origin of covid19 virus

 

As far as I know, covid19 may have originated "the usual way" - from transmission across species and natural mutation. But I would be very interested to hear an honest and unbiased appraisal - by an expert in viral genetics and statistics - as to the probability that the covid19 virus' genetic make-up would have arisen without genetic manipulations done in a laboratory.  

Alternatively, the origin of covid19 pandemic may have been a lab-created virus strain that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).  

Of course, if the virus did come from WIV, there would be many with motive to conceal the truth - the worldwide organizations and researchers who are supporters of virus gain-of-function research,the operators of the Wuhan lab, the Chinese government.

My opinion aligns well with the January 2021 statement from the US Department of State from https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html. This statement is copied just below along with[my additions/comments which are indicated in red]. (And below that is a March 10, 2023 article about current efforts to declassify intelligence on US government investigations into the possiblilty that the covid19 virus originated from experiments in the Wuhan lab.)

For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident [- specifically the escape of a genetically modified virus created in the Wuhan lab -] could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure

The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:

1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

• The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
• Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.
• The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

2. Research at the WIV:

• Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
• The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
• WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.

3. Secret military activity at the WIV:

• Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
• Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
• The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.

Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.

As the world continues to battle this pandemic – and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays – the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.  

[The Chinese government is certainly not alone in trying to conceal its high risk research activities. Remember the Manhattan Project?]

[If the human race is to survive, it is critical that scientists and organizations involved in genetically modifying viruses be keenly aware of the possible existential risks to humans and to other species.  It is crtical that there be independent oversight, public knowledge and transparency in this work.]  

[The optimistic perspective: there are other existential risk activities we humans have had to regulate or moderate in order to survive.  And we have had some degree of success with most of these. (Well, at least we're still here.) Consider: fire, gunpowder, chemical explosive devices, chemical weapons, chemical pollution, manipulating nuclear isotopes, nuclear bombs, DDT, changing the world climate via burning too many fossil fuels.] 

[Genetic manipulation of viruses is just another to add to the list.]

From https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/10/covid-house-votes-to-declassify-intelligence-on-possible-wuhan-lab-leak.html:

The House of Representatives on Friday unanimously voted to declassify information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Covid-19 pandemic, sending the bill to President Joe Biden.

The Senate also voted unanimously earlier this month to require Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify such information.

Covid first emerged in Wuhan, China, in 2019, though it’s still unknown how the virus spread to people. Scientists have clashed for years over whether Covid came from an infected animal that transmitted the virus to humans, or whether the pathogen escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

The effort by Congress to declassify intelligence on the origins of Covid comes after the Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the virus most likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan as the result of an accident.

The Energy Department is one of 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. The department was previously undecided on how the virus emerged.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also concluded that the pandemic likely started with a lab incident in Wuhan, the agency’s director, Christopher Wray, told Fox News earlier this month.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” 

“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody,” Wray said.

Biden ordered the intelligence community in 2021 to provide an updated analysis of how the pandemic emerged. The intelligence agencies were divided on how Covid started spreading among humans, though they said a natural original and a lab leak were both plausible.

Four unnamed agencies in that 2021 report reached low-confidence assessments that an infected animal spread the virus to humans. The intelligence community agreed that Covid was not developed as biological weapon, and most agencies assessed that the virus was not genetically engineered.

The Central Intelligence Agency and another unnamed agency are undecided about whether virus has a natural origin or came from a lab, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news about the Energy Department’s position.

“Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN last week. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

Sullivan said that Biden had specifically requested that national labs under the Energy Department participate in the intelligence review of how the pandemic started. He would not confirm or deny reports about the Energy Department’s assessment that a lab leak was more likely.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the former heads of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health, respectively, have maintained that Covid most likely spread from an infected animal to people. Such an animal has not been identified three years after the pandemic began.

House Republicans have called on Fauci, Collins, and other former and current health officials to testify on the origins of the pandemic.

China has denied that the virus escaped from a lab. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning pointed to a World Health Organization report published in March 2021 that said a laboratory origin of the pandemic “was considered to be extremely unlikely.”

But the U.S. and 12 other countries sharply criticized the WHO report because the experts who wrote it lacked access to complete, original data and samples.

On the day the report was published, WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said all hypotheses of the pandemic’s origin are on the table and further studies are needed. Tedros called on Beijing last week to be more transparent.

“WHO continues to call for China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results to that effect — until then, all hypotheses on the origins of the virus remain on the table,” Tedros said a news conference in Geneva.

He also called on the U.S. to share any information it has on the pandemic’s origins.