Thought of the Day - May 21 2021 - Back to the Origin

With all of the "discussion" in the US media of late, I was asked if I have an update concerning the origin of SARS-CoV-2; as you know I have been proving a quarterly update on the subject starting in June last year ( Thought of the Day - June 17 - The Search for the Source ).

Okay, here we go. First, there are now four main origin theories:

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 far more virulent. Until this point, any cases were just considered "the flu". Indeed as we have seen, people around the world had antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 at least six months before the first "official" cases of the Novel Coronavirus were recorded. Unfortunately, antibodies do not tell you which variant you were exposed to - it just happened that the first variant sequenced in Wuhan became our baseline.

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. Heck, the development of SARS-CoV-2 was the purpose of this work.

3. The Bat Theory: That a bat coronavirus spontaneously altered about 4% of its genetics in 2019 and, via an intermediary species, SARS-CoV-2, that was especially virulent, was introduced to humans.

4. Aliens: It came from outer space.

Okay, so what do we do now - in no particular order?

Option 4: Even with the pentagon releasing UFO files we should skip this one. Remember the mantra: "It is not aliens, until it is aliens".

Option 3: For the past year, the WHO, led by "experts" like Peter Daszak who was directly involved in gain-of-function research, has been investigating this option with no developments, so we may as well drop it as there is still no evidence.

Option 1: The first option came from, and can be further expanded by, antibody testing of archival blood samples. In this way, we can ascertain where and when the first SARS-CoV-2 family can be found - leading us closer to the origin from a time and location basis.

Option 2: This one is simple to address. We need to ban all gain-of-function research on coronaviruses and the like. As well as potentially fixing the problem, you have to remember the justification for this research was to equip us in case there was a global pandemic - well that was money wasted. Moreover, a move in this direction may actually flush out more information for or against this theory.

As well as where did it come from, the next issue is how did it become a pandemic? While there has been a lot of focus on the Wuhan Market, and indeed this may have been the event that accelerated the spread in Hubei Province, it has little to do with how it got around the world. It should be noted that the spread to other parts of China was simultaneous with the outbreak elsewhere in the world. So it is likely the superspreader event (of the leaked virus or a new variant) was the Military Games in Wuhan ( Thought of the Day - April 2 2021 - The Origin Report Arrives ). Indeed by the time reports in China were noticed, this was already a pandemic.

This is not an easy problem to solve and unfortunately, most of the people currently involved in the investigations have vested interests. However, this does not erode the importance of discovering the origin. Plagiarising from Kennedy: "We take on these questions, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, and because this challenge is one that are unwilling to postpone."

Cheers

Cliff