He debunks the lab leak
Two new coronaviruses have been found in bats in China. Scientists claim that they both have a strange mutation that proves that COVID was not created in a laboratory.
China has discovered two new coronaviruses lurking in bats, Daily Mail writes. And government-funded virologists are putting them up as evidence that COVID-19 did not leak out of the lab.
Both pathogens contain the same genetic trait that is believed to make the pandemic-causing strain so contagious.
Prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in China in late 2019, no sarbecovirus (family viruses to which it belongs) was not even found «furin cleavage site».
According to the Daily Mail, Western experts argued that this oddity indicates that the pandemic allegedly has an artificial origin, throwing a challenge to Beijing's claims that it arose naturally.
However, the researchers, backed by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said their discovery «deepens our understanding of the diversity of coronaviruses.» Sharing their findings in a scientific journal, they claim the discovery is «convincing» indicates that the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site is «naturally occurring». They wrote that the discovery «provides a clue to the natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site.»
But, the Daily Mail notes, independent experts said the study could not draw such a conclusion because the detected viruses are actually not that closely related to COVID-19. Neither of the two viruses, known as CD35 and CD36, has yet been proven capable of infecting humans.
That prospect warrants «further study» according to researchers who were indirectly funded by the authorities through China's national research and development program, the Daily Mail emphasizes.
Dr. laboratory, argues that the article's findings do nothing to disprove the possibility of a Covid leak from the research facility.
«The viruses reported in the article are not coronaviruses associated with SARS-CoV-2,» he told MailOnline. They are not even sarbecoviruses (a subgenus of viruses that includes viruses related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-Cov-2). The authors of the article classify them as hybecoviruses, placing the hybecovirus clade next to, but distinct from, the sarbecovirus clade.
He therefore said the article could not draw any conclusions about the unique cleavage site of COVID furin.
< p>"SARS-CoV-2– the only one of hundreds of known sarbecoviruses that has a furin cleavage site, – says Dr. Ebright. – This was true before the article was published and remains true after the article was published. No informed person would suggest that the article is somehow enough to refute the idea that COVID originated in a lab”.
Professor François Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London, expressed the same doubts, writes the Daily Mail. "This is a gibecovirus completely unrelated to SARS-CoV-1/2,– he told MailOnline. – It has a furin cleavage site, but many coronaviruses (with the exception of sarbecoviruses) have it. This article tells us nothing about the origin of Covid. It just adds another type of coronavirus to the hundreds described to date.
The study itself describes that CD35 and CD36 are 54% genetically identical to Covid. This means it's actually not that related to Covid itself, writes the Daily Mail.
For comparison, a virus called RaTG13 obtained from bats in China in 2013 is 96% compliant and there is no furin cleavage.
Scientists involved in the study analyzed the results of 112 bats caught in «abandoned caves» in Baoting County, Hainan Province in southern China in March and April 2021. Of the collected bat samples, 7 (6.3%) tested positive for coronaviruses.
According to the Daily Mail, CD35 and CD36 were found in samples taken from large round-leaved bats, which are also known as great Himalayan leaf-nosed bat.
The Chinese authors noted that because great roundleaf bats have a wide geographic distribution, they can be found in southern China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Malaysia, which means that CD35 may circulate widely.
Discovery was published by Virologica Sinica, the publishing house of the Chinese Society for Microbiology (CSM).
According to the Daily Mail, Virologica Sinica is edited by Dr. Shi Zhengli, an influential scientist known as the Chinese "woman– bat» who works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), believed in some circles to be the alleged source of the Covid pandemic.
Among the study's admirers is the British zoologist, whose organization funded research at WIV and took center stage in the debate about the origin of COVID, notes the Daily Mail.
Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which has donated millions of US government dollars to fund experiments in a Chinese lab, tweeted about the study: «Happy Saturday! Here is a recently discovered bat β-CoV with a furin cleavage site in bats in the Chinese province of Hainan”.
He also cited the study's conclusion: «…this study deepens our understanding of the diversity of COVID and provides a clue to understanding the natural origin of FCS SARS-CoV-2".
Dr. Daszak has repeatedly dismissed any suggestion that experiments in the laboratory could have led to COVID.
An expert on zoonoses, the spread of viruses from animals to humans, has become one of the central and controversial figures at the center of the debate about the origins of COVID. He was accused of orchestrating a behind-the-scenes «scare» campaign to divert blame for COVID from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was about how he convinced 26 other scientists to sign a letter he wrote to the scientific journal The Lancet, arguing that the coronavirus could only have a natural origin, and suggestions to the contrary give rise to «fear, rumors and prejudice.» The letter was so influential that it caused most experts to refuse to even consider the possibility that the virus could have been man-made.
In January 2021, Dr. Dashak joined the World Health Organization (WHO) team sent to Wuhan to investigate the origin of the virus. The group's report, published in March 2021, concluded that it was «highly unlikely» that the virus originated in a laboratory. But he came under fire after it was revealed he had a working relationship with virologist Dr. Shi Zhengli, nicknamed «Woman» bat.»
The lab leak theory, once dismissed as an outright conspiracy, has been gaining ground ever since the virus first caused a global pandemic, writes the Daily Mail.
Back in 2020, the prevailing view, shared by the world's leading experts, was that COVID naturally jumped from animals infected with the bat coronavirus to humans. But the consensus about how the pandemic began three years ago has slowly begun to change. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in February that the virus «most likely» originated from an incident at a laboratory in Wuhan.
However, most experts say that COVID most likely arose naturally, transmitted from animals to humans – what is known as zoonosis. Such theories mostly pointed to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where numerous species of live animals were kept and sold, as a potential site where such an infection could occur.
And in February 2021, an investigation into the origins of COVID by The World Health Organization said it was «highly unlikely» to leak the virus from the lab. But plans for a second phase of the investigation, including an audit of laboratories in the Wuhan area, were rejected by the Chinese government.
No concrete evidence has ever been found to support either argument, leading experts to fear that the truth the origin of COVID will never be revealed.
In addition to simply establishing historical fact, experts also want to find out how COVID came about to help prevent other similar pathogens from becoming pandemics in the future.