WHEN US President Joe Biden asked the United States Intelligence Community (IC) to determine the origin of Covid-19, its conclusion was remarkably understated but nonetheless shocking. In a one-page summary, the IC made clear that it could not rule out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) emerged from a laboratory.
But even more shocking for Americans and the world is an additional point on which the IC remained mum: If the virus did indeed result from laboratory research and experimentation, it was almost certainly created with US biotechnology and know-how that had been made available to researchers in China.
To learn the complete truth about the origins of Covid-19, we need a full, independent investigation not only into the outbreak in Wuhan, China, but also into the relevant US scientific research, international outreach, and technology licensing in the lead-up to the pandemic.
We recently called for such an investigation in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Some might dismiss our reasons for doing so as a “conspiracy theory.” But let us be crystal clear: If the virus did emerge from a laboratory, it almost surely did so accidentally in the normal course of research, possibly going undetected via asymptomatic infection.
It is of course also still possible that the virus had a natural origin. The bottom line is that nobody knows. That is why it is so important to investigate all the relevant information contained in databases available in the US.
Missed opportunities
Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the US government has pointed an accusatory finger at China. But while it is true that the first observed Covid-19 cases were in Wuhan, the full story of the outbreak could involve America’s role in researching coronaviruses and in sharing its biotechnology with others around the world, including China.
US scientists who work with SARS-like coronaviruses regularly create and test dangerous novel variants with the aim of developing drugs and vaccines against them. Such “gain-of-function” research has been conducted for decades, but it has always been controversial, owing to concerns that it could result in an accidental outbreak, or that the techniques and technologies for creating new viruses could end up in the wrong hands. It is reasonable to ask whether SARS-CoV-2 owes its remarkable infectivity to this broader research effort.
Unfortunately, US authorities have sought to suppress this very question. Early in the epidemic, a small group of virologists queried by the US National Institutes of Health told the NIH leadership that SARS-CoV-2 might have arisen from laboratory research, noting that the virus has unusual features that virologists in the US have been using in experiments for years – often with support from the NIH.
How do we know what NIH officials were told, and when? Because we now have publicly available information released by the NIH in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. We know that on Feb 1, 2020, the NIH held a conference call with a group of top virologists to discuss the possible origin of the virus. On that call, several of the researchers pointed out that laboratory manipulation of the virus was not only possible, but according to some, even likely. At that point, the NIH should have called for an urgent independent investigation. Instead, the NIH has sought to dismiss and discredit this line of inquiry.Heads in the sand
Within days of the Feb 1 call, a group of virologists, including some who were on it, prepared the first draft of a paper on the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” The final draft was published a month later, in March 2020. Despite the initial observations on Feb 1 that the virus showed signs of possible laboratory manipulation, the March paper concluded that there was overwhelming evidence that it had emerged from nature.
The authors claimed that the virus could not possibly have come from a laboratory because “the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.” Yet the single footnote (number 20) backing up that key claim refers to a paper from 2014, which means that the authors’ supposedly “irrefutable evidence” was at least five years out of date.
Owing to their refusal to support an independent investigation of the lab-leak hypothesis, the NIH and other US federal government agencies have been subjected to a wave of FOIA requests from a range of organisations, including US Right to Know and The Intercept. These FOIA disclosures, as well as internet searches and “whistleblower” leaks, have revealed some startling information.
Consider, for example, a March 2018 grant proposal submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) and researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the University of North Carolina (UNC). On page 11, the applicants explain in detail how they intend to alter the genetic code of bat coronaviruses to insert precisely the feature that is the most unusual part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Although DARPA did not approve this grant, the work may have proceeded anyway. We just don’t know. But, thanks to another FOIA request, we do know that this group carried out similar gain-of-function experiments on another coronavirus, the one that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
In yet other cases, FOIA disclosures have been heavily redacted, including a remarkable effort to obscure 290 pages of documents going back to February 2020, including the Strategic Plan for Covid-19 Research drafted that April by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Such extensive redactions deeply undermine public trust in science, and have only served to invite additional urgent questions from researchers and independent investigators.
In a one-page summary, the IC made clear that it could not rule out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) emerged from a laboratory. – AFP
The facts of the case
Here are ten things that we do know.
First, the SARS-CoV-2 genome is distinguished by a particular 12-nucleotide sequence (the genetic code) that serves to increase its infectivity. The specific amino acid sequence directed by this insertion has been much discussed and is known as a furin cleavage site (FCS).
Second, the FCS has been a target of cutting-edge research since 2006, following the original SARS outbreak of 2003-04. Scientists have long understood that the FCS holds the key to these viruses’ infectivity and pathophysiology.
Third, SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus in the family of SARS-like viruses (sarbecoviruses) known to have an FCS. Interestingly, the specific form of the FCS that is present in SARS-CoV-2 (eight amino acids encoded by 24 nucleotides) is shared with a human sodium channel that has been studied in US labs.
Fourth, the FCS was already so well known as a driver of transmissibility and virulence that a group of US scientists submitted a proposal to the US government in 2018 to study the effect of inserting an FCS into SARS-like viruses found in bats. Although the dangers of this kind of work have been highlighted for some time, these bat viruses were somehow considered to be in a lower-risk category. This exempted them from NIH gain-of-function guidelines, thereby enabling NIH-funded experiments to be carried out at the inadequate BSL-2 safety level.
Fifth, the NIH was a strong supporter of such gain-of-function research, much of which was performed using US-developed biotechnology and executed within an NIH-funded three-way partnership between the EHA, the WIV, and UNC.
Sixth, in 2018, a leading US scientist pursuing this research argued that laboratory manipulation was vital for drug and vaccine discovery, but that increased regulation could stymie progress. Many within the virology community continue to resist sensible calls for enhanced regulation of the most high-risk virus manipulation, including the establishment of a national regulatory body independent of the NIH.
Seventh, the virus was very likely circulating a lot earlier than the standard narrative that dates awareness of the outbreak to late December 2019. We still do not know when parts of the US government became aware of the outbreak, but some scientists were aware of the outbreak as of mid-December.
Eighth, the NIH knew as early as Feb 1, 2020, that the virus could have emerged as a consequence of NIH-funded laboratory research, but it did not disclose that fundamental fact to the public or to the US Congress.
Ninth, extensive sampling by Chinese authorities of animals in Wuhan wet markets and in the wild has found not a single wild animal harboring the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Despite this, there is no indication that the NIH has requested the laboratory records of US agencies, academic centers, and biotech companies involved in researching and manipulating SARS-like coronaviruses.
Tenth, the IC has not explained why at least some of the US intelligence agencies do in fact believe that a laboratory release was either the most likely or at least a possible origin of the virus.
Time for transparency
Given the questions that remain unanswered, we are calling on the US government to conduct a bipartisan investigation. We may never understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2 without opening the books of the relevant federal agencies (including the NIH and the Department of Defense), the laboratories they support, academic institutions that store and archive viral sequence data, and biotechnology companies.
A key objective of the investigation would be to shed light on a basic question: Did US researchers undertake research or help their Chinese counterparts to undertake research to insert an FCS into a SARS-like virus, thereby playing a possible role in the creation of novel pathogens like the one that led to the current pandemic?
Investigations into Covid-19’s origins should no longer be secretive ventures led by the IC. The process must be transparent, with all relevant information being released publicly for use by independent scientific researchers. It seems clear to us that there has been a concerted effort to suppress information regarding the earliest events in the outbreak, and to hinder the search for additional evidence that is clearly available within the US. We suggest that a panel of independent researchers in relevant disciplines be created and granted access to all pertinent data in order to advise the US Congress and the public.
There is a good chance that we can learn more about the origins of this virus without waiting on China or any other country, simply by looking in the US. We believe such an inquiry is long overdue. – Project Syndicate
Neil L. Harrison is a professor at Columbia University. Jeffrey D. Sachs, university professor at Columbia University, is director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This article was first published on Project Syndicate.
Recently, Germany’s largest newspaper ‘Bild’ published an invoice amounting to €149bil that Beijing ‘owes’ Berlin from the impact of Covid-19. — Reuters
U.S. top health adviser rejects lab-made virus theory
The U.S. administration has been flirting with a theory that the novel coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab, but top White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has rejected that.
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Richard Horton: We should work together with China fighting COVID-19
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Science man: Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has refuted Trump’s theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan. — AP
IN recent weeks, some anti-China governments and lawyers have been hyping up unreasonable demands for compensation to the tune of billions – and even trillions – from Beijing for the origin and spread of Covid-19.
China has become an easy target in the current global public health catastrophe just because the first novel coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan in the mainland.
This anti-China campaign to press for hefty compensation is getting more intense as Western politicians lend credence to the movement.
The first case was fired off by a Florida attorney, who filed a federal class-action lawsuit on March 12 against the Chinese government, accusing it of “a slow early response” to the coronavirus crisis in China that caused “injury and incalculable harm” to business and people totalling US$6bil (RM26.2bil).
On April 18, US President Donald Trump added fuel to the fire when he warned that China could face consequences for the Covid-19 pandemic.
“If they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences,” Trump was quoted by Reuters as saying at a daily media briefing.
He did not state the actions the United States might take.
Trump and his senior aides have been accusing China for a lack of transparency in dealing with the coronavirus spread in its Wuhan province, after failing to gain support from scientists in his earlier exertion that the virus had originated from China.
China has repeatedly denied all allegations.
US allies – the UK, France, Australia and India – have joined in the fray to incriminate China.
Most recently, Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild, published a €149bil itemised “invoice” that Beijing “owes” Berlin from the impact of Covid-19.
It is obvious that with the pandemic engulfing over 200 countries, some governments that have failed to contain the virus spread in their backyard are looking for a scapegoat.
Many Western countries have been pointing fingers at China.
Although China has wiped out its epidemic and is helping other countries fight the battle, it continues to face a ruthless barrage of vicious allegations and accusations.
Besides using China as a scapegoat, the US and West are seen as taking the opportunity to smear China and discredit the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by President Xi Jinping.
To them, it is unthinkable that the CPC was able to mobilise 1.4 billion Chinese nationals to stay indoor for two months from January to March until the virus was contained.
Hence, instead of choosing the global cooperation advocated by Beijing, Trump is constantly picking on China with old and new accusations.
As the US is facing a presidential election in November, bashing China is seen as a strategy to gain electoral support as past surveys have shown that many Americans dislike the CPC.
But by focussing on geopolitics, Trump is allowing the deadly virus to creep into all corners of the United States.
The United States is now the worst-hit nation in the current pandemic.
Covid-19 has infected 905,333 people and killed 51,949 across the country as of Saturday, according the Johns Hopkins University.
Globally, infections have shot passed 2.82 million with death toll at over 197,500 as of Saturday, according to the official website of World Health Organisation (WHO).
Science man: Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has refuted Trump’s theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan. — AP
Origin of Covid-19
Up to now, the origin of the virus is still a mystery – at least in the world of science.
Although Wuhan was the first to report the new virus, recent studies on genomes show that Covid-19 could have originated in the United States or elsewhere.
While Trump has now switched his rhetoric to whether the virus had emanated from a lab in Wuhan.
The WHO officials and Trump’s own White House advisers have refuted this hypothesis.
The WHO has repeatedly said that “from all available evidence, the novel coronavirus was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the White House, has rejected Trump’s allegations too.
Before this, a group of researchers have already written in the journal Nature Medicine: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Repeated blame on China
Since the talk on origin and lab conspiracy do not hold water, then what else can Beijing be faulted on?
Chinese leaders have been repeatedly accused of “not being transparent, covering up and suppressing information” in the early stage of the outbreak by Trump and his Western allies.
Although China has admitted there were early missteps and underestimation of public risks during the initial stage, it had quickly acted to inform the WHO and scientists in the United States soon after.
“This miscalculation did not hinder the communication between Chinese and foreign scientists. All data were sent out, including a thesis by Chinese scholars in international academic journals,” said China’s Global Times.
On Jan 20, China made public its findings on human-to-human transmissions.
Global Times argued: “At the global level, the time lost could have been compensated by taking resolute measures. This was especially true for those countries far from China.”
Wuhan locked down its city in the early hours of Jan 23, and from then onwards, China rapidly mobilised. Harsh measures to prevent contagion were criticised but the country struggled on.
And by early March, China had brought the situation in China under control.
In fact, the accusation that Beijing had delayed in informing the world about Covid-19 has been refuted by WHO and Western scientists.
Scientists in China have won international praise for hitting several key milestones in understanding the novel, fast-moving virus, according to research and innovation forum Science/Business on April 7.
Ian Jones, professor of biomedical sciences at Reading University, told its newsletter: “We will never know if faster action in those first days could have averted the outbreak. Despite the initial slow reaction, there has been a very open dialogue since and many research findings from the Chinese experience are now appearing.”
Dr Zhang Jixian, the first doctor to report Covid-19 cases to Wuhan authorities on Dec 27, defended Beijing by stating authorities had responded promptly after getting her report.
In an interview on April 18 with CGTV, the director of the department of respiratory and critical care medicine at the Hubei Provincial Hospital showed records of a medical consultation of seven Covid-19 patients at the early stage.
A vendor at the Huanan Seafood Market, who was sent to the hospital on Dec 27, 2019, showed the severest symptoms among the seven.
“I reported to the district at noon on Dec 27, and they came to conduct an epidemiological survey that afternoon and collected patients’ blood samples and throat swabs,” Zhang said.
As the hospital in which Zhang works could not identify the source of infection, expert help from the district level and provincial CDC was sought.
“They reacted quite quickly,” Zhang recalled.
“I suspected it could be a kind of infectious disease, but did not expect the virus to spread like this – so infectious and serious, and affecting so many areas.”
On Jan 3, China formally reported the situation to the WHO and other countries, including the United States.
Does the case against China hold water?
Hostile groups may file charges against China, but are these grounded on norms and legal principles?
It is an international practice that a sovereign or a government cannot be sued.
It is obvious from the reasons cited against China thus far that most have been based on imaginary assumptions and baseless allegations.
Even if the virus had originated from Wuhan, China should not be made to compensate the world, as virus knows no boundary and country. It can emerge anytime and anywhere.
When the H1N1 pandemic, which started in the United States in 2009 claimed an estimated over 200,000 lives worldwide, there was no claim against Washington.
Did Washington compensate the world for the economic and financial loss to investors and countries resulting from the collapse of the Lehman Brothers of the US in September 2008?
When the Ebola broke out in West Africa, the world behaved in a sympathetic and civil manner.
By the same token, China – the first victim of the pandemic – should not be assaulted.
Perhaps, governments attacking China should reflect on what they had not done after witnessing China suffer in January.
Hannan Hussain, a security analyst at the London School of Economics, comments “there is no case against China as Beijing has concrete information-sharing reference points”, including sharing the genome sequence of Covid-19 in January.
“Washington lacks similar precedents, given its removal of key CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) officials that were tasked with the tracking, investigation and containment of diseases in China,” he wrote in the South China Morning Post recently.
Reuters revealed on March 26 that the Trump administration had cut its staff presence at the CDC in Beijing by two-thirds over the past two years.
While the “lion-mouth” claims against China may eventually turn out to be a waste of time, the West and their proxies will achieve their motive of smearing China.
China-bashing will continue.
This should not come as a surprise, given that the United States and the West have often wanted to contain the rise of China, which has become the world’s second-largest economy and is now the only enviable country focusing on rebuilding its virus-battered economy.
According to research, although Wuhan is the initial epicentre, it may not be the root of the outbreak.
No proof that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan: Peter Forster
https://youtu.be/AQQf2yoymu0
Peter Forster, a geneticist at the University of #Cambridge, has identified three distinct strains of COVID-19. Forster and his team traced the origins of the epidemic by analyzing 160 genomes from human patients and found that the strain in #Wuhan mutated from an earlier version. #Coronavirus
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Going out safely: People wearing face masks seen on the East Lake after the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. — Reuters
CHINA bashing is continuing even as the world struggles to fight the killer Covid-19 virus. In fact, the blame game has intensified, fuelled by some western politicians and the media.
It’s not a good time for Asians, especially ethnic Chinese, to be in Western countries as there have been reported cases of racial abuse and even assault.
Without doubt, these, are isolated cases as the majority of people are reasonable but such incidents have made many Chinese people in these countries feel uneasy and unsafe.
Amid all these, a very important report went almost unnoticed last week. Perhaps most journalists were preoccupied with headline- grabbing news of Covid-19 deaths and lockdown violators.
The report, which has been widely discussed in the scientific community, was carried by some newspapers but CNN and BBC did not find it interesting enough or perhaps it did not fit into their narrative.
Well, for the first time, experts from Britain and Germany have mapped the evolutionary path of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 and determined there are currently three versions of it spreading around the world.
In simple English, the viruses are mutating – changing their forms – and these scientists have put them in three forms, or variants, as they prefer to call them. But the bad news is that they are still mutating, and more variants could be added later.
The virus, according to these experts – “is constantly mutating to overcome immune system resistance in different populations.”
According to the findings, these researchers reconstructed the early evolutionary paths of the virus as it spread from the epicentre in Wuhan, China, out to Europe and North America.
By analysing the first 160 complete virus genomes to be sequenced from human patients, scientists found the variant closest to that discovered in bats was largely found in patients from the US and Australia – not Wuhan.
They used data from samples taken from across the world between Dec 24,2019 and March 4,2020. They found that the closest type of coronavirus to the one discovered in bats – type A, the original human virus genome – was present in Wuhan, but was not the city’s predominant virus type. The Chinese city was initially the epicentre of the outbreak.
The finding said type A was also found in Americans who had lived in Wuhan, and in other patients diagnosed in the United States and Australia.
However, the report did not elaborate who were the Americans who had lived in Wuhan and how they got infected.
The most common variant found in Wuhan was type B although this appeared not to have travelled much beyond East Asia before mutating, which the researchers said was probably due to some form of resistance to it outside that region.
Type C was the variant found most commonly in Europe based on cases in France, Italy, Sweden and England.
It has not been detected in any patients in mainland China, though it had been found in samples from Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, the study said.
Dr Peter Forster, geneticist and lead author from the University of Cambridge, said: “There are too many rapid mutations to neatly trace a Covid-19 family tree.”
But the researchers concluded that variant A was the root of the outbreak as it was most closely related to the virus found in bats and pangolins. Type B was derived from A, separated by two mutations, while type C was the “daughter” of variant B.
“The Wuhan B-type virus could be immunologically or environmentally adapted to a large section of the East Asian population, ” Forster said.
“It may need to mutate to overcome resistance outside East Asia. We seem to see a slower mutation rate in East Asia than elsewhere, in this initial phase.”
But one thing is for sure. It is not a good time to travel as the virus has been transmitted at an unbelievable speed.
For example, the study reported that one of the earliest introductions of the virus to Italy was found in a Mexican traveller, who was diagnosed on Feb 28, came via the first documented German infection – a person who worked for a company in Munich on Jan 27. The German contracted the infection from a Chinese colleague in Shanghai, who had recently been visited by her parents from Wuhan. The researchers documented 10 mutations in the viral journey from Wuhan to Mexico.
“Because we have reconstructed the ‘family tree’ (the evolutionary history) of the human virus, we can use this tree to trace infection routes from one human to the next, and thus have a statistical tool to suppress future infection when the virus tries to return, ” Forster said.
The research team has since extended its analysis to 1,001 viral genomes and while it has yet to undergo peer review, the report has indicated that the spread of the virus has increasingly adapted to different populations and therefore the pandemic needs to be taken seriously.
More importantly, this scientific report could help politicians and the media to understand better the cause of the virus, and end their conspiracy blame game.
Overdue inquiry: There is a good chance that we can learn more about the
origins of this virus simply by looking in the US, say the writers. –
123rf.com
