Corona Daily 074: The World Filled with Ex-Health Ministers

The pandemic for health ministers began with Yelzhan Birtanov of Kazakhstan. Holding the post since early 2017, he tested positive in June 2020. He tweeted he had developed pneumonia which required serious treatment, and resigned.

The next month, David Clark, New Zealand’s health minister took his family to the beach. They also drove to a mountain biking track. In his professional capacity, Clark had imposed border closures and strict lockdown measures. When found out, he called himself an idiot, and resigned.

Also in July, Zafar Mirza, Pakistan’s de facto health minister was accused of having a foreign passport. In his asset declaration, he had not revealed it. His dual nationality doomed his job.

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In January 2021, USA’s Alex Azar had to go along with Trump. Strangely, his resignation letter included text urging Donald Trump to promote a peaceful transition in view of the Capitol riots the previous week.

In the same month, protests erupted in Mongolia. The nation saw the inhuman treatment of a covid-19 patient and her newborn baby. Video footage showed the patient, in her nightgown and slippers, was forcibly relocated with her baby to a quarantine facility. Both the Prime Minister and the health minister of Mongolia resigned “assuming responsibility upon themselves and accepting the demand of the public.”

In February, Latin America had a large wave, in which the health ministers of Ecuador, Argentina and Peru had to resign.

Ecuador’s Juan Carlos Zevallos resigned after his interference in the vaccination trial was revealed. Among other things he had conducted inoculation at his mother’s nursing home from the vaccine trial doses.

Gines Gonzales Garcia, Argentina’s health minister, started the vaccination drive with his friends, associates and other political figures. This didn’t go well with the public.

In a similar case, Peru had vaccinated 500 government officials secretly before the public. Pilar Mazzetti, a lady health minister said she didn’t know anything about it. She not only knew, but was vaccinated secretly herself. She had to go.

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In March 2021, in Jordan King Abdullah and his son were visiting a hospital where at least seven people died when their oxygen supply ran out. The king was very angry and said things can’t be dealt with this way. Following that Nathir Obeida, the health minister had to resign accepting moral responsibility for the incident.

In the same month, Marek Krajci, Slovakia’s health minister was ousted. The entire cabinet including the prime minister had to resign following the scandal about secret imports of Sputnik V. I have covered this story in detail earlier.

 In April 2021, an oxygen tank exploded causing a fire at a Baghdad hospital. The fire left 82 people dead. Hassan al-Timini, the health minister of Iraq offered his resignation.

In the same month, Rudolph Anschober, (photo above), Austria’s health minister resigned. He had taken up this job a few weeks before the start of the pandemic. He said his 15 months felt like 15 years. He was overworked and exhausted. Facing death threats, he was under police protection since November. His blood pressure and sugar had gone up, and he was diagnosed with an early stage tinnitus. This was the occupational hazard for any health minister in a pandemic.

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In the competition for the highest number of resignations, Czech Republic currently leads Brazil. Vojtech was the first to go for lack of a pandemic strategy. Roman Prymula was dismissed after he was photographed visiting a restaurant that should have been shut. Jan Blatny was fired over his handling of the pandemic. Last week, Petr Arenberger resigned. The tax department found his income and assets grew suddenly after he became a minister.

In Brazil, so far, three health ministers have lost their jobs.

The list is longer with Poland, Paraguay and others. UK’s Matt Hancock saved himself – yesterday was the first day in a year when UK had not a single covid death.

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Harsh Vardhan (India), Mikhail Murashko (Russia), Saeed Namaki (Iran) and Jorge Varela (Mexico) have been the health ministers of their respective countries throughout the last eighteen months.

The reasons for their not resigning are not known.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 075: Turning Boardrooms into Bedrooms

What was suspected a year ago is now reality. Some big names in America and Europe are giving up their office space. JPMorgan Chase, Ford, Salesforce, Target are reducing their real estate. The CEO of JP Morgan Chase, the largest private employer in New York City, said the bank will keep about 60 seats per 100 employees. United Airlines is giving up 150,000 sq feet at Willis tower in Chicago. Salesforce is subletting 225,000 sq feet.

What is going to happen to all the surrendered space in New York and London? The plan is to convert the office space into residential housing.

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Three types of conversions are planned. Offices into residences. Hotels into residences. And hotels into offices. The last category is about renting or leasing hotel space for staff to meet or to use as a co-working hub.

Converting office buildings into residential is an architectural challenge. Office building floor plates are usually large and deep to provide layout and partitioning flexibility. Elevators may need to be ripped off. A fat office building’s interior may be too dark and airless for someone to live in. Natural light and ventilation, fire and smoke protection, plumbing, electrical installations, an energy efficient wall-to-window ratio are matters that make the conversion challenge daunting. Other than architecture, it will be good for the new housing block to have grocery stores and public transport nearby.

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The office building can be demolished and a new residence block built. That seems like a solution. But usually excavation, foundations, superstructure and elevator shafts account for 30 to 40% of the building’s value. Preserving them saves a lot of money. Moreover, in many places regulations don’t allow change of façade.

For a developer, this is expensive. He must pay for the acquisition of the building and for its conversion. In current times, it is not easy to organize finance. The governments are keen to convert the offices into affordable housing.

In the past, offices and hotels were turned into luxury residential complexes. The 22 floors of New York Telephone Company were transformed into 156 condos, each priced at $4.5 million. The Bank of New York and New York public library at 61 Rivington are now residential.

The suggested solution is that the government should buy the distressed commercial buildings and then give them to developers for conversion.

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UK has a law called PDR (permitted development rights) where converting offices or shops into residences doesn’t require planning permission. This has proven to be controversial, because people living in former shops are stuck with big floor-to-ceiling windows and fully glazed doors. They have little privacy, overheating in summers and freezing in winters.

Recently, in Leicester’s shopping street, a developer planned to convert a chip shop into single room flats of 7.7 sq meters. That would be about 9 feet by 9 feet, with the resident barely moving inside. The UK government has now modified the law to prescribe 37 sq meters as a minimum for a converted one-person home, and 50 sq meters for two people.

In London and other English cities, availability of commercial space rose by 30%, in New York by 17%. In Manhattan, rents have dropped by more than 10%. Value of office space has gone down by 25%. In the last thirty years, such availability has never been seen.

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Landlords are genuinely worried. By law, they couldn’t evict tenants or leaseholders. But the bills are mounting. In New York, hotels have not paid $1.8 billion, in Chicago $1 billion. Sixty American hotels sheltered 9500 homeless people during the pandemic, which was noble, but it hasn’t helped their balance sheets. The New York governor is worried because commercial property accounts for 41% of the property taxes.

Some people compare the situation with the Spanish flu epidemic. By 1923-24, everything was normal. However, 100 years ago, there was no internet. The last year has shown work can be carried on without a large office building. Back-of-the envelope calculations show 3% to be the expense on real estate. Many companies plan to reduce office space by 35% and simply transfer the saved 1% to the bottom line.

In the pandemic, homes are getting converted into offices. Now we know the reverse is also true.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 076: Whatever Happened to the Covid Apps?

Do you remember the variety of contact tracing apps launched a year ago? Download the app and keep Bluetooth on. One fine morning you may get an alert saying a passenger (complete stranger) in your bus has tested positive. Could you go into self-isolation for ten days please?

India’s Aarogya Setu (Health Bridge), with 50 million downloads in the first two weeks, became the world’s fastest growing app, beating Pokemon Go.

In April 2020, Google and Apple, the two giants – competitors – improbably came together to develop an app. Their systems run 99% of the world’s software.

The vision or dream was that the elderly and vulnerable stay at home, everyone else goes about business as usual. Only those getting an alert go into isolation. Modern technology would keep the economy and businesses running. Except the people in isolation or quarantine, life would be normal.

The vision turned out to be a fantasy.

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Bluetooth was capable of producing a huge number of false alerts. GPS-enabled smartphones are accurate up to a 16 feet radius under the open sky. But the social distancing guideline was six feet. You could end up in isolation thanks to a person waiting at the bus stop on the opposite side of the road.

One challenge for the apps was that they must run 24x7 to be effective. The battery started running out rapidly, some android manufacturers shut down the apps to save battery life.

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Google/Apple mechanism made certain improvements. A log entry was added to the phone, only if the two smartphones were in proximity for at least five minutes.

The software relied on the Bluetooth signals to estimate the distance without needing to know people’s locations (a privacy concern). And rotating IDs were used, instead of real names. They called it “exposure notification” rather than “contact tracing”, which was more intimidating.

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Strangely, no country attempted to run trials. Just like medicines and vaccines, a covid app is a health related product.

The software privacy features meant no studies could be conducted to check if alerts really helped reduce virus transmissions. Researchers need names of people to talk to, not rotating ID numbers.

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South Korea treated contact tracing as a detective job. They combined the app with CCTV footage, credit card records, GPS data from the cars and phones. South Koreans’ smartphones vibrated when a new case was discovered in the district. The apps detailed the hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute timeline of infected people’s travel. Which buses they took, where did they get on and off, whether they were wearing masks.

South Koreans ordered into self-quarantine had to download another app. That app showed if the person violated the quarantine. The fine was $2500, payable online.

Alipay, a Chinese app generated a QR code in three colours. A green code on your smartphone meant you could move freely. A yellow code must stay at home for seven days. Red meant a two-week quarantine. (See clip above: passengers must show green code on smartphones before boarding an underground train).

Relative success in South Korea and China could be attributed to large scale; rapid testing, quick results without which contact tracing is not effective. More importantly, South Koreans were voluntarily willing to sacrifice their privacy. In China, privacy concerns didn’t cross anybody’s mind.  

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It is not known to what extent the apps helped China crush the coronavirus. If they did, people living in constitutional democracies may feel angry about the inability and unwillingness of their States to enforce the measures, and the citizens to accept them. In the USA, UK, Europe and India, hundreds of thousands of lives may have been lost because privacy and freedom are more valued than unproven apps that allow the governments to get greater control over our lives.  

Yes, freedom always comes at a price. And usually the price you pay for it is permanent. Once freedom is taken away, it is rarely given back.

Is it worth losing lives for concerns over privacy and government controls? In my view, it is. Because life itself is not life without freedom.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 077: Overjoyed in Ohio

Abbigail Bugenske, a 22-year old freshly employed engineer, was driving from Cincinnati to her parents’ house near Cleveland. It was the evening of Wednesday, 26 May. She switched to hands-free when her phone rang.

“Hi, is that Abbigail?” asked a mature voice. “This is Mike DeWine – the governor of Ohio.”

Abbigail knew who Mike DeWine was. But there was no way the governor was going to call her. She focused on the voice to see if it was any of her friends. The voice kept talking. He said he was making the call on live TV. The whole town, the entire state of Ohio was listening to the conversation. Was she watching TV? Abbigail said no, sorry, she was driving. Fortunately, she had almost reached her parents’ house by the time the call ended. It was just after 7.30 pm.

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Abbigail was screaming when she entered the house. Her parents rushed out thinking she was crying. Something was wrong.

“Mike DeWine, the governor just called me,” Abbigail said, “I won $1 million. I am going to be a millionaire.”

Her father grabbed her by the shoulders. “Calm down,” he said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The talk was interrupted by Abbigail’s phone. She was getting thousands of new followers on Instagram and Facebook. The messages continued non-stop. Friends and strangers congratulating her on winning Ohio’s Vax-a-million lottery.

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In another part of Ohio, Colleen Costello, a chemical engineer was leaving the office when the same Mike DeWine called her. Colleen thought she was listening to the governor’s taped message. The more they talked, the more she realized it was really him, live. Colleen was thankful there was a bench nearby for her to sit down. The call over, she dialed her husband, and asked him if he was sitting down. He hurried to pick up their 14 year old son, Joseph, from youth group. They rode home, their hearts beating wildly.

As promised, on the lawn of their house; the governor himself, his wife and the governor’s staff were waiting for them.

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In the USA, the vaccine supply now far exceeds demand. It is becoming difficult to get people to the vaccination centers. In some states, free transport from home is arranged. There are people who won’t take vaccines no matter what. There are others who want to wait for a few months to see what impact vaccines have on the others.

In brainstorming sessions, the Ohio governor liked the idea of a vaccine lottery. Anyone taking even a single shot can enter it, and every week, Ohio will give the winner $1 million. Abbigail Bugenske was the first winner.

As part of the same initiative, a vaccinated teenager would be picked up randomly. His entire four years’ college education, tuition fees, accommodation, textbooks and all education related expenses would be borne by the State. This four year full-ride scholarship lottery was won by 14 year old Joseph Costello. While Abbigail had taken her vaccine before the lottery was announced, Joseph was vaccinated only last Saturday, with the lottery announcement crossing his mother’s mind when she registered his name.

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If you live in Ohio, you have four more Wednesdays. June will turn four more lucky winners into instant $millionaires. Parents of four more chance youngsters would be relieved to know they don’t need to spend on the child’s university education.

American states are competing to entice Americans. Memphis will give a new car. Maryland and Oregon have launched their own lotteries. Kentucky is handing over 225,000 free lottery tickets. Maine will give 10,000 licenses for hunting and fishing. Not to be left behind, California, on 15 June will pay $1.5 million each to ten randomly selected vaccinated people.

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Offering millions of dollars and cars to bribe the people to get vaccines is happening in the same mystifying world, at the same time, where billions are desperate to get access to vaccines, some of them are on ventilators, others dying.

No vaccine has been invented for the man-made virus called inequality.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 078: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part Final

Eighteen months after its birth, there appears to be a consensus among scientists that the origin of covid-19 virus was the horseshoe bat. The virus spilled over into humans either directly, or more likely via another animal. The genome analysis suggests it could be a cross between a bat virus and say a pangolin virus, with some additional genetic sequence (called furin cleavage site) that makes it far more infectious for humans.

Such blending and spicing up can be done in labs. In 2015, Dr Shi’s team from WIV created a chimera from a bat coronavirus and a mouse coronavirus that was able to replicate efficiently in human airway cells. Those suspecting a lab leak suggest the engineering of the furin cleavage site could have been the product of WIV.

However, most scientists believe such engineering is more likely to happen in nature. Nature is the greatest designer.

The lab leak theory neither insists on a Wuhan lab designing the covid-19 virus, nor deliberately using it as a bio-weapon. The naturally created virus could accidentally slip from a lab through negligence, accident or sheer bad luck. Crashing of a Petri dish is not required. An infected bat, brought in for research, can transmit the virus to a lab employee, and start a global pandemic.

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In this mystery, where millions are killed, certain suppression of data raises doubts. China has the key epidemiological data on the first 174 covid patients in December 2019. The authorities refused to share it with the WHO delegation. Such data is critical for investigation, and can clearly tilt the balance towards one of the hypotheses.

China is in a difficult situation. If they keep the data secret, they will be assumed guilty. If they share it, who knows what will come out.

They have instead opted for whataboutism. A hawkish Chinese ministry spokesman has demanded the USA opens up its Fort Detrick (a US lab established to develop bio-weapons in the past, now runs a biological defence program) for international scrutiny. The biologist Dr Daszak reminds us that China is a sovereign country. Why should it open up its lab records to outsiders? Daszak must ask the coronavirus if it is aware of the concept of a country’s sovereignty.

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The stated objective of the virus re-engineering research (gain of function) was to prevent pandemics. The irony is that such research has not prevented, but may have caused the pandemic. Neither did the WIV manage to create covid medicines or vaccines as promised in its agenda.

Countries are now competing for virology research. There is no global authority or international treaty that sanctions such labs. USA already has more than a dozen BSL-4 labs, and more are planned. After the pandemic, more scientists will be keen to research dangerous viruses. That will mean more researchers going to the caves, coming into contact with BATS and other animal reservoirs of viruses, collecting samples, working on them in labs, upgrading them to make them potent killers, and in this entire process leaking them through accident or negligence.

The existence of such viruses is itself a major threat. Despite repeated requests to destroy them, a collection of live smallpox viruses is stubbornly held at Koltsovo (Russia), and Atlanta (USA). It just needs a single madman to use them. Both USA and Russia have shown capability of having madmen at the helm.

China should use this as a negotiation tool. To open up their records, they can insist on an international audit of all such labs in the world. That would be fair. Any lab leak can start another pandemic. An international treaty exercising strict controls and scrutiny over all bio-labs is essential. As critical as control over nuclear installations. Pandemics may be a greater threat than nuclear warfare. In the name of science, researchers can’t make the world a more vulnerable place. The gain of function research to make natural viruses more vicious should be banned. The smallpox viruses in Russia and USA must be destroyed.  

If such bargaining results in worldwide bio-safety lab reforms, China may be forgiven even if the lab leak theory proves correct.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 079: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part Four

Smallpox, Ebola, plague, SARS are dangerous viruses, and for scientists to conduct research on them, the lab must have a specified BioSafety Level (BSL). The levels of containment range from BSL-1, the lowest to BSL-4, the highest. The world has fewer than fifty BSL-4 labs; China has two, the Wuhan Institute of Virology being one.

All BSL-4 researchers must change clothes at entry, shower upon exiting, and decontaminate all the materials used during experiments. The lab itself must be in a separate building or wing, with its own air filtration and decontamination systems.

Working in astronaut suits, the researchers can’t have coffee or feel hungry. The negative air flow dehydrates and exhausts them. Working longer than three hours at a stretch is difficult. Wearing that suit and having a runny nose is a nightmare. If you sneeze, you can’t clean your face shield.

Equipment breaking is another problem. The lab must turn everything off, remove the equipment from the BSL-4 lab, and decontaminate it before fixing it. The Wuhan lab cost $44 million, and was the first Chinese lab approved as BSL-4 in 2015.

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Such precautions are important, because pathogens manage to escape frequently. The last smallpox death was a result of a lab leak in the UK in 1978. The original SARS escaped twice, once in Singapore, once in Taiwan. In 2004, SARS leaked out of a Beijing lab twice. In December 2019, around the same time as covid-19 started, more than 100 students at two agricultural research centers in Lanzhou in Northwest China were infected with brucellosis, a bacteria transmitted by livestock.

American diplomats who visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018 specifically mentioned coronavirus and the pandemic risk. In February 2020, China issued new rules requiring labs to increase their biosafety, suggesting there was something to improve.

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In February 2020, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, two Chinese scientists published a paper “the possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus”.

They screened the area around the seafood market and found two labs conducting research on coronavirus. Wuhan CDC lab was within 280 meters from the market. In one study, the lab researchers had captured 605 bats. The expert who collected them was aware of the danger of proximity to bats. He quarantined for 14 days each on two occasions, once when a bat attacked him, and once when the bat peed on him.

Surgery was performed on the caged animals, tissue samples were collected for analysis. Tissue samples and contaminated trash were a source of pathogens. This center was next to the Union hospital, where the first group of doctors was infected.

In summary, the researchers say the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.

Not surprisingly, the Xiaos were asked to withdraw the study. (Fortunately, the paper is still available). “The speculation was based on published papers and media and not supported by direct proofs.” Said Botao Xiao in an interview.

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The Xiao paper was withdrawn under government pressure before it was peer-reviewed. But the WHO report in March 2021 is an official document. In projecting the hypothesis, the report says: …although rare, laboratory accidents do happen… humans could become infected in laboratories with limited biosafety, poor laboratory management practice or following negligence.

This is followed by an interesting paragraph: “The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2 December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market. Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory.”

If you have moved houses, you know what a nightmare moving is. And to move a bio-safe facility handling 605 bats, it may be more so. This is the same lab the Chinese researchers mention in their paper. For reasons best known to WHO, the biosafety level of the Wuhan CDC is not mentioned in the report. It is BSL-2.

Shi Zhengli may have spoken the truth saying nothing leaked from her institute. What about the other Wuhan labs, particularly the one that moved on 2 December 2019?

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Based on the data available so far, I will sum the case up tomorrow.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 080: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part Three

Suddenly the lab leak theory is in headlines everywhere, particularly in nations where life is becoming normal.

Yesterday, President Biden, speaking publicly, asked the US intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to find the truth. He has given them 90 days to come back with a report.

Before that, on 14 May, eighteen scientists published a letter in a scientific journal urging further investigations into the origins of Covid-19. The WHO visit in March, and the delegation including the ever-present Dr Daszak, a man with conflicting interests; produced a report that did not satisfy anyone. The two theories were not given balanced consideration, with only 4 out of the report’s 333 pages talking about the possibility of a lab accident. The scientists now demand an investigation that is transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to an independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. (Meaning all these factors were absent during the WHO visit).  

Taking cue, Facebook today lifted a year-long ban. From now on, your FB posts can say the virus was man-made. Earlier, this was considered misinformation that warranted removal of the post.

One possible reason for the revival of the subject is the World Health Assembly, which meets this week (24 May-1 June), virtually. This is a decision making body of the WHO. The theme of its weekly conference is: “Ending this pandemic, preventing the next: Building together a healthier, safer and fairer world.”

Of course, if the world knew how the current pandemic started, that will be a big help in preventing the next one.

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If prosecution (led by the USA) must present evidence to show the coronavirus leaked from a lab, the defense (China) can strengthen its argument by offering evidence of a natural spillover from animal to human.

Scientists have been skeptical of the lab leak theory because animal spillover has been common in most epidemics. Genetics studies show that nearly every disease mankind has faced has jumped from animals: bubonic plague from rats, measles likely from cows, whooping cough from dogs, and AIDS from Chimpanzees.  

SARS virus was transmitted to humans from civets and MERS from dromedary (Arabic) camels. This detection happened within four months for SARS and nine months for MERS. Now, eighteen months after the start of Covid-19, scientists have failed to discover an intermediary who has passed on the covid virus to humans.

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The bats blamed as the source live in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both provinces nearly 1000 km away from Wuhan’s seafood market. Bats normally live in caves and trees and are not known to fly 1000 km to reach a densely populated town of 15 million. Research among Wuhan residents showed bats are neither eaten in Wuhan nor traded at its markets. If bats were a source, an intermediate host was essential. Pangolin was suggested in the beginning, but for want of evidence nobody is talking about it now.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the premier virology institute not only in China, it ranks among the top in the world. How did the coronavirus originating from bats located 1000 km away decide to infect people precisely in the town where China’s premier Virology institute is situated? Why did the epidemic not start in places between Yunnan and Wuhan? One possibility is that people in other places were infected, but because of top-class virologists, Wuhan managed to detect the virus first. (Like UK’s superior genomic surveillance ability allowed it to quickly find mutations). But the studies conducted in other Chinese towns/villages did not show any presence of antibodies outside Wuhan.

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None of this discussion suggests Bats were not the source, they probably were. Nor that the coronavirus was not natural, it could be. Still China in its defense must map out the route of the virus from the Yunnan caves to Wuhan. Its failure to do so makes the virus landing precisely in Wuhan a spooky coincidence. The logical alternative is that the virus existed in a Wuhan lab, and accidentally went out. More on that, tomorrow.

Ravi   

Corona Daily 081: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part Two

In this debate of natural spillover vs lab leak, it is critical to understand a term “Gain of Function Research.”

In virology, this research is done with the intention of better forecasting future pandemics and developing solutions to them. Scientists take a virus, usually known to endanger humans, and start tweaking it to make it more transmissible or more lethal. This is a dangerous game. The idea is to develop in the laboratory viruses that may start deadly pandemics in the future, so as to develop medicines and vaccines in advance.

Scientists who support such research argue this is the only way to stay ahead of the epidemics. New diseases emerge all the time and viruses keep evolving. This research allows the world to stockpile vaccines and antibodies.

The opponents agree this objective may be noble, but the research is capable of building Frankensteins. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist, were scientists and professors. In their scientific endevour, they probably didn’t plan to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – but that is what happened in the end.

The troubling thing is that the Wuhan laboratories routinely create viruses more dangerous than those existing in nature. The Chinese don’t deny those man-made mutations. They argue they can do it safely, and stay ahead of nature in the game. Dr Shi Zhengli, the Chinese Batwoman, and her team has done work on inserting cleavage sites into viruses to check if that enhanced their ability to infect humans.

Such man-made viruses are called Chimera viruses. Combining two pathogenic viruses increases the lethality of the new virus. That is why Chimeric viruses are generally considered a bio-weapon. The USSR had secretly tried combining encephalitis and small pox, and later Ebola and smallpox.

There have been cases of lab leaks before. But most have infected and killed very few people. Scientists believe that the annual H1N1 flu (1977-2009) was the result of a leak. The strain first appeared in Eastern Russia, and its genes were identical to a 1950 strain that was presumably stored in a Russian freezer for 27 years. The virus behaved as if it was deliberately weakened. The assumption is that Russian virologists were trying to develop a vaccine against the return of the 1918 flu.

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Having established that the Wuhan scientists have worked on developing Chimera viruses, let us now go through all the evidence that has emerged so far.

On 23 May, the Wall Street Journal published a report that three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology had become sick and were hospitalized in November 2019. Their symptoms were consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This is part of the US intelligence report that was not previously disclosed.

Shi Zhengli and the Chinese government have denied anybody from the institute was ill. So, it is the American word against the Chinese word. We live in a world where it is difficult to trust any government. If US intelligence really had any evidence, it is impossible that Donald Trump would have let it go. Unless more specific evidence is produced, it is difficult to take the WSJ report as proof of anything.

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On 19 February 2020, a group of public health scientists had issued a statement in the Lancet in support of the Chinese scientists. It strongly condemned conspiracy theories that covid-19 doesn’t have a natural origin. Genome analysis, the statement said, overwhelmingly concludes that the coronavirus originated in wildlife.

One of the authors was Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance in New York. Now it turns out that the letter was organized and drafted by him. Dr Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the covid virus really leaked from the research he financed, he may be held potentially guilty. Dr Daszak pro-actively hid this conflict of interest. The lancet letter ends with: “We declare no competing interests”.

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(Story continued tomorrow)

Ravi 

Corona Daily 082: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part One

In January 2020, from what we read in the news, the coronavirus first appeared at Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market. Wet markets around the world are literally wet because of live fish splashing in tubs of water, melting ice to keep meat cold and the blood and organs of slaughtered animals.

Wuhan’s market was not only a wet market, but a wildlife market. It sold exotic live and killed species: snakes, beavers, porcupines, baby crocodiles and others that people in other continents would not imagine eating.

The non-vegetarian food in Europe, USA or India is usually made from animals that are themselves largely vegetarian: cow, lamb, duck, chicken. Chinese, on the other hand, can eat carnivores. Some people wondered if this could be the cause of the virus appearing at the market. It is true that wildlife and human life should have some distance from one another, to prevent a virus spillover. In the beginning of 2020, the world demanded that China should shut its wildlife markets.

One question made me uneasy. Why now? Chinese people have been eating wild animals for over 1000 years. Earlier, China was extremely poor. For survival, they had to eat whatever moved on four legs. After developing a taste for centuries, the habit continued even for well-off Chinese. If the Chinese have been buying exotic animals for centuries and eating them, why should that cause a pandemic now?

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Trump called it the Chinese virus. Conspiracy theorists said this was China’s bio-weapon to become the ultimate superpower. Scientists analyzing the DNA of the virus said it was a natural virus, not made in any lab.

Now eighteen months later, more information is available. Last week, 18 leading biologists have published a letter calling for a new investigation. Once again the Chinese Lab Leak theory is in the news, big time.

It is like a murder mystery where only circumstantial evidence is available. The balance of probabilities can help us form a judgment.

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The four possibilities discussed last year were:

(a)  Natural: From the Wuhan seafood market or somewhere else. A few infected Chinese patients at the beginning of the pandemic had nothing to do with the seafood market. It is possible the food from the market reached and infected them. However, it is increasingly accepted the seafood market was not the primary source.

(b) Regular scientific work, but bad safety: The Wuhan lab may have been researching tests or vaccines, which is a legitimate activity. Accidentally, a breach caused the leak.

(c)  Bad intentions, and bad safety: Chinese scientists were trying to create an engineered bio-weapon. Just like nations developing nuclear weapons, without planning to use them. Sadly, an accidental leak occurred.

(d) China deliberately released the covid virus: This theory is considered unlikely. If it was deliberate, China didn’t need to launch the weapon in its own territory.

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In late December 2019, doctors at hospitals near Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market began seeing patients with a strange viral pneumonia. On 30 December, the Wuhan Municipal Health commission issued a warning. On the following day, WHO put out a global alert.

On 1 January, the Huanan seafood market was closed and hosed down with water. This was a crime scene that might have contained clues. Before the market closure, sellers were driven away with their animals. Some sellers may have had infected animals. Some live animals or fresh meat may have gone to other markets or in the trash. Customers left the market. And then the hosepipes cleaned it. The best epidemiological evidence was probably lost.

The Chinese health commissions then ordered diagnostic and genetic labs to destroy the samples of viruses they held, or pass them to the high level biosecurity lab. Most labs burned them. This was cited as a cover-up by the Trump administration. However, this is a standard safety procedure to prevent an outbreak. In 2014, CDC USA had given a similar order when Ebola was detected.

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(Continued tomorrow) 

Corona Daily 083: Father of Social Distancing

Sanitary measures described include: (III) Through edicts, the population must be warned that citizens who do not declare new cases - cases that occur in their houses and in other houses - within six hours will be prosecuted.

(IX) Meetings, dances and entertainments are strictly forbidden.

(XXII) The pharmacists must provide the poorest with the necessary treatments. A list of the citizens must be kept to distinguish between the poorer and the richer. The richer will pay for their treatments and the city government will pay for the paupers.

(XXXIII) It is highly recommended to be careful when shaking hands.

(XXXIV) All citizens are compelled not to leave their houses. Only one member per household is allowed to go out for shopping.

(XXXVI) People allowed to go out must bear with them a cane measuring 6 feet long. It is mandatory that people keep this distance from one another.

(XXXVIII) A large rail (parabanda) must be positioned in front of the counters in the shops in which meat, bread, wine and foodstuff are sold so that citizens will keep their distance from the counter itself.

These measures are from a manual (1588) published 433 years ago.

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Alghero is a small town on the island of Sardinia, in Italy. In November 1582, a sailor arriving from Marseille imported plague from France. The disease was known as Buboes that affected the groin area. Alghero had Morbers, plague guardians, to check outsiders at the borders and stop them if they showed symptoms. This French sailor escaped scrutiny, became ill and died, but not before starting an epidemic.

This was much before modern science; diseases were still considered a divine punishment. They were caused by “bad air” (mal aria) and vinegar was the sole antiseptic. Plague treatments ranged from bathing in one’s urine (disgusting), to drawing the poison out of buboes by rubbing that part with the rump of a live chicken (absurd).

Against this background, appeared Quinto Tiberio Angelerio, a 50 year old doctor who had studied abroad. Fortunately, he was fresh from Sicily, which had experienced its own plague epidemic in 1575.

Angelerio took charge and set up a triple sanitary cordon around the city walls. The measures suggested by him: no handshakes, 6 foot distance, cancellation of all entertainment made him so unpopular; people wanted to lynch him. However, as more and more people died, his authority came to be accepted. People began self-isolating for forty days. (Quarantine comes from quaranta giorni, meaning forty days in Italian).

Some Italians secretly visited the houses of the infected, to meet friends, play the guitar and drink together. They were duly prosecuted.

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Angelerio also passed a decree specifying the eligibility of the gravediggers. Only those who had already contracted and survived the plague qualified. Theirs was a high risk job because they would transport confessional booths to the bedsides of dying patients, and deal with the dead bodies. Angelerio was ahead of his time, because the concept of immunity was not yet known.

A plague hospital, lazaretto, to isolate infected patients was an Italian concept. They were built all over Sardinia. Part-hospital, part-prison, patients were usually taken there by the city’s plague guardians.

Angelerio made certain the lazarettos in Alghero were efficient and humane. The plague guardians had to record everything that came in and went out – beds, furniture and food. The lazarettos were free for the poorest. Orphaned babies without a wet nurse were bottle-fed with goat milk. Goats were allowed to roam freely within the complex.

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The outbreak in Anghero lasted eight months, and then there was no epidemic for the next sixty years. When the next plague happened, the first thing that was referred to was Angelerio’s manual. (He had died in 1617). During the 1652 outbreak, the island followed to the letter his instructions, including the 6 feet social distancing. (I recommend reading the 57 instructions from his book).

Recent research suggests that 6 feet is indeed safer than three or four feet.

Ravi