Origins of COVID-19….

On Sept 14, a scientific article (“Yan report”) was preprinted stating that COVID19 was made in a lab rather than the “natural origin theory” (i.e. jumping from animal to human). The article has been downloaded 539,705 times and was picked up by several news source (some with more than 2 million views on YouTube). The Yan report has NOT been peer reviewed.

The report claimed many things using complex technical jargon. It’s impossible for non-experts to decode the science. However, previous peer-reviewed science can poke a LOT of holes into their claims…

1. Yan report claims COVID19 is similar to two strains of bat coronaviruses (ZC45 and/or ZXC21) that were created by scientists at Chinese military labs. However...

• COVID19 has more than 3500 differences (11%) compared to these two strains, so using them as a blueprint would be, quite literally, a waste of time.

• In July, a peer reviewed article showed the lineage of COVID19 and found its closest ancestor (96% match) was RaTG13 (a virus that’s been circulating among bats for decades)

• We know that COVID19's cousins exist in nature among many animals. For example, SARS is found in bats. And the cousins have been shown to directly jump from bats to humans.

• Viruses constantly evolve and are passed between species. The Yan report ignored all recent COVID19 data implicating that the virus jumped from bats to pangolins. Viruses are often passed to an intermediate animal, like pangolins, and stay in the intermediate animal until the virus could evolve enough to infect humans.

2. Yan report claims the presence of a “furin cleavage site” on COVID19, which would make the virus more infective than usual. They also claim that cleavage sites are not found on other coronaviruses. Together, this must mean COVID19 was engineered. However, this cleavage site could have been added by combining with another virus (and not added by humans). This happens all the time. It could have happened the day before patient zero was infected or could have happened thousands of years ago. Also, not to mention, similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations.

3. Yan report points out that COVID19 has sites that can be cut and pasted (also called enzymes). These are sometimes found in cloned viruses. However, these sites also naturally occur in ALL types of genes. Also, using enzymes is really a quite outdated way to make a biological weapon...

There are also 3 noteworthy “non-scientific” holes in this article…

1. The writing style was nothing but odd. For example, the study doesn’t start with a hypothesis. Instead, the authors start by stating “It is noteworthy that scientific journals have clearly censored any dissenting opinions that suggest a non-natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. Because of this censorship, articles questioning either the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 or the actual existence of RaTG13, although of high quality scientifically, can only exist as preprints.” A defensive opening is certainly not a “normal” introduction (or justification) for a scientific study.

2. The authors also use an odd choice of vocabulary throughout. For example, the word “suspicious” is used five times throughout the manuscript. I’ve honestly never seen in a scientific article. Should I say that this is “suspicious” 🙂

3. The scientists state, as they should, their institution: a non-profit called the Rule of Law Society & Rule of Law Foundation located in New York, NY. This non-profit also funded the study (i.e. paid the scientists for their time). After some light googling, it’s clear that the institutes are NOT bi-partisan, scientific think tanks. This brings into question conflicts of interest.

Finding the origin for COVID19 is like looking for a needle in a haystack, as we have to test a huge number of animals and humans in China to trace the evolution. The World Health Organization has already organized a team to lead this.

We will have to be patient while we find the origin of this virus. We will also have to be patient while we wait for the Yan report to be peer reviewed. It’s important to get this right, not only for public health (and preventing future virus jumps) but also because of political, social, and economic implications if we were to get this wrong.

Love, YLE

Andddd here are ALL the data sources… RaTG13 lineage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 SARS and bats: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7; https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985; bats to pangolins: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0; https://asm.org/COVID/COVID-19-Research-Registry/Basic-Virology#evolutions Furin cleavage sites: https://jvi.asm.org/content/94/5/e01774-19 ; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222030662X Finding a needle in a haystack: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9