The whole World had 289,936 covid cases this past week, and South Korea alone was responsible for 229,668 of them, or 79%.
- The USA was #2 with 21,309, or 7%.
- Interestingly enough, of the 576 world deaths this past week, S. Korea had only 52 of them, or 9%.
- Brazil had 171 covid deaths, or 30%, while the USA had 139 deaths, or 24%.
There remains a range of questions and unknowns about our past pandemic. One of them is, where did this all start? Well, no doubt about the location being China, and almost surely Wuhan. But where and how exactly? The New York Times this week summarized the current state of knowledge:
Was China initially hiding the truth? Yes.- The country was concerned, and ordered the original coronavirus samples be destroyed. Maybe this was smart, but was "coverup" the reason?
- This Wuhan lab was known to purposefully create dangerous viruses to learn how to combat them before they emerged in the wild. But was this, then, a phase of biological warfare?
- Worldwide, these labs have had leaks.
- Some are for nefarious purposes, such as the 2001 anthrax attacks from Fort Detrick. This incident began a week after 9/11, so the first suspects were Al-Queda and Iraq. Turned out a scientist at this biodenfense lab, Bruce Edwards Ivins, was subsequently suspected, but he committed suicide with an overdose of Tylenol (I did not know this pill was that dangerous?) in 2008, and the case was never really settled. There were 5 anthrax deaths, with 17 more injured. The covid pandemic death toll is approaching 7 million, and in reality should be at least double that number.
- May of 1977 there was an outbreak of the H1N1 flu strain in northern China. It quickly spread to Russia, which was first to report this problem, and thus became known as the Russian Flu.
- There has been no confirmation of source, and both Chinese and Russian scientists have denied responsibility, but studies seem to indicate that there was a leak of the 1955 H1N1 virus from a lab in one of these two countries.
- There were 700,000 deaths, mostly under the age of 25. Why? Apparently, those older had previously become immune from that 1955 pandemic.
There is a trackable trail of H1N1, which caused the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed perhaps 50 million, yes, 50 million, from 1918 to 1921. With the world population of 1.8 billion then (and now is 8 billion), the deaths/capita of the Spanish Flu was 32 times higher than the recent covid pandemic. In other words, this would have been the equivalent of 224 million deaths from covid today.
There was, of course, an on site investigation by the World Health Organization, which went nowhere, partly because of Chinese resistance. Maybe because of the reluctance to dis-engage China, WHO has not conducted a Phase 2 follow-up. All they did was create a Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Pathogens (SAGO) to study the origin of covid and other dangerous new bugs.
All this past history early on convinced the FBI and Department of Energy that lab leak was the most plausible origin of covid.
- The Trump Administration bolstered this hypothesis, for late in 2019, a few researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were so infected. Trump wanted to blame China, anyway. Democrats dismissed all that as a conspiracy theory of xenophobia.
- The early Biden Administration, however, also seemed supportive of the lab-leak theory.
- BUT THE SITUATION HAS CHANGED SOMEWHAT OVER THE PAST YEAR.
- U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the sick lab workers in Wuhan might not have had covid. Read this June 2023 report.
- Further, the intelligence community says there is no evidence that the Wuhan Lab research could have been a precursor to the virus that causes covid.
The conclusion is that all five intelligence agencies lean toward the natural-transmission theory, that is, the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from something like a raccoon dog or Malayan porcupine being sold at the sprawling emporium (supposedly trading annual revenues of $70 billion) called the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But to test that hypothesis, you need something from these animals to analyze. But you can't because this market was closed down in December of 2019, with no sampling occurring.
Also, this SARS-CoV-1 virus is not new. Back in 2002 this virus spread in human travelers from Hong Kong, and this specific organism was traced to palm civets, a catlike carnivore sold as food in South China markets and restaurants. But the civets turned out to be intermediate hosts from the horseshoe bat. To quote this article:
The story of SARS is only one chapter in the saga of dangerous new viruses emerging from animals. The grim tale of how H.I.V. got into humans and caused the AIDS pandemic is another — a tale known partly by inference and partly by molecular evidence, and traceable back to a single blood-mingling event between a person and a chimpanzee, probably hunter and hunted, in the southeastern corner of Cameroon around the start of the 20th century. Human contact with nonhuman animals accounts for our influenzas as well, which usually emerge from wild aquatic birds. Hendra virus, in Australia, comes to humans from bats, generally through an intermediate host: horses. Machupo virus, in Bolivia, abides in rodents when not infecting people. Hantaan virus, discovered in Korea, and its relative Sin Nombre virus, in the American Southwest, also spill over from rodents. Nipah virus, in Bangladesh and some surrounding countries, comes from bats. It’s excreted in bat feces, saliva and urine, and when certain fruit bats visit date palm trees that are being tapped for their sugary sap —a custom in Bangladesh — the virus contaminates the sap, which is sold fresh on the street to local customers, some of whom die. These cases and many others like them are among my own priors, and no doubt they do incline me toward the idea of natural spillover. It happens often, sometimes with dire consequences.
The CIA itself does not lean one way or the other because they say too much evidence has been lost though the chaos of the pandemic, destruction of samples and the passage of time. Apparently the same is true of Chinese authorities:
Some Chinese officials believe the case for natural transmission. Others are less convinced but know that if evidence points to a lab leak, it will be bad for their country. So they have every incentive not to look. If you want to keep a secret, as George Orwell wrote, you must hide it from yourself.
So what is the answer to where this covid pandemic origin? We might never know.
This article was written by David Quammen, who had written 18 books, including Spillover in 2012 predicting a pandemic caused by a newly emerged virus, and Breathless (2022), tracing the scientific effort to discover the origin and track the evolution of Covid.
Typhoon Doksuri began as a tropical depression on July 21, and attained typhoon status on July 23. Strength zoomed up to 150 MPH, a super typhoon, on July 24. Weakened to 85 MPH earlier today, but soon strengthened back up to 120 MPH. Also called Typhoon Egay in the Philippines, as a Category 3 and 4, killed six and brushed Taiwan, bringing torrential rain of up to one yard (36 inches), on his way to China, eastern Guangdong or Fujian province tonight into tomorrow, affecting Shanghai.
In the Atlantic, is Emily coming?
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