COVID CORNER
Weird science in Wuhan, jabs in Castle Dracula and Shakespeare dies again...
COVID’S CONTESTED ORIGIN
From the start of the pandemic there have been rumours about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (also known as SARS2) that causes Covid-19, suggesting that it was the result of an accidental release from a research lab and that it was a virus engineered by scientists. Swiftly picked up by conspiracy theorists, they were just as swiftly debunked by Western scientists, with letters by groups of leading virologists appearing in The Lancet and Nature Medicine. While suspicion was aroused by the presence of China’s leading coronavirus research lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), in the virus’s presumed city of origin, there seemed to be absolutely no evidence that it had anything to do with the infections and it was deemed more likely that the city’s wet market was the source of the outbreak. The first people whose infections were initially reported were all associated with the market, and China’s wet markets have form as sources of novel viral infections: the SARS1 outbreak of 2002-04 is thought to have originated in a wet market in Foshan and involved a bat virus crossing to civets, then to people. Partly as a result of President Trump’s enthusiasm for the idea, the lab origin theory seemed completely consigned to the fringes (see FT407:20).
Wet markets do provide ideal circumstances for the generation of novel viruses; they are often huge places where many species, both wild and domestic, are sold alive and dead and where they are kept in crowded conditions close to creatures they would not otherwise encounter. The markets are like one huge bioreactor where all kinds of animals mix with humans, allowing exchange and recombination of viruses to create novel variants. If such viruses can also pass easily between people, they are a pandemic waiting to happen unless prompt action is taken. Nonetheless, China has been less than forthcoming about the actual origin of the virus and provided only limited access to a World Health Organisation (WHO) team sent to get a definitive answer as to its true source ( FT403:7, 404:6). Unusually, though, they found no evidence of environmental traces of SARS2. With SARS1 and the later MERS, the original infected bat population and intermediary host species were quickly found, and there was evidence from blood tests that some people had been exposed to the viruses before the infection rate took off; but there is none of that for SARS2 before December 2019. As a result, the actual origin of the virus remains unknown and its attribution to the wet market no more than an educated supposition.
However, in late May 2021, President Biden instructed his intelligence officials to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origin of Covid-19, including the idea that it came from a lab in China. What had changed? It seems that investigations by the US intelligence community have so far been unable to come to a definitive conclusion as to the virus’s origin either. They felt there was evidence that could point to either a lab leak or the wet market, but not enough to settle on one or other cause. The fact that China was being secretive and uncooperative was raising suspicions, as was new information, such as news that three WIV staff had been hospitalised with symptoms suggestive of Covid-19 as early as November 2019, two months before the first infections were supposed to have taken place. US diplomatic cables dating back to 2018 also came to light that raised concerns about the WIV’s biosecurity, while additional information on the first Wuhan infections revealed that not all the patients had an identifiable link to the wet market.
The credibility of the lab leak hypothesis was further enhanced by a carefully argued piece on the origin of Covid in the highly reputable Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in early May 2021. In this, science writer Nicholas Wade shreds the credibility of the two key statements from early 2020 that dismissed the idea of a laboratory origin. He condemns both as poor science and reveals that the Lancet letter had been instigated by Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, an organisation that had funded coronavirus research at the WIV, and so had a vested interest in diverting suspicion from the lab.
Is it likely then that WIV was carrying out experiments on coronaviruses that could have made them more deadly? In fact, it is known that they