The Origins of Covid-19 — Not Wuhan, Where?

We Know Now It Did Not Come From China

The recent 123-page World Health Organisation (WHO) Report on the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus was disappointing for some people, but did not surprise most professionals and scientists in the healthcare and medical community.

The Report judged that the most likely and plausible scenario was that the virus had made a direct leap from bats to humans (or via an intermediary), when compared with other theories.

The key theory that the virus was somehow imported in frozen food into China was considered “possible” but very unlikely.

Repeated claims by the United States (US) that the virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China, were deemed “extremely unlikely”. In fact, in March 2020, the analysis of public genome sequence data from the Covid-19 and related viruses by Scripps Research found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered. The novel Covid-19 coronavirus is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published (17 March 2020) in the journal Nature Medicine.

The WHO Report concluded that the Covid-19 virus made a zoonotic evolution, originating from a bat then to another animal. The virus then travelled from the other animal into the human body. This was the most likely way the pandemic began.

To the consternation and dismay of the US and some of her political allies, they immediately, without any proof, chided and lambasted the distinguished panel of renowned virus hunters, public health specialists and experts in animal health from the UK, United States, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, Qatar, Germany, Vietnam and Russia.

A total of 34 experts from the WHO and China conducted the 28-day research from January 14 to February 10 in Wuhan, China.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken immediately expressed his skepticism of the report and said that the US has doubts regarding the methodology of the report and the writing of the report since the Chinese were involved in writing it. Another 14 countries also raise concerns over the WHO-China Report, arguing that the WHO team was “significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.” None disputed the facts in the Report leading to the conclusions and findings regarding the transmission path of the Covid-19 virus.

AFTER WUHAN, WHERE TO NEXT?

The truth now that the Covid-19 coronavirus did not originate from China changes all the parameters and future pre-emptive strategies which rest upon those presumptions. Many will recall earlier factual evidence pointing to the Covid-19 virus found in Spain, Italy, France and the USA long before the first “confirmed” case in Wuhan, China. They are also among the highest COVID-19 infections.

SPAIN

In one of many wastewater samples collected in March 2019, 9 months before the 1st Chinese Wuhan case, University of Barcelona researchers found presence of the Covid-19 virus. The potentially hugely significant finding indicates the coronavirus could have been in general circulation long before it was officially detected in Spain or the rest of the world.

Both symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 shed the virus in their feces, making sewage surveillance a powerful tool for monitoring the spread of the disease throughout the community.

“We found the same virus concentration again in March-April 2020. Maybe it wasn’t detected at the time because it was flu season and nobody was looking for it.” said Albert Bosch, the university’s research leader.

The study analyzed samples from two wastewater treatment plants in Barcelona from 13 April 2020, approximately the epidemic’s peak, to 25 May 2020. They also tested frozen archival samples from as far back as January 2018. The researchers first found the virus was present in Barcelona on 15 January 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported in the city. Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the Covid-19 virus genome in one of them, collected on 12 March 2019, nine months before the virus was first discovered in China.

According to the researchers, one way to back up the findings would be to examine blood samples from influenza patients admitted to Barcelona hospitals in March 2019 to see if they were infected with COVID-19 but misdiagnosed. The researchers believe the findings could be replicated around the globe. “It is nevertheless likely that similar situations may have occurred in several other parts of the world, with circulation of unnoticed COVID-19 cases in the community.”

France and Italy have also each reported finding from wastewater treatment plants from before their first official cases were known. All these should also be investigated in the next round of WHO investigations.

ITALY

According to the Milan’s National Cancer Institute (INT), Covid-19 was probably already circulating in Italy by September 2019, months before the coronavirus was first documented in the Chinese city of Wuhan. An INT biologist, Gabriella Sozzi, said that blood samples taken in September 2019 showed the presence of the antibodies against the Covid-19 virus, even though Italy’s first coronavirus patient was officially detected on 21 February 2020 in the northern region of Lombardy. “We found more than 10% of the samples having antibodies against the Covid-19 virus,” and “this finding seems to tell us that the Covid-19 virus was probably circulating at a low level in Italy before the outbreak that we had in February 2020.”

The Italian research also shows that 11.6% of nearly 1,000 healthy volunteers taking part in a lung cancer screening trial had the Covid-19 coronavirus antibodies before the disease was officially detected in Italy.

In another test conducted by the University of Siena, 4 cases were positive for coronavirus antibodies dated back to the first week of October 2019, indicating that the individuals were infected by Covid-19 in September 2019.

WHO was only notified of the first cases of the Covid-19 virus in Wuhan at end-December 2020, several months after Italy collected her samples. It was however not yet the beginning of the global pandemic outbreak.

In fact, the Italian study shows a higher than usual number of severe pneumonia and flu reported in Lombardy at end-December 2019, likely due to the presence and circulation of the Covid-19 virus before December 2019. We shall note later that the US also experienced similar unusually high incidence of severe pneumonia and flu about the same time.

Another Italian study also reported the presence of the Covid-19 coronavirus in wastewater from Milan and Turin collected in December 2019; further evidence that the virus was probably circulating in the Autumn of 2019, around September. Again, before Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, China.

USA

According to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were Covid-19 infections in the US as early as mid-December 2019, weeks before it was first identified in China and a month earlier than the first case was reported in the US on 19 January 2020. The early findings confirmed evidence that the novel coronavirus emerged and was circulating outside of China much earlier than its detection in Wuhan. In the study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, CDC researchers tested blood samples from 7,389 routine blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from 13 December 2019 to 17 January 2020, for antibodies specific to the novel Covid-19 coronavirus. The blood tests found Covid-19 antibodies in 106 of 7,389 blood donors, suggesting that they had already been exposed to the virus. A person’s immune system develops antibodies when exposed to a pathogen like a virus to fight it off. Their presence suggests exposure to a virus. The blood samples were from 9 states across the US. Covid-19 antibodies were found in 39 samples from California, Oregon and Washington state collected between 13–16 December 2019, and also in 67 samples in Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin or Iowa, and Connecticut or Rhode Island collected between 30 December 2019 and 17 January 2020.

The data indicated that the Covid-19 virus was widespread and isolated in the US much earlier than in Wuhan, China. That means that Americans may have been carrying and spreading the coronavirus while showing only minor symptoms or even no symptoms at all before any infections attributed to Wuhan connections.

Reports of a mysterious pneumonia spreading in Wuhan, China, first emerged in late December 2019. After multiplying rapidly throughout the city in the following weeks, the disease was quickly found across the globe, with the first official US case emerging on 19 January 2020.

We now know that the Covid-19 coronavirus was already in the US long before China experienced it in Wuhan.

In the United Kingdom (UK), scientists at University College London’s (UCL) Genetics Institute found almost 200 recurrent genetic mutations of the Covid-19 coronavirus which the UCL researchers said showed how it is adapting to its human hosts as it spreads.

“Phylogenetic estimates support that the COVID-2 pandemic started sometime around 6 October 2019 to 11 December 2019, which corresponds to the time of the host jump into humans,” the UCL research team, co-led by Francois Balloux, wrote in a study published in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution.

On 12 March 2020, CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted to the US Congress’ House Oversight Committee in a statement that some cases in October and November 2019 diagnosed previously as seasonal flu could have been the Covid-19 coronavirus. His statement is corroborated by staunch US allies Japan and Taiwan.

Indeed, a 23 February 2020 Japanese Asahi news report claimed that the Covid-19 coronavirus originated in the US, not in China, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed to influenza may have in fact resulted from the coronavirus.

In July 2019, the CDC directed the shutdown of biosafety level 3 and 4 work at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, a US military base, after a failed safety inspection. It is unknown whether any US soldiers from USAMRIID infected with the coronavirus attended the Military World Games held in Wuhan in October 2019.

Some Chinese netizens alleged without proof on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like app, that “perhaps the US delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, and some mutation occurred to the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread Covid-19 outbreak this year (2020)”. USAMRIID claimed that it was only researching the Ebola virus before the shutdown.

The USAMRIID facility was re-inspected and approved for operations by the CDC in November 2019. It is currently working on the Covid-19 virus, including its replication and purification for future testing. The USAMRIID also received antibodies from someone with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which is caused by the SARS-CoV virus, and is genetically similar to the virus that causes COVID-19.

According to USAMRIID, it was studying the SARS antibodies to see how they can respond to the Covid-19 virus. They definitely do not. It was part of the early research on what is now Remdesivir. The drug was originally targeted for Ebola but now being tested as a possible treatment for COVID-19 patients; it was used effectively in an antibody cocktail consisting of Remdesivir, Dexamethasone and Regeneron REGN-COV2 on former US President Trump to treat his coronavirus infection in October 2020 within just 10 months of USAMRIID’s re-opening.

How did USAMRIID know so much about Covid-19 and Remdesivir in order to develop an early effective treatment? Did it have experience with the Covid-19 virus before it was shut down in July 2019? Did any of its people travel to Wuhan for the World Military Games in September 2019, and “inadvertently” introduce or insert the Covid-19 virus into Wuhan? So many unanswered questions, and clearly demanding answers from another WHO investigations.

AFTER THE WHO REPORT. WHAT’S NEXT?

The compelling evidence point elsewhere for the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus. The WHO Report could not and did not identify Wuhan as the point of the coronavirus origins. There is no evidence that Wuhan is the virus origin after more than a year of data and information, and by ignoring the facts and data from Italy, Spain, the USA and possibly many other countries.

The repeated calls to return to Wuhan, China, to continue the origins investigations is therefore baffling and irrational. Given the massive body of evidence from Spain, Italy and the USA, surely the next logical move for WHO is to mount multiple expeditions to these and other countries to pin down the origins of the ubiquitous Covid-19 virus.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for further studies, as he declared that “all hypotheses remain on the table”. He vowed to “continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned” until “we find the source of the virus, and we must”. What remains to be seen is the political courage of WHO members to let science replace politics in hunting down the common coronavirus enemy threatening the extinction event of the human race.

WHO would have traced the origins of the Covid-19 virus much earlier if it were not so obsessed and pre-occupied with finding the origins ONLY in China.

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