The World Needs to Know What Happened at the Wuhan Lab – WSJ

One of the lab theories hypothesizes that SARS-CoV-2 was manipulated or taught to infect humans. Imagine several viruses being run through humanized mice (grafted with human tissue and immune cells) to test their ability to infect human tissue. Notably, SARS-CoV-2 includes a kind of cleavage site that allows its spike protein to change its orientation and dock more easily with a human cell.

This hypothesis bears investigation, especially since no new information has emerged in the past 18 months to support the natural-origin theory. Meantime, a growing body of circumstantial evidence supports the lab-leak theory, including information reported by the U.S. State Department that employees of the Wuhan lab were becoming sick with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019.

A virus with a head start in becoming acclimated to humans likely has an easier time evolving to increase transmission. Hence the variants, which seem more effective than anything nature usually delivers on its own. In the months ahead we may have another variant that is even more contagious than Delta, that makes people sicker and in the worst-case scenario that eludes vaccines.

The story of SARS-Cov-2 started long before January 2020. We believe the virus was most likely uncontained in a laboratory where it was being worked on, and that it escaped unintentionally. A Harvard study of satellite images revealed a shutdown of traffic around the Wuhan lab in the late summer and early fall of 2019. Weeks later, in late September, the hospital parking lots were filling up.

There were hallmarks of scientific arrogance and failures in the containment system. China s CDC initially appeared to be out of the loop but later became a key messenger, selling the natural-origin and wet-market theory. Another apparent misdirection was several key scientists insistence on a narrow definition of gain of function research to include remodeling, overt bioengineering, shaping or constructing a virus. As far as we re concerned, if a virus is taught to or evolves in a lab to infect human tissue more efficiently, that s gain of function.

Beyond the responsibility to tell the truth, there is the global need to know what we are dealing with because it affects how we approach the problem. Physicians on the front lines were ambushed from the beginning as the novel pathogen was spreading through communities asymptomatically and causing an unexpected inflammatory response in blood vessels and major organs. Now variants are emerging rapidly that continue to change the game. All this is in keeping with a virus that more likely jumped from a bat to a lab, not to a rat or a rabbit.

We need a comprehensive bipartisan investigation into the origin of Covid-19. Until then, we call for a world-wide moratorium on gain-of-function research while authorities develop a clear and careful policy to help prevent the next pandemic.

via www.wsj.com

Eeyup.