Debatable topics

COVID-19 virus Is the virus natural or man-made?

The COVID-19 virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, is a new type of coronavirus that causes respiratory illnesses. It first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 but spread rapidly across the globe causing a global pandemic also known as COVID-19.

The virus spreads primarily through direct contact or air droplets from saliva or nasal discharge when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

Ever since the virus appeared in Wuhan at the end of 2019, amid global panic and fear people began to question whether COVID-19 has natural origins or whether it was synthetically engineered as a bio-weapon in a lab.

Some experts have not ruled out the idea that this novel coronavirus was man-made, however, other experts deny that claim, arguing that the virus evolved from other coronavirus strains and mutated to form COVID-19.

What Do Different Health Experts Think of COVID-19 Virus?

Opinion 1: COVID-19 is a Natural Virus

Many scientists believe that COVID-19 was not genetically engineered as part of a trade war going on between the US and China. They also argue that there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that COVID-19 is a man-made virus.

Experts point out several reasons why the virus is natural. When analyzing the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they concluded that the virus has “zoonotic” or animal origins. It may have originated in bats, then moved into pangolins or scaly anteaters, and was later transmitted to humans. “The viral strains found in pangolins and humans were compared and showed about 91.02% similarity” with one another. The strong degree of viral similarity suggests that the virus was transmitted to humans via animals like the pangolin or the bat.

Plus, scientific evidence shows that the COVID-19 virus uses its unique spikes to bind to specific ACE-2 receptors in the human body, which are found in the lungs, kidneys, and intestines, allowing the virus to hit multiple organs. The spikes on the coronavirus are unique to it and aren’t similar to any of the spikes found on other viruses, further suggesting that it is a natural virus.

If it were man-made, scientists could identify the manipulated genetic material because it would be similar to viruses they have encountered before.

The editorial, “The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters” published by The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene debunks the claims the novel coronavirus was man-made saying the “SARS-CoV-2 contains neither the genetic fingerprints of any of the reverse genetics systems that have been used to engineer coronaviruses nor does it contain genetic sequences that would have been “forward engineered” from preexisting viruses.”

Plus, virologists explain that if a virus was created in a lab, “you [would] have pieces that are bio-engineered. You don’t bio-engineer the whole thing at once.”

Virologist Barbara Sherry of North State University claims that manufacturing the whole virus in a lab would be impossible to do, and geneticists would easily be able to tell if a virus was engineered because “pieces [of the virus] would be swapped in and out…[however] the coronavirus looks like the bat virus throughout. It doesn’t have any parts of it that look like they were swapped in. ”

Opinion 2: COVID-19 is a Man-Made Virus

On the other hand, some experts suggest that COVID-19 is a man-made virus and is part of a biological war between the US and China. Some claim that the U.S released the virus in Wuhan to weaken the Chinese economy. While others accuse China of manufacturing this virus in order to use it as a bio-weapon against the U.S.

In several interviews, Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who worked at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, claims that she has evidence that the virus came from Chinese military labs. She says that the Chinese government was already aware that human-to-human transmission of the virus was possible in December 2019.

Li-Meng Yan also claims that the Chinese government used the Wuhan wet market origin story as a “smokescreen” to cover up the origins of the virus. When the government read her reports about the virus, she was warned that she would be “crossing a red line” if she didn’t stay silent. She even claims that she reported her findings to her supervisor who works with the World Health Organization (WHO), but they ignored her reports.

Other virologists and university professors also argue that the virus could be being man-made .When researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia modeled the virus’s behavior, they saw that it could bind to the ACE-2 receptors in humans better than the ACE-2 receptors in other animals.

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University says, “We don’t know when the virus had the opportunity to adapt to [the ACE 2] receptor in humans before.” That’s why he says that the idea that the virus was created in a lab cannot be “ruled out.”