Thought of the Day - July 21 2021 - Where Did It Come From?

It has been another two months in the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and what have we found ( Thought of the Day - May 21 2021 - Back to the Origin )?

Well, as a reminder, here are the two, at first controversial, origin theories that continue to gain endorsement. In case you missed them:

1. "Been Around for a While: The first, that you may not have heard before, is that SARS-CoV-2 has been in circulation in the human population for years and that the only thing that happened in 2019 was that a variant emerged that was more virulent";

2. "Escaped from the Lab: The second theory is that SARS-CoV-2 was developed through multi-nationally funded gain-of-function research into coronaviruses."

We have also heard that up until recently both of these "theories" have been censored by the US-based social media (you know the ones you rely on for information). Note, neither of these bears any resemblance to the theory first promoted. The one that claims a bat coronavirus spontaneously changed 4% of its DNA late in 2019 and then spread into humans through a Wuhan wet market - or something crazy like that.

On the"Been Around for a While" front, the new evidence is that: As we reported a year ago SARS-CoV-2 traces were found in sewage samples from March 2019 in Spain - implying that the coronavirus was prevalent in Europe six months earlier than first thought ( Thought of the Day - July 6 - Oh Shi-ooot ). However, the emergence of the Delta (India, B.1.617.2) illustrates that seemly minor mutations can have significant effects on transmissibility (much more likely than suggesting 4% of the genome spontaneously changed jumping from bats in 2019).

Concerning the "Escaped from the Lab" theory the WHO (remember those we pay to get to the bottom of this) has adjusted a number of statements in their Q1 2021 report (the one that took months to produce) saying there were some "editing errors". Among them:

• They now state that the outbreak did not occur at the Wuhan wet market - well duh, this was common knowledge since last year ( Thought of the Day - November 20 - One Year Anniversary ), before the report was published ( Thought of the Day - April 2 2021 - The Origin Report Arrives );

• That the earliest traceable case of the Novel Corna Virus in the Hubei Province was mistakenly reported to be in Wuhan. Actually, they were located in the North-East of Hubei (Wuchang district), on the other side of the Yangtze River, much closer to the Wuhan lab!

The WHO proposed, late last week, that a second phase of studies into the origins of the coronavirus be conducted in China, including audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan; this comes a year after they proposed the first phase. At least it appears they will change the team members, removing some of the more biased people like Peter Daszak (the one that promoted the original origin "Bat Theory" in The Lancet early last year) in both the second phase study and in WHO's new Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO).

So what have we learned in the last two months? As far as the origin - well nothing I guess.

But don't forget Biden's 90-day mandate launched on May 26th. An interim update now says that "officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild".

Stay tuned - it will be interesting to see the conclusions at the end of the summer.

Cheers

Cliff