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Why Are US Bureaucrats Helping China Cover Up The Lab Leak Theory? - The Federalist

Why Are US Bureaucrats Helping China Cover Up The Lab Leak Theory? - The Federalist

Why Are US Bureaucrats Helping China Cover Up The Lab Leak Theory? - The Federalist
May 20, 2022 2 mins, 21 secs

There are only two plausible competing virus origin hypotheses: “lab leak” and “wet market.” Instead of imploring scientists to work together and discover the truth, then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote in an email to presidential medical advisor Anthony Fauci early in the pandemic: “Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy [i.e., ‘lab leak’], with what seems to be growing momentum.”.

A curious feature of SARS-CoV-2 is the presence of a furin cleavage site in its spike protein that gives it remarkable infectivity.

Human cells display a specialized enzyme called “furin protease” that can cleave the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein at the furin cleavage site to facilitate efficient infection. .

Surprisingly, this furin site is absent from the spike proteins of the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2, leading to the hypothesis that the furin site could easily have been inserted into a bat virus to create a “chimeric coronavirus” (i.e., SARS-CoV-2). The importance of furin protease cleavage was well known to the PNAS researchers, as evidenced by their statement: “Differences in these regions of spike may yield increased protease targeting, enhanced spike cleavage, and/or expanded tropism leading to more robust infection for the epidemic SARS strains” (emphasis mine). .

Notably, this paper does not report a closely related sibling of SARS-CoV-2 displaying a spike protein with a furin cleavage site.

Still, the authors claim “dispositive evidence” in favor of the Wuhan market as the virus origin because: first, a cluster of early cases were allegedly geographically centered around the market; second, animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 appear to have been sold at the market; and third, highly sensitive PCR testing detected evidence of the virus in various environmental samples at the market. .

But by January, with initial cases in Wuhan recorded in early December, the virus had already been spreading for at least one month?

In fact, the joint WHO-China report states: “Transmission within the wider community in December could account for cases not associated with the Huanan market which, together with the presence of early cases not associated with that market, could suggest that the Huanan market was not the original source of the outbreak.” None of the 457 live animals sampled at the market tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, so there simply cannot be “dispositive evidence” of zoonotic spread. .

did: “Thus, the market might have acted as an amplifier due to the high number of visitors every day, causing many initially identified infection clusters in the early stage of the outbreak.” According to these scientists, the market was likely a super-spreader event, not the origin of the pandemic. .

failed to include these deleted data in their study, their findings probably present an incomplete picture of the circulating viruses in Wuhan early in the pandemic

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