Origin of Covid-19: Why Searching for Sources Is Important

The zoonotic hypothesis is based on the idea that the virus spilled from animals to humans, either directly through bats or through other intermediate animals. Most scientists say this is likely to be the cause, given that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases jumped from animals into humans. Previous coronavirus outbreaks included the first SARS in 2003. It started with bats and then spread to civets and humans. And the outbreak of MERS in 2012 spread from bats to camels and ultimately to people.

Controversial World Health Organization Report

Quickly, criticisms of the report came from a wide range. More than 12 countries have issued joint statements on the independence and credibility of the findings. WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adanom Gebreyes was also critical of the findings, and immediately called the report’s dismissal of Labreak’s theory “premature.”

“Looking at the trends in flu-like illnesses, it’s clear that the virus was prevalent in the past and most likely in December, with excess mortality. That’s really, really, really, important.” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist of infectious diseases, and WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead. “The areas of the report that weren’t covered in detail were labs, lab audits, and lab hypotheses,” she told Gupta.

“It’s clear to me, and for many they saw one plausible hypothesis (zoonoses spillover) fairly rigorously, but in reality another hypothesis: laboratory-related. I think I was ignoring or ignoring my hypothesis. It wasn’t fair and objective. ” Dr. David Lerman, an infectious disease expert and microbiologist at Stanford University, said.

Relman has aggregated the number of pages in the WHO report dedicated to Labreak theory. “Total: The lab (hypothesis) appendix and main report was about 4 out of 313 pages … and on those 4 pages, the section title was” Conspiracy Theory “. “”

Critics say the WHO study was flawed even before the WHO team landed in Wuhan in January 2021. From the beginning, the Chinese government had to agree on the terms of WHO’s research, including which scientists were chosen to go to China and which locations they included. Which primary data is visited and accessible. “All the original analysis was done by Chinese scientists before the advent of WHO,” said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

“The official name is’joint research’and it is very important. If it is a joint research, it is a joint research between Wuhan and Chinese member countries, so the people considered it as a survey from the beginning, but that was a mistake. I think it was. ” Dazak, the only American on the Wuhan ground to join the WHO team, said. Dazak, a well-known virus hunter and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, will be one of the most controversial members of the WHO team. Critics say he had a clear conflict of interest due to his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He then funded bat coronavirus research at the institute through a subgrant from the National Institutes of Health.

“This is due to the bat coronavirus that we have been working on in China for over 20 years, so we have some expertise that is valuable to the team,” Daszak told Gupta. The work of Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance was the key to elucidating the origin of the first SARS outbreak in 2003.

“The mission team didn’t have biosafety and biosecurity experts, so it wasn’t their duty,” Wankelhove admitted.

“I think WHO should have spoken more strongly and said it did not intend to conduct forensic investigations at Chinese laboratories as part of this work,” Dazak told Gupta.

WHO’s Wankelkov explained to Gupta why Tedros was so critical of WHO’s report. “Looking at the way they reported about it (Laborique theory), they classified it as” very unlikely. ” To get it off the table, you need to study it properly. It needs to be thoroughly researched. “

Evolutionary biology

Scientists around the world continue to dig deeper into the unique characteristics of the virus.

But when Andersen first learned of the new coronavirus that would sweep across China and beyond in early 2020, he focused on this question: why SARS-CoV-2 spreads so easily. Is it? In those first few weeks, he questioned the possible relationship between the Wuhan Virology Institute and its research on bat coronavirus and its location in the very city where the human case was first detected. thought. “First in January, I learned about the types of work being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and began to think,’Look, we need to consider the possibility that this is not a natural virus.'” “”

In late January 2020, Andersen raised the danger signal to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. In a later email, Andersen wrote that he and other scientists “found a genome that contradicts the expectations of evolution.”

Shortly after the email, some of the world’s top scientists gathered on the phone to discuss what they saw in the genome. The group included Andersen, Fauci, and NIH director Dr. Francis Collins. “I was worried because this was an unfamiliar sequence. Is there anything here that looks like a sign of human manipulation?” Collins said.

However, this idea was quickly rejected. Researchers initially thought the new virus was characteristic of bioengineering, but later found evidence of similar characteristics in other known viruses.

“The engineering side of this … I soon realized that there was no evidence to support it …. If you can find evidence that the virus was previously sequenced or processed, then there is probably a fragment. The breakdown of the virus used in the previous experiment is unquoted, “smoking gun”. And we couldn’t find anything. So the overall idea of ​​engineering was like, “Look, this isn’t completely backed up by the evidence,” Andersen told Gupta.

“We … discussed one up and down and finally decided: No. In fact, if you’re trying to design a really dangerous coronavirus, you wouldn’t design this. That spike The protein had some unusual characteristics, but what everyone would have speculated would be very effective in binding to the ACE2 receptor and invading human cells, “Collins said. Told to. This is the view of many genetic epidemiologists, virologists, and coronavirus researchers.

But the question remains. If the virus didn’t come out of the lab, where did it come from? When did you start circulating? And is it possible to find an animal that might have been a carrier?

Was it a wild animal for sale in one of China’s fresh markets where exotic meat, fur and live animals are on display?

Have the virus-carrying animals been imported from elsewhere in Southeast Asia?

Did researchers studying bats accidentally get infected and perhaps unknowingly start spreading the virus?

Does China store blood samples that can pinpoint when the virus first began to infect people and show how it was transmitted from animals to humans? If so, how can we convince the always secretive and now defensive Chinese government to share what is there?

Many questions remain about the Wuhan Institute, but Daniel Anderson, the last and only foreign scientist working at the Wuhan Virology Institute’s Biosafety Level 4 Institute, tells Gupta about his experience working there. bottom. Anderson has proven the high standards of the laboratory’s BSL-4 lab for treating deadly pathogens, while other scientists have conducted bat corona in Wuhan’s low-level BSL-2 lab. He has expressed concern about virus research.

Ralph Barrick, a top coronavirus researcher at UNC Chapel Hill in collaboration with the Uhan Virology Institute, points out specific evidence needed to better understand the origin of the virus. “Early cases, Chinese serology was performed in appropriate populations. Not many of the populations were reported by WHO. Systematic investigation of that information, outbreaks that occurred not only in Wuhan but also in surrounding hospitals. The analysis community for serological cases … all those answers are in China. “

“If it weren’t for the Chinese government, Chinese scientists, friends of Chinese scientists, and the others they worked with would all come forward and be organized in these different ways, shapes, and forms. I still want that, “Relman said.

“A pandemic is rare and it’s really devastating … it’s frustrating and we’re looking for an answer,” Andersen told Gupta. “I want to know what this has led to, and I hope I can try to prevent the same from happening in the future.”