some
scientists have done, that we ought to be more fully investigating
SARS-CoV-2 to determine its origin, and that means not ruling out the
possibility that it was created in a lab and leaked out. But the downside to
performing that sort of investigation is twofold.
First: Seriously
considering this shocking, ill-founded accusation serves to further undermine
the autonomy and academic freedom of researchers around the world who work in
highly specialized fields.
As Zhengli Shi, the chief scientist for emerging disease at
the Wuhan Institute of Virology, wrote:
“The hypothesis of a lab leaking is just based on the expertise of a lab which
has long been working on bat coronaviruses which are phylogenetically related
to SARS-CoV-2. This
kind of claim will definitely damage the reputation and enthusiasm of
scientists who are dedicated to work on the novel animal viruses which have
potential spillover risk to human populations and eventually weaken the ability
of humans to prevent the next pandemic.”
Second: This reason
is truly chilling. So many people have died is because of a global political
failure to respond appropriately. Attempting to shift the blame onto the very
scientists who have been instrumental in understanding and combating the virus
is a tactic straight out of Operation Himmler,
and must be opposed by the entire scientific community in full force.
One of the most challenging obstacles that scientists face
in trying to communicate what they do is people’s stubborn resistance to a
basic truth about the natural world: no one is in charge. There is no one at
the controls; no one responsible for what nature does; no one in charge of
mutation or natural selection in this world. Nature simply does what it does
according to the physical laws that govern it, and all we can do to help
navigate the human enterprise through it is to understand it and act according
to the best recommendations that human knowledge has to offer.
Conspiracy theories like the lab leak hypothesis might sound
compelling and inviting to us. After all, how much more comforting would it be
to know that just a handful of evil people — not the politicians who sacrificed
their constituents, but rather some imaginary “mad scientists” laughing
maniacally in their lair — were ultimately responsible for the tragedies of the
past 18 months? Fortunately, as scientists, we are not guided by comfort, but
rather by the pursuit of truth and accuracy, based on the best knowledge we can
obtain.
My 2 Cents: Took a while
to research this hot topic to this point.
Despite what many
prominent voices would have you believe, that the virology is open-and-shut: There
is no compelling reason to believe that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab, or was released, or escaped on purpose or not by China.
But, the conspiracy types
will linger forever based on what they believe, what they watch, what they read,
or who they believe. It will always be a big conspiracy to them regardless of
what the above information and facts reveal as true.
Thanks for stopping – and
I hope this info is good for you.
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