Mar 19 2020
Two recent blogs on chimeric virus research raise many questions. The research was published in Nature Medicine on November 9th of 2015, refer to the original article and the commentary. Please note that while writing this blog, I tried my best to avoid making any firm conclusions or ignite conspiracy theories.
Here are the key points:
This work was performed in cooperation between various US research institutions and … Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China;
It was funded by the US government;
Boyd L Yount Jr. of Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina designed the infectious clone and recovered chimeric viruses;
Zhengli-Li Shi provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China. This means the biomaterial was transferred between USA and China at least once.
The research was underway when the US government imposed a moratorium on federal funding of such research in October of 2014, but the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) allowed it to proceed while it was under review by the agency. The NIH eventually concluded that the work was not so risky as to fall under the moratorium;
The chimeric SARS virus was engineered from the one found in Chinese bats;
The authors made a special effort to make this chimera as effective in infecting human airways cells as possible and proven it works on human airway cell culture and mice;
This was achieved by synthesizing a special protein - “spike” - located on viral membrane allowing it to use human ACE2 receptors. Incidentally, exact same mechanism is present on COVID-19;
None of the immune therapies or vaccines tried were effective;
The purported goal of this work was to demonstrate that such highly pathogenic virus can, in theory, emerge in nature and therefore emulating its characteristics and testing in mice, and … non-human primates, e.g. monkeys, would help in development of treatments and vaccines;
Notably, many renown experts spoke against such research at the time as reflected in the editorial published only 3 days later – on November 12th of 2015. Their main arguments were:
“if the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory”
“it (the study) provides little benefit, and reveals little about the risk that the wild SHC014 virus in bats poses to humans”;
“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk”
“The study findings “move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger”
Interesting news emerged in the last 24 hours:
a Chinese woman, a resident of Massachusetts was arrested in Beijing after flying from Los Angeles for concealing of the fact she took anti-fever medicine before boarding her plane, and then failed to inform the flight attendants of her health condition with honesty. Police are probing her on suspicion of preventing the control of infectious diseases.
Earlier, on March 10th, The Boston Globe published the article How the Biogen leadership conference in Boston spread the coronavirus https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/11/nation/how-biogen-leadership-conference-boston-spread-coronavirus/
These facts made me re-think my prior statements that COVID-19 is “just another virus”. Even if it originated in nature and jumped to humans at a wild animal market in Wuhan, its similarity with chimera produced by joint US-China effort forces me to take information about its deadly qualities much more seriously. After all, these qualities were designed and proven in experiment.
Regardless of intentional or unintentional scenario (I believe it WAS non-intentional), I now see various government actions in a different light. I have no doubt that the information discussed in the Nature article was known or was made known to those in charge very quickly.
China, thanks to its centralized government, was very quick to respond with wartime like actions and contained epidemics with zero new cases reported as of today.
The United States were initially slow to respond both for political reasons and because of the time and courage required to make the president aware of the situation. The political urge to display China in a bad light was not helpful either.
Russia, without doubt, was informed by China immediately, closing its borders with China on January 30th, a day before US imposed travel ban on China. Please note that Chinese-Russian border is 2,615.5 miles long vs. US ports of entry with zero miles of land border.
Europe, as a whole, mimicked the US pace and response before going into overdrive, presumably after receiving information from the US, China, and Russia.
India must have received prompt update from China and acted decisively but not before the official visit by the US president on February 24th-25th!
These were all bad news.
The good news
I still stand by my assessment regarding mortality, fatality and number of exposed;
The entire globe went (still going) through an ultimate stress test, which will makes individuals, societies, and governments stronger and smarter, as long as we can learn from our mistakes;
The government finally got into action and takes appropriate measures to isolate and quarantine the entire population. There is definitely some over-reaction here, but better be safe than sorry;
The qualities of the virus are well understood. It is not an enigma. We know the enemy, hence there must be no fear of unknown;
Regardless of the way this virus was introduced into human population, the epidemic will be contained quickly. I would give it until the end of April at most. In fact, if there was indeed intentional or non-intentional transmission via one of the labs involved, it is easier to contain. It is much harder to contain transmission in nature, as bats would not obey our orders to stay inside;
We had expensive but much needed reality check and a biohazard drill, which must awaken us to the need of self-isolation regardless of kind of infection, stay out of the office, if sick, regardless of perceived importance of our work, keep children at home when they sneeze and cough, wash hands, clean and cook your food, etc.;
Medical professionals received much needed and valuable experience in dealing with biologic warfare;
The crisis highlighted the importance of well-funded and coordinated healthcare system;
Telehealth received much needed boost;
Regulations on professional activities across borders and institutions eased;
The digital economy will flourish;
Many will realize that global trotting for non-essential business meetings may not only be inefficient and expensive, but also dangerous. The business travel budgets will shrink along with pollution it generates;
Traffic will lighten (already did!), as many people will almost certainly prefer to work from home from now on. We will be more productive and have more day left to ourselves by saving on daily commute. Again, pollution will decrease, and number of traffic accidents victims will go down;
Climate warming, if real, shall slow down…