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| Author | Alina Chan and Matt Ridley |
|---|---|
| Published | November 16, 2021 |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| ISBN | 978-0-00-848749-2 |
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 is a 2021 book by Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan and British science writer Matt Ridley. The authors describe ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19. An updated version was published in June 2022. [1]
The book has received mixed reviews. [2] [3] [4] The Wall Street Journal's reviewer said the book has compiled "perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available". [5] Columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the authors "place[d] a conspiracy theory between hardcovers to masquerade as sober scientific inquiry." [6] A review in The Times described it as concluding that the lab-leak hypothesis is "highly possible" rather than "definitely true". [7] Writing in The Guardian , medical journalist Mark Honigsbaum considered the book's main argument to be unconvincing, and some of Chan and Ridley's descriptions to be "highly misleading". [8] Author Steven Poole writing for the Daily Telegraph was unconvinced by the central thesis although he did support the authors in their plea to discontinue gain of function research. [3]
Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley,, is a British science writer, journalist and businessman. He is known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics and has been a regular contributor to The Times newspaper. Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period it experienced the first run on a British bank in 130 years. He resigned, and the bank was bailed out by the UK government; this led to its nationalisation.
EcoHealth Alliance is a US-based non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases. The nonprofit focuses on research aimed at preventing pandemics and promoting conservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
Viral means "relating to viruses".
Nicholas Michael Landon Wade is a British author and journalist. He is the author of numerous books, and has served as staff writer and editor for Nature, Science, and the science section of The New York Times.
Shi Zhengli is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan. She came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The institute is one of nine independent organisations in the Wuhan Branch of the CAS. Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it was founded in 1956 and opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory in 2018. The institute has collaborated with the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France, and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The institute has been an active premier research center for the study of coronaviruses.
False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant.
Peter Daszak is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention. He is also a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He lives in Suffern, New York.
This article documents the chronology and epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The first human cases of COVID-19 known to have been identified were in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019. It marked the beginning of the 2019–2020 COVID-19 outbreak in mainland China.
The COVID-19 pandemic was covered in Wikipedia extensively, in real-time, and across multiple languages. This coverage extends to many detailed articles about various aspects of the topic itself, as well as many existing articles being amended to take account of the pandemic's effect on them. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the pandemic – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – received widespread media attention for its comprehensiveness, reliability, and speed. Wikipedia experienced an increase in readership during the pandemic.
Li-Meng Yan or Yan Limeng is a Chinese virologist, known for her publications and interviews alleging that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a Chinese government laboratory. Her publications have been widely dismissed as flawed by the scientific community.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been efforts by scientists, governments, and others to determine the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Similar to other outbreaks, the virus derived from a bat-borne virus and most likely was transmitted to humans via another animal in nature or during wildlife trade such as that in food markets. While other explanations such as speculations that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory have been proposed, such explanations are not supported by evidence. Conspiracy theories about the virus's origin have also proliferated.
The Chinese government has actively engaged in disinformation to downplay the emergence of COVID-19 in China and manipulate information about its spread around the world. The government also detained whistleblowers and journalists claiming they were spreading rumors when they were publicly raising concerns about people being hospitalized for a "mysterious illness" resembling SARS.
The COVID-19 lab leak theory, or lab leak hypothesis, is the idea that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, came from a laboratory. This claim is highly controversial; most scientists believe the virus spilled into human populations through natural zoonosis, similar to the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV outbreaks, and consistent with other pandemics in human history. Available evidence suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was originally harbored by bats, and spread to humans from infected wild animals, functioning as an intermediate host, at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019. Several candidate animal species have been identified as potential intermediate hosts. There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 existed in any laboratory prior to the pandemic, or that any suspicious biosecurity incidents happened in any laboratory.
DRASTIC is a loose collection of internet activists assembled to investigate the origins of COVID-19, in particular the lab leak theory. Composed of about 30 core members, and primarily organized through the social media website Twitter, DRASTIC was formed in February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. DRASTIC members called for a "full and unrestricted investigation" into the origins of COVID-19, conducted independently of the World Health Organization; most scientists thought that COVID-19 likely had a natural origin, and some considered that a potential lab leak was worth investigating.
Alina Chan is a Canadian molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is a postdoctoral fellow. During the COVID-19 pandemic she became known for questioning the prevailing consensus regarding the origins of the virus and publicly advocating a laboratory escape hypothesis.
Michael Worobey is a Canadian evolutionary biologist, and a professor and department head of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has done important work in the study of the evolution of HIV-1, which demonstrated the extensive genetic diversity of the virus by 1960, fully refuting the contaminated polio vaccine theory as the origin of the AIDS pandemic.
The WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2 or the Joint WHO-China Study was a collaborative study between the World Health Organization and the Government of China on the origins of COVID-19. The study was commissioned by the Director-General of the World Health Organization following a request by the 2020 World Health Assembly in which 122 WHO members proposed a motion, which included a call for a "comprehensive, independent and impartial" study into the COVID-19 pandemic" The WHO disbanded the team and proposed a new panel called Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens.
The Lancet letter was a statement made in support of scientists and medical professionals in China fighting the outbreak of COVID-19, and condemning theories suggesting that the virus does not have a natural origin, which it referred to as "conspiracy theories". The letter was published in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, and signed by 27 prominent scientists, gaining a further 20,000 signatures in a Change.org petition. The letter generated significant controversy over the alleged conflicts of interest of its authors, and the chilling effect it had on scientists proposing that the COVID-19 lab leak theory be investigated.
Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.
Chan's critics have multiplied – as have her supporters – with the publication of Viral ... The book has invoked mixed reactions.
Viral ... pretends to be agnostic between the two while pimping the lab-leak scenario for all it's worth... This book shows well how coronaviruses spill over naturally between species all the time... One can agree ... with the book's passionate argument for closer regulation of ... 'gain-of-function research'.
The book makes the case for both possibilities: natural transfer of the virus from bats to mammals and then to humans, or from some sort of lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that spread to the community.
As Chan and Ridley state toward the end of the book, 'Unfortunately, there are no enforceable international biosafety and biosecurity standards.' Preach. This is an extremely important message that should not be lost amid the political firestorm over origins.'
In 'Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19,' molecular biologist Alina Chan and author Matt Ridley assemble perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available.
The Chinese are secretive about all things... The shame of 'Viral' is that it promotes a groundless theory that threatens to lead policymakers, as well as members of the public, down the wrong road, to humankind's enduring detriment.
These stories all seem to be real; I've followed up on all the ones I've mentioned and confirmed them... The book, fairly, does not conclude that the lab-leak hypothesis is definitely true, merely that it is highly possible, and I agree.
There is just one problem: nowhere do they present proof that Sars-CoV-2 was manufactured.
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