nds in viral places // (Scott Johnson).
John Tierney, a former New York Times science reporter, is an excellent example. I recommend his City Journal essay/review “Friemds In Viral Places” Tierney reviews a new book about the origin of Covid-19, whose author he describes “a highly-regarded and widely published writer on viruses and natural history[.] ]”
The review is both educational and entertaining. Tierney accuses the author of ignoring the lab-leak theory about the virus’s origin. Tierney writes that while the case that Covid originated at a laboratory is not yet proved, it is based on circumstantial evidence. This case is so compelling that few people understand it (see the outline below). Science journalists working for the mainstream media have, by and large failed to present it fully to their readers. Tierney considers this one of the book’s failures, but not the only one.
Tierney briefly outlines the case for the lab-leak origin in his review.
Collins and Fauci advocate since 2011 for the enhancement of natural viruses in the laboratory with the hopes of predicting future outbreaks. They are the most powerful bureaucratic figures in the U.S., and they fund the majority of virology research there. This has allowed them to outwit critics who claimed that the risks of creating new infectious viruses were high and the benefits nugatory.
Fauci donated money via Daszak to Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers to collect bat coronaviruses from the wild and manipulate the viral genomes at the lab. The goal was to determine which virus had the greatest potential to infect people.
The Wuhan researchers applied for funding from DARPA, a Defense Department agency to create novel, SARS-like viruses. Their goal was to take genetic elements, such as the furin-cleavage site, and insert them in a specific place on viral genomes. This position, which is a single point in the virus’s 30,000-unit genome, is known as the S1/S2 Junction of the virus’s spike gene. While many viruses have furin-cleavage sites, none of the 300 members of the SARS-like coronavirus family have. This is important because viruses can swap genetic elements with other members of their own families, but they cannot acquire elements from their family.
SARS-CoV-2, a novel virus, was discovered in Wuhan, the home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It launched the Covid pandemic. The virus’s most distinctive feature and the reason for its infectivity is the furin cleavage location inserted at the spike protein’s S1/S2 junction. This is exactly as the Wuhan virologists proposed to DARPA. The sequence of units used to identify the furin cleavage sites in the virus’s genetic code is common in human cells and is available in laboratory kits. However, it is rare in coronaviruses.
Although viruses can spread from animals to humans quite often, there is usually a trail of evidence. Researchers were able to trace the wild bat host population, the mutations that the virus took as it moved from bats to humans, and the immunological traces that it left in the human population in the SARS1 epidemic in 2003. We should expect similar evidence to support the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. None has in three years.
Tierney’s closing paragraph states: “All of this information, including the critical DARPA Grant application, was available prior to Quammen’s book deadline. He and many of his science writers have failed to tell the whole story.
