Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks
graphics.reuters.com
graphics.reuters.com
Outside of reactionary comments about banning eating bats and banning "wet markets", I wish there was more serious discussion about how intensive animal farming in general could lead to another pandemic and what we're going to do about it. We're just going to continue as normal until a pandemic kicks off from cows, pigs or chickens?
On top of just the number of animals treated with antibiotics being kept in close proximity to help a virus mutate, there's also the animal waste produced, the land required and the contributions to climate change that are destroying the environment and displacing species.
Antibiotics are not functional against viruses. They don't make any difference. Where antibiotics are used it must be under qualified medical care, farmers can't just go buy them at the corner store, any more than you can. (15 years ago they could buy them, I don't remember exactly when the laws changed) Even when they are used (never in chickens), there can be not detectable antibiotics in food, and we can detect very tiny amounts.
Animals in close proximity are very isolated. Farmers have strict bio security rules before you can enter the barns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#An...
"This is a growing matter of concern as antibiotic resistance is considered to be a serious future threat to human welfare.[10] Infectious diseases are the third leading cause of death in Europe and a future without effective antibiotics would fundamentally change the way modern medicine is practised.[10][12]"
How does this explain the number of outbreaks of swine flu in multiple countries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1
If we want to safeguard our species from zoonotic pandemics, instead of weaponizing them, then a vaccination effort would be better directed at the source.
Perhaps an international effort to identify dangerous zoonotic pathogens and address them within their natural hosts is preferable to what COVID-19 has forced us to endure.
Given we observe a pandemic, the probability for the virus to be well adapted is very high.
What we do know is:
* There is a highest safety level virus lab in Wuhan.
* Lab escapes do and did happen.
As far as I know we simply do not have evidence if or if not gain of function research played a role.
\edit: formatting. Can somebody please explain the downvotes?
You can examine phylogenetic distance -- the degree of evolutionary drift that the initial virus had from others which are subject to natural (in-the-wild) evolution. COVID is way out there. And even then the closest "natural" virus had its genome published by the Wuhan lab long after the initial outbreak.
The lack of any close relatives suggests that gain-of-function very well may have taken place, as does the heightened vulnerability of typical lab-animals. What there isn't much evidence of is zoonotic transfer.
From my (limited) understanding we only know about a fraction of corona-viruses out there, and hence there is great uncertainty in the phylogenetic modelling.
I haven't seen a credible write-up, if you can point me in the right direction, that would be appreciated.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1....
Some people suspected it [0] and eventually Dr. Shi confirmed it [1] after.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341547726_Understan...
[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/487.full
The important question here is: Given a virus that is as well adapted to humans as SARS-CoV-2, how likely is it that it emerged spontaneously (without a trace of any intermediate states, afaik) vs. how likely is it that it leaked from a lab that has high safety standards, but was probably producing viruses just like it.
It is indeed not surprising that the virus is well adapted to humans, seeing as we are experiencing a pandemic, but that is disconnected from wondering how it got to be so.
It's pretty clear that SARS-CoV-2 shares an ancestor with RaTG13 [0]. Their S-proteins, the main factor in human adaptation, are a 97.8% match, which can be explained with about a decade of divergence, putting the common ancestor somewhere in late 2000s.
Why RaTG13 (then called RaBtCoV/4991) research was shelved by China, when it's been one of the suspects of the death of 3 miners with SARS-like symptoms in 2012[1], is the concerning part of it all. The chances of it being lab made/grown/modified are just way too slim.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-020-0468-7
[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/new-killer-virus-chi...
[1] https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/bats/bat-watchi...
Bascially we don't know and probably won't know. The conflict of interest with the WHO mission is pretty clear.
Beyond any politicization of the issue it's interesting to learn about the possibilities and risks in that research area.
"A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived"
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-by-dr-ste...
The first 12 pages of the PDF read like a sci-fy thriller. Link to the PDF (scroll down the page a bit):
I don't know any "Scientist" making this claim, and I work at a research University. Humans have always lived in direct contact with animals. We evolved from the Natural world living with animals in the forest, desert, and grassland. What has changed is that there are more people and we are more interconnected than ever. So in the past, if someone were exposed to a novel coronavirus, the infection wouldn't leave the village, but now it spreads across the globe in a matter of months.
(70 comments)
The exact role of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is still unclear (in any case we do not eat one another) however we do know it is minor relative to respiratory droplets and aerosols.
https://www.med.unc.edu/orfeome/files/2018/03/a-sars-like-cl...
another interesting find: http://ge.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-ins...
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.
It's a straightforward although time-consuming exercise to trace through Shi's research from the last 15 years and see that she and her team have clearly been developing a bioweapon based on SARS and gain of function stuff pasted in from bat coronaviruses and elsewhere.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/who-covid-19-didnt-leak-from...
"A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived"
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-by-dr-ste...
The first 12 pages of the PDF read like a sci-fy thriller. Link to the PDF (scroll down the page a bit):
EDIT: Removed speculation
Edit: "Several studies have indicated that bats have unique defense mechanisms that allow them to be persistently or latently infected with viruses. Factors leading to an increase in the viral load of persistently infected bats would facilitate shedding of virus." Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410205/
Things aren’t required to occur 100% of the time just because the raw bits are there. Sometimes these things take time.