An Insecure Lab and Millions of Deaths Worldwide

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the “risky” research was conducted with US funding. AFP via Getty Images

 

"The SARS-like virus that caused the pandemic emerged in Wuhan, the city where the world's foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses is located."

"Ultimately, a never-before-seen SARS-like virus with a newly introduced furin cleavage site, matching the description in the Wuhan Institute's Defuse proposal, caused an outbreak in Wuhan less than two years after the proposal was drafted."

"Not a single infected animal has ever been confirmed at the [Wuhan] market or in its supply chain. Without good evidence that the pandemic started at the Huanan Seafood Market, the fact that the virus emerged in Wuhan points squarely at its unique SARS-like virus laboratory." 

"Investigators have either failed to collect or report key evidence that would be expected if COVID-19 emerged from the wildlife trade."

"Whether the pandemic started on a lab bench or in a market stall, it is undeniable that U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan Institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them."

"Advocates and funders of the Institute's research, including Dr. Fauci, should co-operate with the investigation to help identify and close the loopholes that allowed such dangerous work to occur."

"The world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics."

Alina Chan, molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

"Yes, China has the right to set their own policy."

"You believe this was appropriate containment if you want, but don't expect me to believe it."

"Moreover, don't insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS [that it would be sufficiently 'safe' with the work at Wuhan being undertaken by BSL-2 standards]."

U.S. Coronavirus expert Ralph Baric

Dr. Alina Chan concluded in her in-depth analysis of COVID-19’s origin that the deadly virus “most likely” escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. Future Publishing via Getty Images

Dr. Chan's guest essay appeared in the The New York Times' Sunday edition, with the title Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, at the very time that the United States' COVID-period chief epidemiologist is testifying before a Congressional Committee delving into the American response to the global pandemic that took countless lives before it settled in as a permanent, less threatening virus. The emergence of SARS-2 remains a mystery even while among a minority of scientists the belief is that COVID spread in humans contracted from infected animals.

 

Dr. Chan identifies the world's foremost virus research lab in Wuhan, China as the source of the pandemic, pointing out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been researching SARS-like viruses for at least a decade. The lead investigator at the Wuhan lab was Dr. Shi Zhengli, famous for her work with bats as carriers of viruses. Dr. Chan cites Dr. Shi's public speculation whether the outbreak might have emanated from her lab, when the pandemic began.

 

The Wuhan Institute had been collaborating with American partners the year before the outbreak, on creating viruses with defining features like SARS-CoV-2 that produced the COVID-19 virus.  A grant proposal for a research project named Defuse, aiming to create a SARS-like virus with a unique feature called a furin cleavage site enhancing infectiousness in humans was revealed in 2018. That is the very feature that SARS-CoV-2 has, with genetic data suggesting the feature was gained just prior to the pandemic.

What has long been known is that the Wuhan lab though high-security was not capable of containing an airborne virus infectious to the degree of the COVID-19 virus emanating from SARS-CoV-2. There are four recognized biosafety levels for labs working with live viruses; BSL 1 represents the lowest level of protection while BSL-4 is the most stringent. A scientist working at a BSL-3 laboratory in Taiwan became infected with the COVID virus two years into the pandemic. It seems that as a cost-saving measure the Wuhan lab was permitted to operate at a BSL-02 level.

The claim that the COVID-19 virus arose from contact with an infected animal at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is rejected by Dr. Chain who stated the claim "is not supported by strong evidence, in part because Chinese investigators assumed initially the market to be the source, so they overlooked potential evidence that would dispute the theory." Moreover, Chinese authorities blocked reporting of early cases that had no link to the market and destroyed some early patient samples.

The report debunks the theory involving the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, pictured here, AP

 

"I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility [the theory that SARS-2 resulted from laboratory experiments; conversely that the COVID pandemic resulted from the coronavirus naturally leaping from infected animals to humans], and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, American infectious disease official during the COVID pandemic

Dr. Fauci grilled by lawmakers on origins of COVID   The New York Times

Yet Again : Agreeing to Disagree Disagreeably

 

"His [accountant first widely thought the first COVID-19 patient reported his first symptoms December 16] symptom onset came after multiple cases in workers at Huanan Market, making a female seafood vendor there the earliest known case, with illness onset 11 December." 

"It becomes almost impossible to explain that pattern if that epidemic didn't start there."

Mchael Worobey, head, ecology and evolutionary biology, University of Arizona

"It [Woorobey's conclusion] is based on fragmentary information and to a large degree hearsay."

"In general, there is no way of verifying much of what he describes, and then concludes."

David Reiman, professor of microbiology, Stanford University

"I don't feel like anything can be concluded with high or even really modest confidence about the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, simply because the underlying data are so limited."

Jesse Bloom, computational biologist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington

Medical staff help a patient walk into the hospital in Wuhan, China, in January 2020 as the pandemic was beginning.   (Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Another study, this one published in the journal Science reflecting investigative work by Michael Worobey, head of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, concludes that by indications newly unearthed, the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 is unlikely to have been the result of a laboratory escapee, as many in the field of virology insist, implicating the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

 

This conclusion based on a new revelation that it was not an accountant with no link to the Wuhan markiet, but a market vendor who was the first COVID case.

 

Based on the mistaken belief that the accountant who was said to have reported his first symptoms appeared in actuality several days later than was initially believed, Dr. Worobey believes that most early symptomatic cases had links to the city's live-animal food market. He pointed at the western section as the locale of transmission where raccoon dogs were caged, believing the new timeline to be indicative of evidence of a live-animal market origin, where a zoonotic transfer took place from animal to human.

 

The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has vexed medical science since the first cases appeared and in short order the virulent pathogen flew across geographic borders to infect the entire globe with utterly disastrous, and ongoing lethal effect, overturning the world social, political and economic order. Its origins' mystery and the manner in which China attempted to suppress news of its presence instead of instantly alerting the World Health Organization which would have led to a global warning, has caused cold-war-like tensions across continents.

 

A closely monitored and impacted joint study by China and the World Health Organization pretty well ruled out the prevailing suspicions that the COVID-19 origins lay in a laboratory located not far from the Wuhan market. The study, studiously managed by China, summed up a collaborative position on the origins as basically unknown, but unlikely to have originated from a lab escapee, to more likely having been transferred naturally via the wildlife trade to humans.

 

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology conduct experiments on corona viruses circulating commonly within bat colonies located in central and southern China. A focus had been concentrated on the laboratory as the locus of the virus which at some point escaped the confines of the high-security laboratory, where experts in the field are convinced an accidental leak from a research lab to be the most likely source of infection.

 

The article by Dr. Worobey and the conclusion drawn was received with skepticism from scientists who believe the quality of the data out of China on early coronavirus infections to be too incomplete to support any conclusion. The mystery of the origins of the dread virus that has robbed the world population of well over five million lives -- while crushing the global economy and changing the world as we know it, likely forever in the general agreement that the virus, now established, will remain a health threat to be dealt with on an ongoing basis -- continues.