MedStudies

The Origin COVID-19 Pandemic: An Act of Nature or Against?

15 months into the tunnel of COVID-19, no light yet visible. A pandemic that has already taken away 3.5 million of world population and a toll, afraid could reach up to 4 million by the end of 2021, a count equal to an entire population of countries like Uruguay or Croatia. Till date the world doesn’t have a scientific answer when this is going to END. A pandemic this destructive, I believe the world has the right to know about its ORIGIN.

This very quest took me on a cruise to find a rightful answer. To, begin with, came across two prominent theories.

  1. The Outbreak was an Act of Nature: No conspiracy
  2. Possible Escape from a Research Lab: The conspiracy

 I kept wondering, can Nature be so merciless. Can It turn to be so Revengeful? What ever the reason may be, human species has to refrain in future. To do so, there should relative Truth.

With my limited resources I had just tried to bring out few observations which in turn might bring out the Truth. Something of course I leave on to the experts and “intellectuals”.

Act of Nature:

A theory that the SARS-CoV-2 Virus jumped naturally from wild life to human. As the world came to know about the first break, bac in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that origin of these cases were: wet market (wild animal selling market) , in Wuhan. Once again started the world wide research of this Virus (world has already experienced similar in 2002 SARS1 and MERS in 2012).

The virus genomes shown evidence that it belonged to the same viral family that came from Bats, known as beta coronavirus. On previous occasions the same beta coronavirus jumped from bats through some vector animal to human host.

SARS1: Bat to Civet Cats to Human. (Scientist evidently found it within 4 months of outbreak of the Epidemic)

MERS:  Bats to Camel to Human. (Scientist evidently found it within 9 months of outbreak of the Epidemic).

SARS-CoV-2:     Bats to Unknown to Human. (Scientist yet couldn’t find for sure15 months after the Pandemic). Adding to it, even the origin of the bat population is yet not found.

Possible Escape from The Lab: Part I

Wuhan Institute of Virology; world leading research center on Coronavirus. So its assumed that due to human or “mechanical” error, the virus might have escaped from the Research Lab.

My inquisitive journey starts from here:

5th of February “We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who’ve looked at the sequences, looked at this virus, and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin,” said Dr. Mike Ryan at WHO press conference addressing the onset of the pandemic in solidarity with Chinese scientist headed by Dr. Shi Zhengli. (available still on global times)

The pandemic has not yet spread the it full wings, investigating scientist had yet not reached Wuhan, what the rush for such a conclusion?

19th of February “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and other eminent scientists headed by Dr. Peter Deszak wrote in the Lancet (World eminent weekly medical journal).

Too early for anyone to even to be sure what exactly could have happened.

Such outrageously convicting that the cause of outbreak is Natural, Why? What the urgency?

 By end of February, WHO, eminent scientists, virologists; all seemed vocal endorsing the unproved fact that the cause of the Pandemic is NATURA, that the virus did not leak any secured facility in Wuhan. There was more clarification to the conspiracy theories than the theories itself.  Going through archives of newspapers, medical journals dated in February 2020, I was getting more sceptical at the conviction of WHO and the groups of Scientist.

Who is Dr, Mickel J Rayan? Who is Dr. Shi Zhengli and? Who is Dr. Peter Deszak?
(have given the Hyperlinks for the general context)

Dr, Mickel J Rayan:

  • In July 1990, Irish born Ryan moved to Iraq to train Iraqi doctors.
  • In very short while Invasion of Kuwait suspended his work and Ryan worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on their efforts to stamp out infectious diseases in Africa.[

Six years later in 1996 Ryan joined the WHO to work in a newly opened unit that focused on epidemics and infectious diseases

Year 2011 (Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011 after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency. The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown on 23 August 2011)

Year 2012 (Syria: President Bashar al-Assad’s vow on 10 January to fight “terrorists” more than 5,000 civilians died in the protest, by June 2013 the crisis rise up to 90,000 casualties)

  • In 2013-2017 he was placed in Islamabad, Pakistan working for Pakistan government liaised organisation.[4] at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC
  • Right after serving Pakistan Government, In 2017 Ryan joint WHO as Assistant Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response
  • In 2019 Ryan became Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme prepared to deal with Upcoming Pandemic.

 Presently leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19.

Dr. Peter Daszak:

  • President of EcoHealth Alliance
  • 2014 EcoHealth Alliance started Research on SARC Virus at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) with initial funding of 44.2 Million USD.
  • November 2011, WIV research continues with joint was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) along with National Institutes of Health US through Dr. Peter Daszak.
  • By 2016 Rokefeller Foundation become a key granter for EcoHealth Alliance research work in WIV. (since 2003 has received more that $100.9 million USD Government Funds for the research)
  • 19th February 2020 Dr. Peter Daszak along with Virologist colleagues proclaims that the Pandemic was natural cause.
  • March 2020 Dr. Peter Daszak holding his position as Investigator, investigates\ WIV Lab in to any possibilities leakage.
  • June 2020 Trump Administration announces ceasing of Further Funding for EcoHealth Alliance in context of allegation, involving WIV in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • 21st August Dr. Peter Daszak expresses his disconnect towards in restriction subscription of Funds for WIV.
  • 28th US National Institute of Health grants 5 Million USD EcoHealth Alliance to continue Research at WIV.

 Investigation for the Origin:

WHO along with GOARN forms the closed team of investigators.

WHO:         Dr. Mikel J Ryan (Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme)

GOARN:    Dr. Mikel J Ryan (Fonder Member) an organisation indirectly founded by WHO which in turn is directly funded by Bill Gates Foundation.

 WHO sends investing team to WIV (Mission to discover origin of COVID-19)

Investigator:     

And the investigators concluded: The Cause of the Pandemic is “NATURAL”

“More that 16,000 virus samples were missing in the database:

Investigators report: was due to the lab’s concerns over being hacked.”

Dr. Peter Deszak (EcoHealth Alliance ) funding WIV (for research)

US NIH funding Dr. Peter Deszak (EcoHealth Alliance) for research

Investigator:  Dr. Peter Deszak

If still the coincidences don’t raise Questions in the transparency nothing else will.

“Virologists like Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued that they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. “It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom,” an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

 Possible Escape from The Lab: Part II

 “Gain-of-Function” or Biological Weapon Research:

Before the Biological Weapons Convention was ratified, this research was called what it is: biological weapons research. Now, it’s euphemistically called gain-of-function or dual-use research.

Dr, Shi Zhengli:

Virologist and Research Head at Wuhan Institute of Virology, on Coronavirus (CoVs) in November 2015 Dr. Shi created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV). This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture of such cells, The SHC014-CoV/SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two strains of virus. If the SARS2 virus were to have been cooked up in Shi’s lab, then its direct prototype would have been the SHC014-CoV/SARS1 chimera, the potential danger of which concerned many observers and prompted intense discussion. When the investigation committee headed by Dr. Daszak concluded the so called investigation (WHO), all data of collected samples of the virus was deleted from the system (s explained: security threat ) rest what ever left out documents could be found on the research was ceased by Chinese Authorities.

Her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Matter of Fact The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Dr Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Dr, Shi Zhengli.

In non-technical language, Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. Her plan was to take genes that coded for spike proteins possessing a variety of measured affinities for human cells, ranging from high to low. She would insert these spike genes one by one into the backbone of a number of viral genomes (“reverse genetics” and “infectious clone technology”), creating a series of chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses would then be tested for their ability to attack human cell cultures (“in vitro”) and humanized mice (“in vivo”). And this information would help predict the likelihood of “spillover,” the jump of a coronavirus from bats to people.

The methodical approach was designed to find the best combination of coronavirus backbone and spike protein for infecting human cells. The approach could have generated SARS2-like viruses, and indeed may have created the SARS2 virus itself with the right combination of virus backbone and spike protein.

It cannot yet be stated that Shi did or did not generate SARS2 in her lab because her records have been sealed, but it seems she was certainly on the right track to have done so.

“It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice,” says Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety.

“It is also clear,” Ebright said, “that, depending on the constant genomic contexts chosen for analysis, this work could have produced SARS-CoV-2 or a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.” “Genomic context” refers to the particular viral backbone used as the test-bed for the spike protein.

The lab escape scenario for the origin of the SARS2 virus, as should by now be evident, is not mere hand-waving in the direction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is a detailed proposal, based on the specific project being funded there by the NIAID.

December 9th 2019, before the outbreak of the Pandemic; Dr Daszak gave an interview in which he talked in glowing terms of how researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been reprogramming the spike protein and generating chimeric coronaviruses capable of infecting humanized mice. (the video is in the hyperlink).

One part of the interview that got my attention:

“Interviewer: You say these are diverse coronaviruses and you can’t vaccinate against them, and no anti-virals — so what do we do?

Meaning: that once you have generated a novel coronavirus that can attack human cells, you can take the spike protein and make it the basis for a vaccine.

One can only imagine Daszak’s reaction when he heard of the outbreak of the epidemic in Wuhan a few days later. He would have known better than anyone the Wuhan Institute’s goal of making bat coronaviruses infectious to humans, as well as the weaknesses in the institute’s defense against their own researchers becoming infected.

But instead of providing public health authorities with the plentiful information at his disposal, he immediately launched a public relations campaign to persuade the world that the epidemic couldn’t possibly have been caused by one of the institute’s souped-up viruses. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney. It’s simply not true,” he declared in an April 2020 interview.

Conclusion:

Proponents of natural emergence is far from facts.

  • No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats.
  • Despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did.
  • There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else.
  • There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other SARS-related beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons.

SARS-CoV-2 did originate in the Lab.
But there are certain circumstances that gets my attention.

Lack of Public Opinion:

If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As may now be obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it. The list is led, of course, by the Chinese authorities. But virologists in the United States and Europe have no great interest in igniting a public debate about the gain-of-function experiments that their community has been pursuing for years.

Role of Scientific Fraternity:

Nor have other scientists stepped forward to raise the issue. Government research funds are distributed on the advice of committees of scientific experts drawn from universities. Anyone who rocks the boat by raising awkward political issues runs the risk that their grant will not be renewed and their research career will be ended. Maybe good behavior is rewarded with the many perks that slosh around the distribution system. And if we think that people like Dr. Daszak might have blotted their reputation for scientific objectivity after their partisan attacks on the lab escape scenario, look at the second and third names on this list of recipients of an $82 million grant announced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in August 2020 !

International Diplomacy:

The US government shares a strange common interest with the Chinese authorities: Neither is keen on drawing attention to the fact that Shi’s coronavirus work was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. One can imagine the behind-the-scenes conversation in which the Chinese government says, “If this research was so dangerous, why did you fund it, and on our territory too?” To which the US side might reply, “Looks like it was you who let it escape. But do we really need to have this discussion in public?”

Silence of the Media:

To my knowledge, no major newspaper or television network has yet provided readers with an in-depth news story of the lab escape scenario, such as the one you have just read, although some have run brief editorials or opinion pieces. One might think that any plausible origin of a virus that has killed three million people would merit a serious investigation. Or that the wisdom of continuing gain-of-function research, regardless of the virus’s origin, would be worth some probing. Or that the funding of gain-of-function research by the NIH and NIAID during a moratorium on such funding would bear investigation. What accounts for the media’s apparent lack of curiosity?

With my limited resources what I could find, I did try to put up in this blog. There are bigger questions to ask, definitely not within my capacities, Whether or not there is some conspiracy behind This Pandemic?

          “ITS NOT AN ACT OF NATURE”

Links for references:

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