As I indicated in my earlier posts on the Wuhan Institute of Virology ( A and B), I believe evidence suggests that this laboratory was the origin of Covid-19. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Robert Redfield (a virologist, and former director of the CDC) and Dr. Marc Siegel (clinical professor of medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center) provides additional circumstantial evidence for this possibility.
The authors explain why they doubt that Covid-19 emerged from bats and spread through an intermediate animal. They point out that similar coronaviruses (SARS discovered in 2003, and MERS in 2012) have produced fewer than 10,000 cases of each virus world‑wide since their discovery. They add, “What virus comes out of a bat cave and infects humans by the millions? It’s not biologically plausible. If instead it evolved slowly over many years in nature, how come no one knew of it?”
Gain of function research
They examine the theory that Covid-19 (also known as SARS‑CoV‑2) was “taught” to infect humans in the Wuhan lab by passing viruses through mice with grafted human tissue and immune cells. (As I explained in Wuhan Waltz [A,], this is often called “gain of function” research.) Consistent with that idea, Redfield and Siegel point out that Covid-19 has a kind of cleavage site that allows its spike protein to change its orientation and attach easily to human cells.
The authors believe the virus escaped unintentionally from the Wuhan laboratory where it was being studied. Moreover they argue that China has chosen stonewalling over transparency in this matter, adding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wasn’t allowed to visit the city of Wuhan, China, or the Wuhan Institute of Virology in early 2020.
To further support their opinion that there was an unintentional leak of the virus, the authors report 1) that coronavirus bat sequences were deleted from the Wuhan Institute’s data base in September 2019. 2) that security protocols for the lab were changed. 3) that $600 million was requested for a new ventilation system in the lab. 4) that the U.S. State Department reported that employees of the Wuhan lab were becoming sick with Covid‑like symptoms in the fall of 2019. 5) that a Harvard study of satellite images revealed a shutdown of traffic around the Wuhan lab in the late summer and early fall of 2019. 6) that weeks later, in late September, the hospital parking lots were filling up.
Somber warning
Redfield and Siegel offer a somber warning, one I think we should keep in mind: “A virus with a head start in becoming acclimated to humans likely has an easier time evolving to increase transmission. Hence the variants, which seem more effective than anything nature usually delivers on its own. In the months ahead we may have another variant that is even more contagious than Delta, that makes people sicker and—in the worst‑case scenario—that eludes vaccines.”
Thanks Ken for the informative piece. The thought of masks, sanitizers, and social distancing becoming part of our daily and ongoing norm, especially for our youth, is incredibly disheartening.
Do you believe it’s plausible for an effective vaccine and its global adoption of use to catch up with what appears to be such a quickly evolving and highly contagious virus?
I don’t know enough virology or immunology to answer your question scientifically, John, but from a historical perspective, vaccines have protected the human race from diseases since the late 18th century when Edward Jenner injected cowpox into an 8-year-old boy and months later injected that boy with smallpox. The boy developed no disease. This was huge because smallpox had been around for centuries. It was a horrible scourge that spread easily and killed millions. Now, thanks to vaccinations, it has been eradicated. Vaccination has also wiped out polio, another scourge that was rampant when I was growing up. These successes I think allow for some optimism that Covid-19 can be controlled and maybe eradicated. One stumbling block may be those who refuse to be vaccinated. I don’t know why so many refuse this simple treatment, but probably much of this started with Andrew Wakefield, the now-discredited British physician who published an article with deliberately falsified information in 1998. He became temporarily famous for his lies, but his deceit caught up with him, and he later was barred from the practice of medicine in England.