Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Saturday, April 18th, 2020

COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic has a natural origin

Author:     Scripps Research Institute
Source:     Science Daily
Publication Date:     17 March 2020
 Link: COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic has a natural origin
Stephan:   This pandemic has really brought into focus for me the abysmal ignorance and deliberate conscious disinformation campaign I see on Rightwing media sites, and that I hear and see on the Trumpist radio and television stations. Personally, I think, this ought to be considered criminal behavior. Just as the Supreme Court ruled you can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, so I think media should be held criminally liable for consciously and with malintent propagating medical disinformation. Yesterday I did two stories on the crap that passes for information on the political right. Today's email brought me two more emails each telling me that the Coronavirus was created in a weapons bio-laboratory in China, and deliberately released into the world. One of the emails, from a notably crackpot Trumper, said it was financed by George Soros. So, okay. I contacted two epidemiologist friends, one of whom works for a U.S. government military lab to ask their opinions. Both of them, not knowing I had asked the other, recommended the same source, and here it is.

The novel Coronavirus

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.

“By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,” said Kristian Andersen, PhD, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and corresponding author on the paper.

In addition to Andersen, authors on the paper, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” include Robert F. Garry, of Tulane University; Edward Holmes, of the University of Sydney; Andrew Rambaut, of University of Edinburgh; W. Ian Lipkin, of Columbia University.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging widely in severity. The first known severe illness caused […]

Read the Full Article

2 Comments

  1. Paul H. Smith on Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 9:31 am

    Stephan, I read this article last week and found it persuasive. HOWEVER, just because it is natural in origin doesn’t mean it didn’t escape from a lab. It is quite possible that it could have escaped from a lab that was studying live bats that had been brought in an placed in captivity for research purposes. This is, in fact, a plausible scenario, and one for which the video analysis I posted yesterday convincingly argues. I’m sure you are, as am I getting suggestion after suggestion for videos to watch. And you, like I, can only watch a small percentage. But THIS one is worth watching. I’ll post it again so you don’t have to go looking for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1smFY7QqkE57b6DdeiZVQI1qK60gi0wa0SFhCs8JHr9asEah0NgboxbXw

  2. Rev. Dean on Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 11:39 am

    I, too, have read articles from important epidemiologists that there is no way that the Corona virus could have been made in a laboratory and is a natural virus which has evolved and spread on it’s own as all viruses do.