Making Sense of Medical Science (MSMS)

A Critical Federal Vaccine Mandate

August 12, 2021

In response to the viral pandemic, the military ordered all service personnel to receive a controversial vaccine against the virus. The edict also prohibits military families and other civilians who live in high virus transmission areas from entering military bases. Furthermore, military personnel suspected of having contact with infected people are ordered to quarantine. All this was met with stiff opposition from many troops, from certain States, and even from Congress.

COVID-19 in 2021?

No. Smallpox in 1777.

In 1777 facing an outbreak of smallpox that threatened his troops’ combat readiness, General George Washington ordered that all troops in the Continental Army be inoculated against smallpox. At the time, vaccination against smallpox was quite rare and not widely known. It involved a procedure known as variolation, where a small amount of pus from an active smallpox blister was scratched into the arm of a recipient. The low dose of the smallpox “pathogen” (the world did not know about viruses at that time) would, hopefully, just make the person sick and not kill him while conferring resistance to future smallpox exposure. Variolation was quite controversial and was even prohibited in Washington’s home state, Virginia. Variolation, in fact, did kill a relative of the King George of England. The relative was given too high a dose of pus and developed a full blown case of lethal smallpox. Many others also died from the procedure, hence the controversy.

When the revolution began, the Continentals faced not only the British military, but also the highly contagious smallpox virus carried by European troops coming from England and Germany. Europeans were well exposed to the disease where many survived and had protective immunity. Smallpox was relatively unknown in the Colonies so the colonists did not have that level of protection, and part of Washington’s genius was to realize that. As European troops arrived in Boston and New York, the virus spread through those cities and as the troops deployed, the disease threatened to run rampant through the colonies, potentially decimating the country and the Continental Army.

Washington, who survived smallpox as a child, was somewhat familiar with the rare practice of variolation, which was brought to England from Constantinople in 1721 by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. By ordering it for his troops, despite stiff opposition from the Continental Congress, he acted as perhaps the country’s first public health advocate and averted a potentially disastrous epidemic among his troops.

After the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Continental Army encamped across the Charles River from Boston, which was stricken with smallpox from the arriving British soldiers. Washington prohibited anyone from Boston from entering his camps. He also swiftly quarantined anyone suspected of being infected, which was perhaps the first example of contact tracing. Washington’s actions were very heady stuff for the pre-epidemiology, pre-infectious disease era.

Washington did not immediately order variolation since he knew that the significant side effects of the procedure would temporarily incapacitate the troops who would take a few weeks to recover. Instead, he waited until the fighting subsided and both sides took a breather. Then he ordered the vaccinations against the wishes of the Continental Congress which initially forbade army surgeons from performing variolation. Washington first ordered that all new recruits undergo the procedure believing that they would be healthy by the time they were battle ready and when the war was battle was ready for them.

Washington’s prescience was soon proven. Several thousand Continental troops marched on Quebec under Major General John Thomas who refused to follow Washington’s vaccination orders. He, and one-third of his 10,000 soldiers died from the pox and the force was soundly defeated.

Washington then moved to inoculate his main army and by 1777, 40,000 soldiers had been vaccinated in defiance of Congress. Infection rates in the Continental Army dropped from 20% to 1% and, after seeing these results, lawmakers soon repealed bans on variolation across the Colonies. One historian claims that Washington’s decision to inoculate his troops “…was the most important strategic decision of his military career.”

That radical decision could be a big reason why we do not today have the Union Jack flying over these 50 colonies. I find all of this to be an amazing, but little known fact about the American Revolution. Variolation might have been as important to the Colonists’ victory as was the French Navy finally showing up at Yorktown.

Immunology rocks as much as French naval cannons!

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New Evidence That The Wuhan Lab Might Not Be The Source Of The Virus

July 26, 2021

There is a lot of speculation, but few facts, on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. About six weeks ago, even I speculated that the virus might not even have originated in Wuhan. This was based on the fact that at the same time unusual clusters of novel respiratory diseases were popping up in Wuhan, other clusters were also popping up across China and even in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we have no confirmation that any of these clusters outside Wuhan were caused by the coronavirus. In that blog post, I also wrote about a child in Italy who became sick with a respiratory illness during this time. The child died, but some of his tissues were stored and later proven to be infected with the virus. More recently, Italy also reported on a woman who also died at that time from a respiratory disease. Her stored samples also were positive for the virus. Therefore, we do have proof that COVID-19 was in Italy at the same time it was found in Wuhan. These observations cast some doubt that Wuhan is actually the epicenter of the pandemic.

Of course, these observations are circumstantial and it remains possible that Wuhan indeed is where the virus first infected humans. And the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) labs remain the trendy choice for the origin of the virus, even though there are no data to support that. However, new provocative research just published threw a monkey wrench into the lab origin notion. University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, Michael Worobey, has data very consistent with the virus originating from a different market in Wuhan, the Uhanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The market is 10 miles from the Wuhan lab, and Chinese researchers recently published that the market was illegally selling civets and raccoon dogs, both known to transmit coronaviruses, including SARS, to humans. Worobey has studied the origins of pandemics for over a decade. His research helped explain how the 1918 Spanish flu emerged and how HIV came to the US around 1970-71, much earlier than originally thought.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 began spreading in Wuhan in December 2019 and Worobey mapped the geography of those early cases. What he found was that the Huanan market, not the WIV, seemed to be the center of the new cases. His striking data shows clustering of early COVID-19 cases around the market, not the lab, and can be seen here. If the virus came from the WIV, it would be expected to see early cases near the lab. That was not seen.

How ever the virus got to Wuhan, cluster analysis indicates that it first spread from the market rather than the lab. While provocative, these data do not at all prove an animal origin for the virus. They also do not disprove the lab-origin theory. These data are a piece of the puzzle that is being assembled, which is how science is often done; one puzzle piece at a time.

Keep in mind it took over a decade to find the origin of HIV, and it took a few years to identify the sources of Ebola and the original SARS virus. It also is very possible we will never know where SARS-CoV-2 came from.

We will see.

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Average US Life Expectancy Drops In 2020

July 24, 2021

There remain people who try to explain away COVID-19 mortality as due to underlying conditions like diabetes or asthma. This is like claiming that someone with diabetes who was run over by a bus was felled by the diabetes, not the bus. I continue to point these skeptics to two actuarial studies done in the US and UK that showed that COVID-19 was causing much earlier than expected deaths in patients with these and other comorbid conditions. All of this was later confirmed in another report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In other words, research has well established COVID-19 as the cause of death in most patients with comorbid conditions.

If something causes the death rate to increase, it is reasonable to expect life expectancy to decrease. This is what has happened in the US during the pandemic. Two recent studies reveal just how much of a toll COVID-19 has taken on life expectancy in the US in 2020.

An updated study published in mid-June (originally published in January) in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers from the USC School of Gerontology and from Princeton University reported that in 2020, the average US life expectancy dropped by 1.3 years (from 78.74 to 77.43 years). It also reported that compared to white people, the reduction in life expectancy was three times as large for Latinos and twice as large for blacks. The research was based on data obtained from the CDC, the Census Bureau, and the US Vital Statistics System. The study warned to expect a continued decline in life expectancy in 2021.

A separate study published around the same time in the British Medical Journal, confirmed the racial disparity in life expectancy due to COVID-19, and indicated that the pandemic took a much greater toll on life expectancy in the US than in other high-income nations.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic on life expectancy include deaths directly attributed to COVID-19, as well as those due to pandemic-related reduced access to health care. It is important to understand that these factors are partly offset by a simultaneous reduction in deaths from other causes such as other infectious diseases and accidents as Americans sanitized more and traveled less. In other words, we saw a reduction in deaths due to common causes, which should improve life expectancy. Therefore, the fact that life expectancy dropped, rather than improved, makes the overall decline in longevity more alarming.

Increased mortality represents only part of the burden of COVID-19; for every death, a much larger number of infected individuals experience serious acute illness that requires hospitalization, many more face long term health and life complications that drain personal finances, stress health resources, and affect ability to work at jobs.

Greater than 95% of hospitalizations and >99% of COVID-19 deaths now occur in unvaccinated people. Almost all of this is preventable with vaccination.
Vaccines And Myocarditis In Young People

July 18, 2021

Rare cases of inflammation of the heart muscle, or myocarditis, have been found in 1,200 younger people (16-24) after receiving an mRNA vaccine, and this has been used by anti-vaxers to further the hysteria around the vaccine. But, if you talk to a pediatric cardiologist you will learn that we should be much more worried about the disease than the vaccine. There simply is no comparison.

The post-vaccine myocarditis is very mild, has caused no deaths, is easily treated with anti-inflammatory drugs, and quickly goes away without lasting problems. On the other hand, COVID-19 can linger for months, and, as of June 9, has caused ~3000 deaths in young people. Because of this, the American Heart Association and American Academy of Pediatrics continue to strongly recommend vaccination for young people.

Myocarditis in young people is not a new thing, and is usually associated with a viral or bacterial infection. One vaccine against small pox has also been weakly linked to myocarditis. People from puberty through their early 30s are at higher risk for myocarditis, according to the Myocarditis Foundation. Males are affected twice as often as females. Most of these cases are very mild and many times people with myocarditis do not even know they have the problem. The incidence of myocarditis in young people peaks this time of year when the coxsackie virus, which can infect the heart, is more common. This means that an undetermined fraction of post-vaccine myocarditis is likely due to concomitant infection with coxsakie virus and not due to the vaccine.

Bottom line: Post-vaccine myocarditis is much ado about next to nothing. This should not cause one to hesitate getting the vaccine, unless the person has another underlying cardiac problem. The mildness of this rare side effect contrasts with the thousands of young people who have contracted serious COVID-19 and have even succumbed to the infection. While severe morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 is rarer in children and adolescents than in older adults, the number of cases in young people has been steadily rising on a weekly basis according to the CDC. This trend will likely accelerate as the more infectious, and possibly more lethal Delta variant becomes dominant in the US. Since most older adults have been vaccinated, that leaves younger people as available targets for the new virus surge. There is no rational reason for 99.9% of people to not be vaccinated.

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Has The FDA Approved The COVID Vaccines Or Not?

July 10, 2021

As SARS-CoV-2 and its more virulent variants continue to spread around the world, it becomes even more critical to get the vaccines to unvaccinated people. The slow pace of vaccination in Africa, parts of Asia, and South America is largely due to lack of vaccine access or poor healthcare infrastructure. However, slowing vaccination rates in the US and Europe are now mostly due to vaccine hesitancy. Earlier in these pages, I addressed several of the most common anti-vax myths that people invoke as reasons to avoid the vaccine. These are largely fears based on mis- or even dis-information about the vaccines and COVID-19.

However, there also are people who are not necessarily anti-vaxers, but who hesitate to be vaccinated because of the perception that the current vaccines are not FDA approved.

The vaccines are FDA approved. An FDA panel gave them Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which is not much different from full approval.

What is EUA? EUA comes from an expedited review process that is used to approve new medicines during public health emergencies, like a pandemic, in order to lessen roadblocks to get needed therapies to the public as soon as possible. EUA also puts significant limits on the medicine’s manufacturers. Many people do not understanding what the EUA entails and assume that the vaccines are not fully vetted.

That is not the case.

When people hear “Emergency Use Authorization,” they focus on the word emergency, and jump to the conclusion that the vaccines have not been fully tested, and are not known to be safe or effective. However, the reality is that a vaccine given EUA has gone through the same clinical tests as a vaccine given Full Approval, and all the clinical trial data have gone through the same rigorous review by the same large FDA science panel that also confers Full Approval.

How does EUA differ from Full Approval? For full vaccine approval, a large panel of FDA scientists reviews all the clinical trial data, including data collected six months following the end of the trial. The FDA also uses a fine tooth comb to examine the vaccine’s manufacturing plans to ensure the quality and consistency of the vaccines that are produced. This also includes extended negotiations with manufacturers to determine how the vaccines will be labeled (i.e., what claims and warnings will be placed on the informational insert and on the bottle). It is the review of the manufacturing processes and the negotiations over labeling that draws out the approval process.

In order to streamline the whole approval process during a time of emergency, the FDA allows temporary emergency use after carefully vetting the medicine. As with Full Approval, for EUA the FDA panel reviews all the clinical trial data. However, the post-trial data review is shortened to two, rather than six months. (Note that after either EUA or Full Approval, data continue to be collected and reviewed in order to identify extremely rare side effects that would not be picked up in a study of 30-40,000 participants). Both full and EUA reviews assess the relative risk of receiving the vaccine vs the risk of catching the disease the vaccine is designed to prevent. If that risk calculus is favorable, the vaccine is approved. I repeat, if the risk/benefit ratio of the vaccine outweigh the risk of the disease, the vaccine is approved. This is FDA approval and it is why it is disingenuous to claim that the CoV-2 vaccines have not been approved by the FDA.

More than 180 million doses of the Pfizer and 133 million of the Moderna vaccines have been distributed in the US, with millions more worldwide. Data from all of these recipients continue to be collected making these vaccines the most scrutinized for efficacy and safety in the history of biologics medicine. To summarize: clinical trials on about 70,000 volunteers showed both vaccines to be 95% effective and extremely safe; since then, a number of peer reviewed reports in leading journals have confirmed this using real-life data from vaccine recipients collected in Israel, Qatar, the UK, US and other countries. In other words, the mRNA vaccines have been proven safe and effective in clinical trials, and by independent research examining the real life experiences of hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated.

But, that is not enough for some people. Many claim that they want the full imprimatur of the FDA before they will get the vaccine. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 32% of unvaccinated adults in the US said that they would be more likely to get the “Fauci Ouchie” if it had full FDA approval. They do not realize that the EUA is very similar to Full Approval. So, their hesitation is based on not understanding the approval processes and focusing on the word emergency in the EUA approval.

Pfizer filed for full approval on May 7, and Moderna followed with its own application on June 1. It will be 3-5 months before the full approval is granted, on which I would bet my house. But, the vaccine delay in hesitant people will lead to preventable mortality and morbidity. That is why I have written this blog post. Hopefully, it will convince some vax hesitators that they can be confident in the EUA approval status of the vaccines and will be vaccinated in order to avoid significant health consequences of the aggressive Delta variant that is overtaking many countries, including the US.

If EUA is almost as good as Full Approval, why would a vax company ever go for full approval after they have EUA? There are several reasons for doing so, which mostly have to do with marketing and sales. Without Full Approval vaccine companies cannot give the vaccine a brand name and market it directly to consumers on TV, radio, and other media. With EUA, the companies can also have price restrictions on their vaccines that could be lifted after Full Approval. Also, without Full Approval, law-suit averse employers and schools are often reluctant to mandate the vaccines like they have with other fully approved vaccines. Sure, a few colleges and hospitals already have mandated CoV-2 vaccinations, but others, like the University of California and California State University systems said that they will only mandate a fully approved vaccine. The US military also is waiting for full FDA approval before mandating the vaccine.

Bottom line. All of this shows that having Full Approval for the vaccines makes little difference for assuring the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. However, having Full Approval mostly means that you will see commercials and posters advertising the shots, may be required to get the shots, and will pay more for them.

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Almost All US COVID-19 Deaths Occur In Un-Vaccinated People

June 25, 2021

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As the anti-CoV-2 vaccines roll out in the US, COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations have plummeted. Deaths, too, have plummeted from a peak of 3,400 a day in mid-January to fewer than 300 today. About 63% of vaccine-eligible Americans (those 12 and older) have received at least one vaccine dose, and 53% are fully vaccinated. All this demonstrates the efficacy of the vaccines.

Also showing how effective the vaccines are, almost all new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths now occur in unvaccinated people. An Associated Press analysis of CDC data since May reveals that fewer than 1,200 vaccinated people, out of a total of 853,000, were hospitalized for COVID-19. Furthermore, in May there were 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US, of which only 150 were fully vaccinated. The vaccines are so successful that the CDC director was quoted as saying, “…nearly every death…due to COVID-19 is, at this point, is entirely preventable.” Let me repeat that, COVID-19 deaths are almost 100% preventable now because of the vaccines. Let that sink in, anti-vaxers.

These observations are especially relevant in the face of the Delta, or double mutant virus variant that has taken over India, the UK, Israel, and is rapidly spreading in the US. As I reported earlier, this double mutant variant first appeared in India and carried the same mutations as two earlier variants first identified in the UK and in South Africa. Individually, these mutations made the variants either more virulent, or able to spread faster than the parent virus. Together, they create a more dangerous, faster spreading virus. The good news was that the current vaccines are pretty effective against the Delta variant.

However, there are two concerning things about the Delta variant that raise alarms. First, in Israel, about half of adults infected with the variant were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. 90% of new infections in that country are now caused by the Delta variant and children under 16 account for about half of those new infections. So-called “break-through infections” can occur in fully vaccinated people, but have been, so far, rare. This makes the high level of break-through infections in Israel worrisome. Breakthrough infections in previously vaccinated people are especially worrisome–how is the virus avoiding vaccine immunity? These kind of infections are what most concerns this writer, since a virus that can replicate in a fully infected person suggests we could have a new variant that resists vaccine immunity. We do not yet know why break-through infections appear with greater frequency in that country. However, when vaccinated people are infected, they almost always avoid severe symptoms. Hopefully, this will continue to be the case in Israel. We will see.

The second concerning thing is something I have earlier warned anti-vaxers about—the emergence of further variants that could be even more virulent or able to avoid vaccine immunity. India has just reported a new Delta variant, referred to as “Delta Plus.” It also has been detected in 11 countries including the UK, Japan, and the US. Little is known about this variant, but it has been declared a “variant of concern” and is being closely watched. Again, we will see.

Delta Plus arose in people who have not been vaccinated. As I have strongly argued in these pages, each anti-vaxer represents a potential incubator for a new variant for which current vaccines are ineffective and/or is much more lethal. And as I also pleaded in a previous blog post, “get over yourselves; it is not all about you!” Get the shots.
Anti-vaxers, Get Over Yourselves–The Vaccine Is Not All About You

June 22, 2021

As predicted, viral variants are now causing most of the new cases of COVID-19 disease around the world. The Delta variant, formerly known as the “double mutant,” which first arose in India and as earlier discussed in these pages, is extremely transmissible and seems to cause more severe illness. It arose in India because the country was way under-vaccinated and, therefore, a prime incubator for producing more lethal viral variants. As the virus replicates in a person’s cells, then spreads to another person, it accumulates small mutations that, by chance, can make a significant difference in its virulence. The virus replicated over and over and over in unvaccinated India and a more potent strain evolved. It is a matter of time before an even more potent virus emerges that resists the current vaccines, thanks to people who refuse to be vaccinated. That refusal potentially affects all of us, not just the vaccine recipient.

It is one thing to not be vaccinated because of vaccine supply and delivery problems. India, and countries in Africa and South America fall into this category. It is another thing to willfully refuse to be vaccinated when the vax is readily available. The latter is just wrong and inexcusable. There is no rational reason to not be vaccinated!

Anti-vaxers cite a litany of false claims about how the vaccine might be dangerous for them (the evidence refutes that). They say it is experimental (it has been well proven and uses technologies that are decades old!), or that it is not FDA approved (it is!), or that it is ‘gene therapy’ (it is NOT!), or that people have died or become sterile from it (flat wrong!). Anti-vaxers also complain that we do not know the long term effects of the vax (name ONE vax that had long term effects!). After millions have been infected with the virus or have been vaccinated, the evidence clearly shows that the worst thing that can happen to someone is to be infected with the virus, and that the safest thing is to get the shot. Follow the science, not your emotions.

Note that the objections to the vaccine are all self-focused. No thought is given to the reality that if an unvaccinated person is infected and does not practice caution, he will be responsible for spreading the virus to his family, friends and strangers. And, he might very well be the source of the next, more deadly variant. As I wrote earlier, a great example of how vaccines protect others is the Japanese experience with flu vaccines. After Japan mandated that school kids be vaccinated against the flu, elderly flu deaths plummeted. The vaccine clearly did not just benefit the kids, it benefited others with whom they had contact. The same holds true with the coronavirus vaccine.

Unvaccinated people in India led to the emergence of the Delta virus variant that has overwhelmed health care systems in India. Even younger, healthier people are getting sick. Delta is now spreading in unvaccinated people in at least 62 countries, including the US where it now accounts for 20 percent of new cases, up from just 2 percent a couple of weeks ago. You do not have to be a scientist to see where that trend is leading.

Delta also is now the dominant strain in the UK accounting for three quarters of new cases there. It has forced a four-week pause in the UK’s reopening plans. The variant could also affect reopening in the US as well, thanks to the anti-vaxers.

The good news is that people who are fully vaccinated are well-protected against the Delta and other variants—so far. Again, it is just a matter of time that a vaccine-resistant variant emerges. Again, there is no rational reason to not be vaccinated, but there are billions of reasons to get vaccinated. It is not all about you, but also about your fellow humans on the planet. Get the shot!

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Snakes On A Plane: Another Weird Pandemic Effect

June 10, 2021

In these pages, I have commented on some unexpected consequences of the pandemic, to wit: With reduced restaurant business, farmed fish are not selling and the fish are getting too big for the restaurants to buy–a vicious circle. And with the switch from sit-down dining to take-out, there has been a run on ketchup packets, creating an expensive secondary market for the packets on ebay. Now we learn that as a result of the pandemic, planes are having a problem with snakes—rattlesnakes to be precise.

Since the start of the pandemic, thousands of planes from airlines around the world have been grounded in hot, arid deserts, which are ideal for long-term aircraft storage. Australian airline, Qantas, stored about a dozen of its A380 superjumbos in an airfield near Victorville, in California's Mojave Desert. It is an area well known for feisty rattlers who love to curl up around the warm rubber tires and in the aircraft wheels and brakes. The maintenance workers use a low-tech solution, giving each plane its own designated 'wheel whacker' as part of the engineering kit, complete with the aircraft's registration number written on it. The whacker is a repurposed broom handle.

Prior to any landing gear inspections, the workers walk around the plane whacking the wheels and landing gear with the broom stick to scare off any slumbering snakes. Some scorpions have also been rousted.

It takes more than 100 man-hours to make a wide-body aircraft airworthy after storage—now they have to add a few more minutes for “whacking” the tires and landing gear.

It puts a new meaning on “check your luggage.”
The Origin Of The Virus, Redux: Did It Really Come From The Wuhan Lab?

June 6, 2021

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Back story: In May 2020, I posted here on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. I wrote how many scientists who examined the genome sequence of the novel virus concluded in a letter to Nature in March, that “…the genetic data irrefutably shows that [CoV-2] is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.” That means that in its genetic sequence, there is zero evidence it was engineered in a lab.

On the other hand, I also mentioned, that a 2018 report by several diplomats who visited the Wuhan Institute for Virology (WIV) months before the pandemic broke concluded that the lab’s security and safety measures were lax. If true, it means that an accidental leak from the lab is plausible. However, note that these were not scientists, but diplomats. Later, James Le Duc, PhD and head of the Galveston National Laboratory, which is the biggest biocontainment facility on a US academic campus, also visited the lab and stated that it had safety and quality measures comparable to the best Western labs. Other Western scientists who have visited WIV also highly rated the facility and concluded that an accidental release was “implausible.” And in February, 2020, 27 scientists published a letter in The Lancet that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis. One of the major responsibilities of the lab is to isolate novel coronaviruses from bats from all corners of China, sequence their genomes, and post the sequences into a repository that is freely available to researchers around the world. This was partly paid for with a modest sub-grant from the NIH. The genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not match the sequence of any coronavirus posted in the repository suggesting, but not proving, that they never worked on it.

I also reported last September that in December 2019, the world first became aware of a mysterious respiratory illness that popped up in November of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is home to both a wet animal market and the WIV. Soon after detecting the unusual disease, Chinese scientists reported that it was caused by a previously unknown coronavirus. Suspicion immediately was placed on an animal in the wet market as the source of the outbreak, since the SARS-CoV-1 virus had been traced to an animal in a wet market. Later, the MERS coronavirus was also traced to animals, in this case camels, that passed the virus to humans. Indeed, the CoV-2 virus was found in the wet market, but it remains unknown how it got there and the animal host that is postulated to have transferred the new CoV-2 virus to humans has not been found. Without a “smoking bat,” the source of the CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 remains elusive. That lack of certitude regarding the source of the virus led some to speculate that it came from the WIV, either by design or by incompetence. That hypothesis was downplayed by a WHO expert team that spent a month in Wuhan investigating the source of the outbreak. They reported that it was much more likely that the virus had an animal origin. But, that report was woefully incomplete due to Chinese stonewalling.

The first confirmed cases of COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan in December 2019. But, last February, I reported that in October 2019, weeks before the Wuhan disease was reported, several clusters totaling 90 people with a COVID-like respiratory disease were hospitalized in different parts of China, miles from Wuhan. I also commented that shortly after the Wuhan disease was recognized, the UCLA medical center reported an unusual 50% increase in respiratory illness. Finally, there is the Italian child who was treated for respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, also before the disease was first reported. Recent analysis of samples that were saved from the kid showed he was infected with CoV-2. How did he catch the virus half a world away and before it was recognized in Wuhan?

Fast forward a few months to now, and we find people increasingly exercised over the possibility that the virus came from the WIV—and they do so with the slimmest of evidence, but with an abundance of conjecture.

Why the new focus on the idea that the virus came from the lab? The theory that the virus came from a Wuhan lab began to gain traction amid criticism of the international WHO probe into the virus’ origin earlier this Spring that concluded the virus likely came from nature. That probe was admittedly inadequate due to the Chinese government’s lack of cooperation. They denied the team full access to necessary lab data that might prove or disprove that the virus came from the lab. That lack of transparency added fuel to the conspiratorial fires that Trump and others have been spreading about the virus originating in the WIV. On top of that, a recently released US intelligence report claimed that three researchers in the lab became ill and sought hospitalization in November 2019, just weeks before the disease and virus were identified, and about the time that the Italian child became ill. Beijing denied that report. The information in the report came from an unnamed “international partner,” and remains uncorroborated. The report also stated that the lab workers had “…symptoms consistent with either Covid-19 or common seasonal illness (emphasis mine).” Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team that investigated the WIV told NBC News in March that she attributed the illnesses to regular seasonal sickness. Unlike the Italian child, these lab workers were never diagnosed with or without COVID-19. It is not even known if they were exposed to any coronavirus or even got ill from the lab—remember, others in Wuhan and elsewhere around China, and even in Italy and California, also were coming down with similar symptoms at the same time. The head of the WIV also claimed that all staff had tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies and that there had been no turnover of staff on the coronavirus team, suggesting no hospitalizations. It would be very helpful if the Chinese government released records to substantiate these claims.

If we are going to focus on the Wuhan lab illnesses as almost being a smoking gun, on what basis do we ignore these similar, and in the case of the Italian child, confirmed, far-flung cases? All this is makes it far from convincing that we know where the virus came from, and even casts reasonable doubt that it originated in Wuhan, let alone in the WIV.

Then, there is this: Twenty-seven of the first 41 COVID-19 patients identified in Wuhan had contact with the wet market in Wuhan, where China’s CDC found traces of the novel virus, and none of these 41 cases were clearly linked to the WIV—according to the Chinese government.

Adding fuel to the lab-origin-of-the-virus fire is a recent Fox News interview by Tucker Carlson with an exiled Chinese scientist who did some work with animal coronaviruses as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong. The scientist, Dr. Li-Meng Yang, claimed in the interview that she could present solid scientific evidence that the virus is not from nature, but man-made in a lab. She also claimed that she was among the first scientists to study the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. But the University of Hong Kong said in a July statement that Yang never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus at HKU. More recently, Yang co-published an article that suggests there was "sophisticated laboratory modification" of the coronavirus. The study was uploaded Sept. 14 to a website called Zenodo, an open-source repository of research that is not peer-reviewed.

The research behind that article was backed by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations that are connected to Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist for the Trump administration, and Guo Wengui, a billionaire political activist who fled China in 2014 to avoid corruption charges. Neither organization has published scientific reports before. Also, a website linked to Bannon and Wengui has a history of making inaccurate claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Yang’s charade eventually collapsed as her utter lack of expertise was exposed.

Finally, scientists worldwide have publicly shared the genetic makeup of the coronavirus and its variants thousands of times. If the virus had been altered, there would be evidence in its genome data. Experts in viral genome evolution determined that such evidence is lacking. It almost certainly was not engineered because it has several naturally occurring features and is closely related to a 2014 coronavirus that came from a bat in a cave in China that was collected and sequenced by the WIV and reported in its database. In March, several microbiology, infectious disease and evolutionary biology experts wrote in the journal Nature that the genetic makeup of the coronavirus does not indicate it was altered.

Bottom line: At this point, there is zero compelling evidence that the virus came from the lab. The so-called evidence that the lab was the source of the virus has, so far, been either circumstantial or debunked. Admittedly, it remains possible that the virus did come from the lab, but that remains an hypothesis, not proven fact. China bears responsibility for obstructing investigators. Whether it did so out of sheer authoritarian habit or because it had a lab leak to hide is, and may always be, unknown.

China’s lack of transparency in all this does not constitute solid evidence that the virus came from the lab. Evolutionary biologist, Dr. Joel Wertheim, cautions that we should not default to conspiracy theories when we do not have immediate answers to important question. He reminds us that it took scientists decades of research to find the chimpanzee population that passed the HIV virus to humans, causing the AIDS pandemic. During that time, some cranks posited, with no evidence, only fervor, that the US government created it. It is a maxim of science that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The extraordinary claims made by some regarding the WIV origin of the virus have not been supported by any, let alone extraordinary evidence.

We will see. Maybe….
Left-Over Neanderthal DNA Affects Our Vulnerability To COVID-19

May 22, 2021

Biden recently called Texas “Neanderthal” (pronounced “ne-ander-TALL,” not “THall”) for doing away with pandemic restrictions. Texas did so because it has seen a sharp decline in COVID-19, and it just reported its first day with no COVID-19 deaths. Maybe Biden is right, who knows? But maybe Texan’s residual Neanderthal genes could explain its drop in infections and deaths.

Neanderthals evolved in Western Eurasia about half a million years ago and died out around 40,000 years ago, but they did leave a bit behind. In the past decade, sequencing of DNA extracted from fossils and other samples from ancient hominids have shown that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed, and even consorted, producing hybrid offspring. Almost half of the Neanderthal genome still survives, scattered among almost all modern people’s DNA. The exception is those with mostly Sub-Saharan African ancestors, since Neanderthals seem never to have lived in Africa.

Such ancient genes in modern humans have been associated with things like hairiness and fat metabolism. Some of the left over Neanderthal genes also are linked with how our system affects things like risk of lupus, Crohn's disease, allergies, and diabetes. A pair of recent papers now suggests that COVID-19 belongs on that list as well. Two long stretches of DNA we inherited from Neanderthals, appear to confer either resistance or susceptibility to severe COVID-19.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where research on Neanderthal DNA was pioneered, published in the Journal Nature last September that one Neanderthal DNA string on human chromosome 3 provides the major genetic risk factor for serious COVID-19 illness (other non-genetic risk factors include co-morbid conditions such as age, being male, obesity, diabetes, etc.). Those who carry one copy of that archaic DNA sequence have a 2-fold risk of a trip to the ICU upon infection. Those who have two copies of that sequence, one from each parent, have another doubling of risk for serious disease. The distribution of that ancient sequence around the world is uneven, possibly explaining regional differences in the incidence of severe COVID-19. In Bangladesh, 63% of Bengalis carry at least one copy, whereas it is found in only about 16% of Europeans. Not surprisingly, it is almost absent in Africa, and more surprisingly, rare in large areas of Eastern Asia. One can only speculate that it also might be rare in Texans.

How the gene affects COVID-19 severity is not known, but one gene within the sequence encodes a protein that interacts with the cell receptors used by the CoV-2 virus to enter cells. The sequence is also thought to affect cytokine production. An over-exuberant cytokine “storm” response to infection is one way that COVID-19 leads to severe disease. It is interesting that such a cytokine response is protective against cholera and that cholera has long been a problem in Bangladesh and India. That could explain why this specific Neanderthal DNA sequence has been fixed at a high frequency in the genomes of those populations—it confers a survival advantage to an endemic infectious disease. This is reminiscent of why the sickle cell genetic trait is prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa. That genetic trait protects carriers against malaria, so it confers a survival advantage to people living in areas endemic with malaria.

The second study, published by the same lab in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences links another Neanderthal DNA sequence found on human chromosome 12 to protection from serious disease. Carriers of this sequence are 22% less likely to develop serious disease. About 25-35% of the population in Eurasia carries at least one copy of the sequence, while about 50% in Vietnam and Eastern China do. Even before this area of chromosome 12 was discovered to come from Neanderthals, a gene in the area was known to hinder spread of RNA viruses like CoV-1 (SARS), West Nile virus, hepatitis C, and perhaps CoV-2. It instructs cells to commit suicide when they are infected by one of these viruses, hence reducing the viral load the infected cell can pump out.

All of this provides genetic clues on why some countries and populations have been hit harder by COVID-19 than others, and why others do better.

So, just how Neanderthal are Texans? Do they have more of the good gene or just less of the bad gene? Alternatively, it might just be the chili—eat a bowl of Texas red and go maskless…..

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