Someone rightly pointed that the timeline henceforth depicting BC and AC would now be recalled as Before Corona and After Corona. Rightly so, given the scale of devastation, death, despair, gloom and misery Corona virus pandemic, World will be never the same again. More than 18 months to the pandemic, in this era of fourth generation of industrial revolution, people are still awaiting answers to the origins of the Corona Virus that literally shook the ground beneath their feet. The pandemic has thus far, claimed more than 3.5 million lives, displaced millions of people, caused loss of livelihoods and shattered developing economies.
For all the colossal devastation heaped the humanity deserves
to know the origins of pandemic. Instead of a collective, sober and unbiased
analysis, misplaced political interests and priorities have scuttled all the
effort to investigate the origins.
The timeline of events since the public declaration of the
viral outbreak has been replete of missteps, abdication, complicity and a
reclusive approach. First, the World Health Organisation, the international
body which leads the global responses to health calamity shocked the World with
its complacency. As the casualty figures began to mount and the scale of
infection spread manifold, the scientific community tasked with job of
investigating the outbreak with an open-mind delivered a judgement on the virus
on Feb 18th, 2020 ahead of WHO’s declaration of COVID-19 as pandemic
on March 11th 2020.
Scientists support natural Origins of Covid-19
Foreclosing any debate to alternative theories pertaining to
Covid-19, a group of 27 scientists in their letter to the Lancet, titled, “Statement
in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical
professionals of China combatting COVID-19” stated, “the rapid, open and
transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours
and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn
all the conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 doesn’t have a natural
origin”1.
Ironically, by dismissing all the alternate voices as rumours and
misinformation in one fell swoop, the group of public health scientists have
blockaded any debate on the origins of the pandemic.
Soon this group which suggested a natural origin for Covid-19
hinged on a March 17th paper in Nature Medicine, “The Proximal
Origins of SARS-CoV-2” by Kristian Andersen2. From here
matters get really interesting as we look a close at the people behind this
endorsement and research. Kristian Andersen’s paper has been in dock for being
self-contradictory as it first says that “SARS-CoV-2 is not laboratory
construct”, but in the discussion, it subtly changes the track stating that
this is not manipulated from related SARS-CoV virus.
Indeed, ensnared by his flip-flops Andersen deleted his own
tweets. In an interview Dr Fauci, the head of National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of NIH (National Institute of Health) disclosed
that at a teleconference of the scientists on Feb 1st, just two days
after WHO has raised the alert of Corona virus, Andersen first by phone and
later by e-mail indicated that the genetic structure of the virus suggested
that it was engineered. This view was backed by Australian scientist Edward
Holmes, who reportedly said, “all find the genome inconsistent with
expectations from evolutionary biology”3.
The teleconference was attended by NIH Director Francis
Collins, Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar. In fact, a huge tranche of
emails of Fauci made public under Freedom for Information Act by NIH shed more
light on the details. Fauci indicated
that Farrar was in touch with WHO’s Tedros and was supposed to “give head’s
up”. Three days after the conference, Andersen expressed doubts over the
engineering of virus and termed all the suggestions pointing to it as “fringe”
and “crackpot theories”. Hence forth, scientists strongly argued in favour of natural
origins based on the Andersen and Holmes paper and dismissed all alternate
voices as “conspiracy theories”.
Given the glaring inconsistencies, staring in face, it is
important now to look at the Letter by experts group in the Lancet closely
which has set the “narrative”. Setting narratives is common in politics.
Science is known to be fair, rigorous and open encouraging debate and diverse
thoughts. But the unwillingness of the scientists to admit any alternative
perspective on the origins of the virus has set alarm bells ringing.
Grant Details and Scientists involved in Corona Virus
Research
Interestingly, the Lancet’s solidarity letter and the Nature
publication are spear-headed by scientists who had vested interests in the
Corona virus research. The NIH through the NIAID headed by Fauci, awarded $ 3.4
million grant to the project titled – “Understanding the Risk of Bat Corona
Emergence” in 2014 and 2015. The grants were assigned to Peter Daszak4,
the head of the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) of New York who subcontracted the them
to Shi Zhengh Li, the expert Virologist at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)
famous now as “Bat woman”.
Shi teamed with Ralph Baric of University of North Carolina,
an ace expert on gain-of-function (GOF) research and created a novel virus with
the backbone of SARS-CoV1 and replaced its spike protein with that of a bat in
2015. Around the same time, a moratorium was imposed on GOF research in America
following the incidents of lab accidents involving anthrax and H5 N1 bird flu
virus. Subsequently authorities called
for a “pause” on GOF research on virus related to Influenza, MERS, SARS.
The moratorium had a clause which permitted the continuation
of “such experiments which are urgent and necessary to protect public health
or national security”5. Since the funds continued to flow
uninterruptedly to Shi, the director of NIAID and NIH Francis Collins may have
invoked the exemption.
GOF refers to increasing the transmissibility, virulence and
immunogenicity of microorganisms through serial passaging. Baric taught Shi a
method for engineering bat corona viruses to attack other species. They used
human cells grown in culture (for invitro tests) and humanised mice (in vivo
experiments) to assess the infectivity. Soon she began constructing the
chimeric viruses.
Interestingly, Daszak just before the public disclosure of
the corona outbreak informed about the 100 Chimeric SARS viruses engineered in
WIV. In an interview on December 19th, 2019, he even conceded that Corona
viruses can be easily manipulated in the lab6. He concluded
by saying that the spike protein sequences of the chimeric viruses can be used
to make vaccines against the viral outbreak.
Daszak had first-hand account of the Corona virus research at
WIV. Instead of aiding in mitigation efforts, he chose to defend the research
and outrightly expressed solidarity to Chinese scientists even as countries
were grappling with virus outbreak.
For over 20 years EHA has been funding the research on Virus
which makes them potentially dangerous than what they exist in nature. On the
premise that they can get ahead of the nature and be well prepared to handle
any natural spill overs through zoonotic transmission, they defended
engineering of virus. Hence, any theory substantially firming up the argument
of lab leak would be a devastating blow to EHA.
Connecting the Dots
Instead of declaring conflicting interests before advocating
the natural origins of Covid-19, Daszak worked behind the scenes. He marshalled
expert scientists to condemn all theories suggesting Covid-19 doesn’t have a
natural origin as conspiracy theory.
Signatories of The Lancet letter included Daszak and 26
public health experts. Of them, two scientists are from EHA, two associated
with Daszak as part of leadership of the Global Virome Project, four
collaborators of Ralph Baric, an editor of ProMED which receives operational
support from Wellcome group7. In all, baring three people who
are not in active research most of them as of now have reversed or modified
their position.
For the fear of staking their own reputation the bigwigs of
science community created a perception that questioning or doubting their
natural origins theory of Covid-19 a taboo. Months into Covid outbreak due to
politically charged atmosphere in Trump regime, any discussion on the lab-leak
theory was construed as racist.
By April 2020, Trump called out China for the “Wuhan Outbreak”
and even halted funds to WHO “for failing in its duty”. Coming under intense
criticism over pandemic management, Trump cancelled funds to EHA for funding
the Corona virus research at WIV. In response to Trump’s decision, the
scientists intensely rallied the lab-leak as conspiracy, brought immense
pressure on the Trump administration to revoke the decision. 77 Nobel
Laureates, 33 scientific societies penned an open letter to Trump to reconsider
the decision8.
For the fear of being associated the Trump, who first
advocated a Wuhan lab leak, scientists refrained from discussing the lab leak
theory. Labelling lab-leak as conspiracy theory, media actively churned several
videos in support of natural origins. As elections neared discussions any
contradictory opinions to natural origins of Covid were deemed blasphemous.
As of now, three hypotheses are in vogue- first, virus has
evolved naturally and entered humans through animals; second, virus evolved
naturally, but employee in the lab who might have contracted the virus has
spilled it to society; third, scientists at lab are manipulating the virus and
that it accidentally or intentionally spilled out.
Shortly, after NIH’s revocation of funds to EHA, Daszak in an
interview to Nature lamented that NIH’s funding couldn’t be reinstated until seven
demands are met. He recounting that EHA was asked to obtain a sample vial of
SARS-CoV-2 from WIV for genome analysis and to arrange an inspection of WIV for
federal officials. Terming NIH’s conditions as heinous and that his research
was caught in cross-hairs. He stubbornly ruled out any other possibility and
construed any dissenting voice as conspiracy theory9. Shi
Zhengli voiced similar concerns and called NIH’s conditions as outrageous. Since
2013, EHA is reported to have received $39 million and as of now the amount
that ended up in Wuhan is not clear. Additionally, EHA received $123 million
between 2017 and 2020 from the government with Department of Defense (DoD)
being one of the biggest funders10.
Being an election year, Covid has become a political agenda.
Unfortunately, scientific temper was abjectly surrendered at the political
altar. While domestic politics of America inflicted a fatal blow to the
unflinching scientific efforts to gain greater clarity, an objective dissection
of scientific pursuits to unravel the truth laid out bare the menacing perfidy
of scientists and academic journals.
Indeed, the left-leaning mainstream media, lent credence to
theory of natural origins of Corona virus. Social media censored and ruthlessly
pulled down any references to lab-leak. Newspapers too followed similar suit
for over one year. The political polarisation cast a huge shadow on the
scientific discussions. The “deep state” which drives the narratives actually
made it difficult even for the secretary of the State Mike Pompeo to get the
real intelligence reports on the Covid origins. However, the tide turned to
change the moment President Biden hinted at an alternate hypothesis and ordered
an investigation.
Systematic gaslighting of Covid origins
As the pandemic continued to rage, some scientists daringly
admitted that the remarkable infectivity rate of the virus points to some
manipulation. They haven’t ruled out lab-leak. One of the earliest papers by
the Indian scientists who claimed a similarity between the sequences of SARS-2
spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and gag protein was forced to retract11.
Similarly, scientists who alluded to genetic manipulation of the virus were
either rejected or their reviews were inadvertently delayed.
Social media was abounded with several such stories and
harrowing experiences of the scientists who had to wait for an inordinately
long time to get a response. On the contrary papers which promoted the Chinese
perspective were published in a span of just 9 nine days12.
Interestingly, this trend reversed after the political dispensation began to
embrace and give a chance to the “lab-leak” hypothesis.
At the centre of this entire scandalous approach have been
the science journals. By scuttling the debate, shutting the alternate voices
and stalling an open discussion the elixir of science, the journals have
invariably demonstrated their comprised credentials. In lieu of their
inextricable political leanings, outright rejection of the lab-leak hypothesis
by science journals raised concerns about the erosion of genuine scientific
temper. Clearly, science should have been delineated from politics to have an
unbiased, rational and objective investigation.
The Lancet, considered a gold standard of medical journalism,
gearing up to celebrate its 200th anniversary emerged as the centre
of the Covid origins scandal. By denying platform to dissenting voices, it has
formidably upheld the views that are favourable to China. Mirroring its
shifting priorities and political allegiances, The Lancet expressed serious
concerns over the use of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) manufactured in India for
Covid treatment forcing the WHO to suspend its usage. Now latest studies
suggest that HCQ reduced Covid mortality.
Large-scale clinical trials in Singapore reported of the effectiveness
of HCQ in reducing Covid spread13. India has been at the
receiving end of The Lancet’s implicit bias, which became evident when its
editorial lashed out at New Delhi for abrogation of Article 370 and castigated
the Modi government of Covid handling. Clearly, both the issues, the internal
affairs of India are beyond the realm of a medical journal. But have an
undeclared China connect to them.
The Lancet’s connections with China are so inextricable that
it picked up Peter Daszak, director of EHA to be part of the Lancet COVID-19
Commission 12-member taskforce constituted to investigate the origins of the
SARS-CoV-2. Along the expected lines, the team assessed a zoonotic spill over
from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely” and a laboratory
incident as “extremely unlikely”14
It is interesting to note that The Lancet is part of the
Rockefeller foundation funded “Planetary Health Alliance” which includes EHA,
Wellcome Trust, Harvard T. H Chan School of Public Health, Project Drawdown and
Stockholm Institute15. In short, the journal is hand-in-glove
with the agency that has funded the Corona research and by consequence shields
China from any criticism.
In January, the editor of The Lancet rejected letter of The
Paris group, a group of 14 experts that called for an open investigation on the
origins of the Covid-19. In May 2020, in defence of China, Horton in an
interview to CCTV said, “it wasn’t scientific” and “not helpful” to seek the
details of the patient zero and such efforts could be “highly stigmatizing” and
“discriminatory”. It is very important to understand the origin of this virus
and to study those origins scientifically and not allow such conspiracy
theories to contaminate our thinking” but these would only “end risk
destabilising our response to the virus”16.
In Guardian Horton wrote, “but to blame China of the
pandemic is to rewrite history of Covid-19 and to marginalise the failings of
the Western nations”17. The job of science is to chase
the truth and make inferences based on the data and verifiable evidence.
Horton’s stance and eventual free pass prompted Daszak to sneer at MI6 Head Sir
Richard Dearlove for suggesting that covid escaped from the lab.
Journals Nature and Science also refused to carry critical
articles of dissenting scientists. Nature indeed, published paper submitted by
Shi and two others on the same day of submission. This paper didn’t cite the
virus RaTG13 that caused the death of three miners in the Yunnan caves to the
SARS-CoV-2. The absence of the critical missing link created a confusion.
Despite several requests, Nature published the addendum only after 10 months in
November. Nature also published a series of papers which created a false trail
of the Pangolin present in the Wuhan wet market as intermediary in infection. But
when a scientist pointed that all the four papers used samples from same batch
of pangolins, Nature rejected the submission.
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