Wednesday, June 9, 2021

SARS-CoV-2 Origins: Lab Theory v Zoonotic Disease Transfer Theory Proponents

 

If you've been following the debates about SARS-CoV-2 origins, you are aware that the battle between those emphasizing zoonotic transfer ("natural" explanation) versus lab escape is heating up.

My opinion is that it came from a lab. The question is, in my opinion, which lab?

Since I have no way of testing my opinion, I must rely on the published research findings and testimony of experts.

Quite a few experts have recently lined up to suggest that the virus has lab origins while other experts deny such origins as probable.

The news media are strangely aligning around these experts in politically polarized ways, which is both unfortunate and disturbing.

Here is a run down of the score-card so far as recorded in the mainstream news media.*

*Note that there does tend to be equivocation when experts arguing one position are attacked, they will move back a bit from their position, as evidenced when Dr. Fauci, a proponent of the natural zoonotic disease transfer scenario, acknowledged it could have come from a lab. Likewise, Dr. Gordon, a proponent of the lab theory, backed off using the language of "smoking gun" to refer to the HIV segment found in SARS-CoV-2 but not the predecessor viruses.

 

LAB SCENARIO PROPONENTS

• Former head of British intelligence agency MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove:

• Bill Gardner. (June 3, 2020 Wednesday). Exclusive: Coronavirus began 'as an accident' in Chinese lab, says former MI6 boss; Sir Richard Dearlove tells Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that new scientific report suggests key elements of the virus were 'inserted'. telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved from https://advance-lexis-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:6026-2HH1-F021-60M4-00000-00&context=1516831

Deborah Hayes (2020, July 6 ). Coronavirus: Former MI6 boss says theory COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab must not be dismissed as conspiracy. The intervention comes as a team of scientists from the WHO flies to China this week to investigate the origin of the disease. https://news.sky.com/story/former-head-of-mi6-says-theory-coronavirus-was-made-in-wuhan-lab-must-not-be-dismissed-as-conspiracy-12021693


• Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told CNN he still thought the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

See Sarah Al-Arshani (2021, May 25). Chinese media has fiercely attacked Fauci after he said Wuhan lab theory on COVID-19 origin could be likely. https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-media-slams-fauci-covid-19-wuhan-lab-2021-5


• Former head of the FDA, Scott Gottlieb says there’s growing circumstantial evidence that Covid may have originated in a lab:

Gottlieb says there's growing...Published Mon, May 24 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/gottlieb-says-theres-growing-circumstantial-evidence-that-covid-may-have-originated-in-a-lab.html

• Virologist and former president of Cal-Tech, David Gordon, interviewed by N. Wade in his excellent review of distinct lab hypotheses at the 

Wase, N. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (2021, May 5). https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/


• Emeritus professor of physics at the University of California Berkeley and a former senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Steven Quay and Richard Muller (June 6, 2021) The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak: The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus. The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184


• Virologists Bruno Coutard and colleagues published “sequence in CoV-2 and its novel supercharged site. Double CGG is there; you only have to look. They comment in their paper that the protein that held it “may provide a gain-of-function” capability to the virus, “for efficient spreading” to humans.” 

(cited in Quay and Muller above; research linked https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339153857_The_spike_glycoprotein_of_the_new_coronavirus_2019-nCoV_contains_a_furin-like_cleavage_site_absent_in_CoV_of_the_same_clade ). 


• 18 Scientists who signed letter to science calling for investigation: “Investigate the origins of COVID-19” signed by 

Jesse D. Bloom, Yujia Alina Chan, Ralph S. Baric, Pamela J. Bjorkman, Sarah Cobey, Benjamin E. Deverman, David N. Fisman, Ravindra Gupta, Akiko Iwasaki, Marc Lipsitch, Ruslan Medzhitov, Richard A. Neher11, Rasmus Nielsen1, Nick Patterson, Tim Stearns, Erik van Nimwegen, Michael Worobey, David A. Relman Science14 May 2021: 694 Vol. 372, Issue 6543, pp. 694 DOI: 10.1126/science.abj0016


• The Wall Street Journal coverage of sick workers at the Wuhan Lab during when the virus was thought to be emerging in China. 

Gordon, Michael, Strobel, Warren, & Hinshaw, Drew. (2021, May 23). Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin. The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228 Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab


ZOONOTIC SCENARIO PROPONENTS

1. Chinese government – especially when any US official stray from this account:

Sarah Al-Arshani (2021, May 25). Chinese media has fiercely attacked Fauci after he said Wuhan lab theory on COVID-19 origin could be likely. https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-media-slams-fauci-covid-19-wuhan-lab-2021-5

2. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president (Wikipedia link)

3. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/personnel/dr-peter-daszak

4. Kristian Andersen, Professor Scripps Research and lead author of the main article arguing against lab origins:

Andersen, K., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W., Holmes, E, & Garry, R. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, 26, 450–452. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9


5. News media – Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The New York Times running articles combatting the theory and citing key proponents of the zoonotic transfer account as illustrated here:

Michael Hiltzik (2021, June 9) Column: A Nobel laureate backs off from claiming a 'smoking gun' for the COVID-19 lab-leak theory . Los Angeles Times, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/column-a-nobel-laureate-backs-off-from-claiming-a-smoking-gun-for-the-covid-19-lab-leak-theory/ar-AAKQc4q

"We cannot prove that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin and we cannot prove that its emergence was not the result of a lab leak,” Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, lead author of a seminal paper on the origin of the virus, told me by email.

….“However, while both scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely,” Andersen wrote. “Precedence, data and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence.” The weakness of the lab leak theory is underscored by the character of the evidence invoked to support it — exaggeration of supposed research findings, the magnification of coincidences into certainties, the interpretation of heightened interest in the theory as proof of its validity, supposition piled upon conjecture.




2 comments:

  1. https://www.opednews.com/articles/2/The-Nuclear-Danger-Gone-by-David-Swanson-Nuclear_Nuclear-Armegedan_Nuclear-Arms-Race_Nuclear-Attack-210608-459.html

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  2. Let's no longer talk about the 'Premier corona' of 2020 but rather talk about the following ones. A virus is non-living. It is a nano-metric dust rising from the magma by its continual gas emissions. So a virus does not mutate! He does not have children, has no brothers or sisters or parents!
    The other 'corona' (since it is the same strain modified in laboratories) come from where?
    This is what you have to know and say!
    The corona (as it has been released into our atmosphere for 10,000 years) only has a charge for 3 weeks (not x months or years!)

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