“I wondered genuinely whether there was any correlation between adherents to the respective scenarios,” he said. In an email to Vanity Fair, Quammen wrote that both scenarios-of multiple assassins shooting at Kennedy, and that of COVID-19 leaking from a lab-were fundamentally more dramatic than the alternatives. In connection with that, a question, and I don’t mean it to be coy, merely curious: Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed JFK? Or not?” Quammen wrote back to Metzl, “I want to understand why, in addition to evidence or the absence of evidence, these theories have such appeal. In November 2020, Metzl wrote to David Quammen, a foremost science journalist and author of the influential book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, sharing a scientific paper that posited a laboratory origin, based on some of the unusual features of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence. ![]() One of those was Jamie Metzl, a former executive vice president of the Asia Society who sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing, and served in the Bill Clinton administration as the National Security Council’s director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs. This report does not rule out the possibility that COVID-19 was genetically engineered, unlike the Office of the Director of National Intelligence statement on April 30, 2020, about four months into the outbreak, which said: “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”įor months, even credible figures who raised the possibility of a lab leak were met with almost universal scorn. But intelligence agencies split over the likeliest explanation for how it made the leap to humans, with the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies favoring a natural origin, one favoring a lab leak of some kind, and three undecided. Most agencies also agreed, though with “low confidence,” that the virus “probably was not genetically engineered,” though two agencies believed they did not have enough evidence to conclude that. That in itself is notable, given that, until recently, the lab-leak hypothesis had been largely dismissed as a conspiracy theory.Īccording to the “declassified key takeaways” issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the intelligence community broadly assessed that the COVID-19 virus likely first appeared in Wuhan no later than November 2019, emerged without the foreknowledge of Chinese authorities, and was not developed as a bioweapon. intelligence report on the origins of COVID-19 drew no definitive conclusions but left open the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. They are still SARS-CoV-2, but may act differently.According to a declassified summary released Friday afternoon, a new U.S. Scientists call the viruses with these changes “variants”. Sometimes branches of that tree have different attributes that change how fast the virus spreads, or the severity of illness it causes, or the effectiveness of treatments against it. Just as a family has a family tree, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be similarly mapped out. Because of the importance of this specific part of the virus, scientists who sequence the virus for research constantly monitor mutations causing changes to the spike protein through a process called genomic surveillance.Īs genetic changes to the virus happen over time, the SARS-CoV-2 virus begins to form genetic lineages. Some antibodies can protect you from SARS-CoV-2 by targeting these spike proteins. The spike protein is the part of the virus that attaches to a human cell to infect it, allowing it to replicate inside of the cell and spread to other cells. ![]() These spike proteins are important to the biology of this virus. The word corona means crown and refers to the appearance that coronaviruses get from the spike proteins sticking out of them. Like many other respiratory viruses, coronaviruses spread quickly through droplets that you project out of your mouth or nose when you breathe, cough, sneeze, or speak. It is part of the coronavirus family, which include common viruses that cause a variety of diseases from head or chest colds to more severe (but more rare) diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). About SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19ĬOVID-19 is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2.
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