This week we explore the suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 might have come from a laboratory and what the science says. The virus either emerged from another animal, so called Zoonotic origins or was leaked from a laboratory, in which case this could be deliberately or accidentally.
We dive into the data and explain some of the reasons why despite the coincidence of the virus emerging in a city where there is a virology laboratory focused on Coronaviruses, that same city is also the largest city in central China with multiple animal markets, a major hub for domestic and international travel. The lab was set up in the chase to find the source of the deadly SARS virus…..reported back in December 2017.
And there was a detailed review of the lab 23 February 2017; Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens
We look at the timeline of the emergence, some of the science history of previous coronaviruses and where they came from (hint – they were Zoonotic). There’s even a mouse trail of evidence as to why the lab hypothesis is highly unlikely and dig into the excellent paper (previously available in pre-published format): The origins of SARS-CoV-2: A critical review Leading Edge which was published August 18, 2021
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick, I’m the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein, with accountable health. We’re helping employers look at their employee health improvement programs. So Nick, we’ve been sort of talked about this in the background for a long time, there’s been all kinds of crazy stuff coming out. Is it from a lab is the is COVID, not from a lab. And now it’s sort of tilting as I understand. So where are we with this? And what have you found out?
Nick van Terheyden
Well, I’m a little bit worried to hear you say it’s tilting I hope it’s tilting in the right direction. You know, the prevailing evidence, and there has been some excellent work done in a variety of papers, and not just one, but even a sort of aggregation of content that brings all of this together. And the prevailing evidence is that there is no data to support that this came out of a laboratory. And what we essentially have here, I think, is that the suspicion that SARS covi, two came from a laboratory is because of the coincidence, and I know as soon as you mentioned coincidence, the folks get excited about that, because it’s never a coincidence, but it was detected in the same city that happens to house a major virological laboratory that studies Coronavirus, see, look at that and go well, well, that must be the reason. But it is also this is whoo hat. And by the way, it is also the largest city in central China, with multiple animal markets. And it’s also a major hub for travel for commerce. And it’s really well connected with the whole of China and internationally. So it’s really you know, there’s lots of you could take those as coincidence, but let’s look at the specific some of the things that I’ve heard. So if it came from a laboratory, that would be an escape, it’s either intentional or unintentional. If you look at the portfolio of research from this laboratory, there is no evidence nothing nothing in the published research that talks about anything that is related to SARS, COBie two, there’s lots on Coronavirus, is because that’s what they’re focused on. In fact, they’re harvesting them from the local back caves. And you know, accessing this because we need to understand this incredible wild area with lots of viruses. But if they were going to be doing this, they either had to conceal all of that information for all the period of time. So this is not something that just happens. And if it was a random, you know, accidental, they were working on it, we would have seen it in the published work, we’d see some evidence of some element of that virus that’s being used in the laboratory. And if it was this, you know, accidental release, one of the things that we use in the bar trees is mice to study them. That’s how we breed them. There are different ways of breeding. Guess what the size covi to virus was unable to infect mice in the early days, that’s not true. Now, I think I think it was, you know, it’s mutated, which is what it does. So there’s no rational, experimental reason why any genetic system would have been developed to use an unknown unpublished virus with no evidence or mention of it in any of the prior publications or studies.
Fred Goldstein
So the thinking is, because it’s not published, it couldn’t have come from the lab might have been just secret work.
Nick van Terheyden
Well, but if it was secret at work, then it would have had to have been cultured and worked in mice as an example. So you know, there’s lots of owners, I’m just trying to pick some of the gems that I found in, you know, some extensive reading on the topic. If that were the case, we would have seen it run through the mice population, or it would have been at least able to infect it’s not,
Fred Goldstein
can you run that virus and culture it in other ways?
Nick van Terheyden
I mean, yes, that’s possible. But that’s not the standard that’s not the existing laboratory. That’s not what we see in the womb hand of oratory. So why would you develop a whole platform that’s actually a whole science in its own right and takes lots of time? There’s not something that we work to an exist we use what works, right.
Fred Goldstein
Sure. That makes a lot of sense. It just so you’re talking about these gems that you’ve discovered on the side of non lab released or whether intentional or unintentional, right, and then there are all these, I guess you would call them tarnish gems on the other side. It says he Here’s why we think that came out that way.
Nick van Terheyden
Well, yes and and, you know, let’s let’s talk about the Furin cleavage site, which I’m telling you there are people using this to that do not have the foggiest idea what they’re talking about, but they’ve seen it in a meme, or some graphic. Let’s be clear, this is really complex science. And the reality is that this Furin cleavage site that they are all talking about that has been engineered in their common place in Coronavirus by proteins, we see them across all sorts of them, we see it in the feline coronaviruses. We saw it in MERS COVID to not all strains, but we see it across. So this is not unusual.
Fred Goldstein
So what let’s let’s say it’s not lab introduced, it came through some animal hosts. And I’ve heard that it came from potentially bats through a secondary host into the markets. But they’ve not been able to identify any animals that I understand with this virus in them to this point.
Nick van Terheyden
That’s true. But that’s also true for a host of others. I mean, we’re still struggling to identify the zoonotic, or in this case, that means animal source, which is where an awful lot of these diseases come from, let’s go back in history, because we do that a lot on this show, right? All parks, Cal parks, this is where all this comes, it transmits or comes across. And it comes across into the human pool, essentially as this novel, which means new to the body. So our body hasn’t seen it, so it doesn’t know how to react. And we’ve got the same so we saw it with MERS. We saw it with SARS covi. One. So this idea that we’re going to identify now there’s work going on trying to identify it, I think if there was a smoking gun, and I’m I wouldn’t state my life on it, but certainly bat seem to be implicated. And there’s been some demonstration in the pangolin of some matching of elements of that three dimensional shape that you see sometimes of the virus that matches to something that we see in a pangolin. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the way it happened. But there is clear evidence of this happening, where we’ve understood it and able to find it in the past.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah. And I would recommend to anybody who doesn’t know what a pangolin is, check them out on the internet, I think they’re one of the coolest looking animals out there. Really neat stuff. So at the end of the day, you know, I look at this, and I say, what’s the relative possibility of one answer or the other? We don’t know the answer yet. So I’m gonna leave some percentage of possibility that there was a potential leak out there. It’s not 100% Sure. Either way, I guess is that the way to look at it?
Nick van Terheyden
Well, I think, you know, you can’t prove a negative that’s one of the challenges in science, we can’t ever disprove this 100% unless we can go and identify the origin or the source and demonstrate that with validity. And we haven’t done that we’re focused on trying to deal with this pandemic that has emerged. You know, these viruses are great, but you know, what they do they mutate, they’ve gotten better throughout all this time, if you were going to release a virus, you know, deliberately and cause havoc, you’d make it the best that you possibly could well, this virus definitely isn’t just look at Delta way superior to the original alpha version that emerge. So it continues to develop, we’re not going to be able to disprove it. The abundance of evidence is clear. There is nothing to suggest that this was a laboratory released incident. Could it have happened? Of course it could, but it’s not likely.
Fred Goldstein
Got it? Well, it’s just an interesting discussion. We could get into the whole politics of this obviously, we’ll leave that alone. And once again, Nick, thanks for a fantastic discussion. This is really a cool area. We’ll see where it gets to over time. This is Fred Goldstein with accountable health. Thanks so much for listening this week. If you’d like more information, please go to accountable health LLC COMM
Nick van Terheyden
And this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
