Corona Daily 071: Dr Tomoaki Kato

Dr Tomoaki Kato, 56, was among the first Covid-19 patients in the USA. He had spent his entire adult life in hospitals, without ever being a patient there. He was fit and healthy, seven New York marathons to his credit. One day in March 2020, suddenly feeling breathless in the shower, oxygen level dangerously low, he reluctantly admitted himself to the same New York hospital where he worked. Once on the ventilator, he lost consciousness. Weeks passed without any signs of improvement or consciousness.

The doctors, his colleagues, were depressed. Even if Dr Kato were to survive, would he be a doctor again? There was a long waiting list of patients, and Dr Kato was irreplaceable.

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Dr Tomoaki Kato is the surgical director - adult and pediatric liver and intestinal transplantation. He is the innovator and practitioner of  “ex vivo” operations.

In his first year, Dr Kato and his team operated on Heather McNamara, a 7-year-old girl. She was told by several hospitals her abdominal cancer was inoperable.

As a transplant surgeon, Dr Kato knew organs can survive outside the human body for up to ten hours before going to a recipient.

He clamped the arteries of the little girl and removed her stomach, spleen, liver, small and large intestines and pancreas. The abdominal organs were put in a cold-preservation solution. Once out of the body, it becomes easier to reach and remove the tumours. Dr Kato cut out the tumour in the arteries, reconstructed her blood vessels using synthetic materials, replaced the organs and reconnected the arteries. It was like an organ transplant with the same person as donor and recipient.

When Dr Kato took out the organs, the anesthetized girl was lying on the table, with nothing in her body cavity. Though an empty abdomen was a familiar sight for Dr Kato, his colleagues found it unreal.

The organs were out for 19 minutes. It took an hour to sew them back. Another two hours to re-establish blood flow. The total surgery took fifteen hours. Heather went home in three weeks. She was the first child in the world to undergo multi-organ ex-vivo surgery. Ten years later, she is fine, studying in a college.

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 Over the years, Dr Kato had performed hundreds of complex operations. His operations were also marathons, requiring anywhere between 12 and 20 hours. While the team worked in rotation, Dr Kato stayed alert and in charge throughout. His surgical innovations, skilled hands and superhuman stamina had made the soft spoken surgeon a hero for his colleagues and god for his patients.

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In March, Dr Kato’s chest x-ray confirmed his covid was severe. Initially he had bacterial infections, then sepsis, followed by his kidneys failing, requiring dialysis. After four weeks of unconsciousness, he was put on ECMO, the machine that pumps oxygen into the patient, and sucks out CO2. This is the last resort.

Like many serious covid patients, he had frightening and vivid hallucinations and delusions. Scans found a blood clot and a brain hemorrhage. His hair had fallen out. Finally he woke up, a tube still feeding him. He had no strength and had lost 25 pounds.

It was two months before he could go home. When he left on a wheelchair, 200 staff members gathered around, chanting: Kato. Kato. Kato.

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In August, he started performing surgeries again. First few surgeries he performed sat in a wheelchair, with his sore shoulder wrapped in athletic tape. In two months time, he was performing liver transplants. By March this year, he completed over 40 transplants and 30 other operations.

Now he feels more driven to teach his art to other surgeons. If he died, and nobody else has picked up his magic, it will be a problem, he knows.

He also now understands better how patients feel. When he encouraged them to take a feeding tube, and said it might look like hell, he didn't know what hell meant. Now he does. He had experienced a near-death. “I was there”, are very powerful words for patients, he says.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 072: A Chip In Your Shoulder

On 7 May, a group of Columbia University engineers published a paper about a microchip designed by them. This microchip can sit inside the tip of a needle. That photo with accompanying captions like “I am not getting chipped by the government”, “Make sure to get your vaccine!!” “Now you know why the magnet sticks” went viral on Facebook. A “magnet challenge” competition alleged that a strong magnet will stick to the arm where the covid-19 vaccine was injected.

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James Heathers is the Chief Scientific Officer of a data company making wearable devices. He holds a doctorate in physiological-signal methodology. For the last fifteen years, he designs and sticks tech devices on or in people. Yesterday, in the Atlantic, he analysed the chip in the shoulder hypothesis.

First, he says, the syringe filling operation is visible to anyone who cares to watch it. Empty syringes are filled from vials, six shots per vial drawn out for Pfizer. Nurses fill the syringes; other nurses take the trays of prefilled syringes to tables, another nurse administers the jab. Pfizer syringes are Monojects (maker Cardinal Health). This needle snaps after a single use. To avoid injuries to nurses.

The Monoject needle is narrow, 25 gauge, its diameter about one quarter millimeter. Bigger needles, 16-gauge, are used for blood donation. Smaller, 30-gauge for injecting insulin. The bigger the gauge, smaller the needle.

The needle’s length is 1.5 inches, to make sure that on big arms, it can reach the muscle through skin and subcutaneous fat. Other than the nurse injecting, there is no human contact. No hugs, no handshakes. Everyone is masked. Little opportunity for micro-chipping at the vaccination center.

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The chip with 5G functionality is ruled out. The size of a penny, it can never fit inside a needle.

If some evil-schemer, whether named Bill or otherwise, wants to use a real tiny microchip, and inject it into billions of arms, he might consider pre-filling the syringes, not the vaccine vials, with the microchips.

Now there is a problem. If a vaccine liquid in a vial has six microchips, it is near impossible to draw it into six syringes so as to have one chip in each. Dr Heathers has calculated the vial must contain 26 chips to improve the chances of each person getting at least one chip in the arm. The evil Bill will have a real problem dealing with people with several microchips inside them.

The only possibility, Heathers says, would be to preload the tiniest microchip into the barrel of each syringe, and then hope it ejects itself when injected into the arm.

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Assuming that is done, the system needs to be somehow powered. Microchips of that size can’t have in-built batteries; an external source must power them. This requires a pretty hefty energy source very close to the injection site. Maintaining secrecy of the microchipping operation would not be easy.  

The other technical issue is how to get the data off the chip. A microchip or an RFID tag can function only if it can communicate through an inch of muscle, fat and skin. A muscle is a bag of fluid, known to obstruct radio signals. (GPS animal tracking usually involves attaching the GPS tracker to a radio collar, not insert it inside the animal).

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Dr Heathers rests his case here. He doesn’t even want to think of the other questions such as: how to make billions of such high-end chips in times of severe semiconductor shortage? How to persuade giant listed companies to risk committing an act of secret micro-chipping? How to offer an after-injection-maintenance? Etc.

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The Columbia Engineering group has since clarified their research has nothing to do with covid-19 and vaccinations. The microchip made by them uses ultrasound and can measure only temperature. Temperature of the rats. The microchip has been tested only on rodents, not on humans. Human testing will not happen any time soon.

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If you are already vaccinated, be happy. Nobody has planted any microchips inside you.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 073: Zoo Baby Boom

This pandemic has brought some delightful news from all around the world - animals are producing far more babies than usual. Several animals in zoos gave birth for the first time.

Tourism is a key income source for Sri Lanka. Its zoos have been shut since March 2020. For the first time, the Sri Lanka Zoo witnessed the births of a black swan, a white peacock and a Nilgai, Asia’s largest antelope. In addition, an Arabian oryx, black duck, scimitar-horned oryx, a zebra, and three lion cubs were born. In the absence of visiting crowds, animals moved around more freely and successfully consorted with mates.

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In the San Antonio Zoo in Texas, the arrival of a baby bird called Micronesian Kingfisher was a surprise. It was thought to be extinct. Two near-extinct aquatic species of pupfish gave birth in the zoo’s aquarium. The last sighting of a La Palma pupfish in the wild was in 1994, and that of the Charco Palma pupfish in 1995.

Seven Tasmanian Devils were born in Australia for the first time after 3000 years (imported earlier). They are the world’s largest carnivorous marsupials. As native predators, they are capable of controlling the populations of feral cats and foxes.

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Kenya has had an elephant baby boom. A record breaking 248 baby elephants were born in Amboseli national park alone. The lockdowns were not responsible for the conception, since elephants are pregnant for about two years. In a drought, females stop their cycles. Kenya had a terrible drought in 2017, and in 2018, the elephants started mating. The pandemic helped, because poaching and killing of animals stopped.

Conservationists don’t name the elephants till they are four years old, because of high infant mortality. Out of the 248 babies born, 240 have survived. Twins are rare, because the mother struggles to give milk to two hungry babies. In the pandemic baby boom, two pairs of twins have survived beyond six months, the critical mark.

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Animals in Palestine are perhaps safer than people. At a Palestinian zoo, peacocks, ostriches and baboons joined a baby boom that produced three times more than the usual animals. With people visiting the zoo daily, in normal years an ostrich laying eggs could rarely incubate them properly. This year, she produced eleven eggs, and with no people around, was able to build a nice nest.

In Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk zoo, the rare births included Egyptian goslings, reindeer calves, llama crias and a brown weeper capuchin monkey. Only the zoo’s herd of camels seems to be missing visitors. In a confused state, they followed every zoo employee walking past their enclosure.

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Spring is usually the best season for fertility in the animal kingdom. More food is available. With more rainfall, more sunlight and longer days the animal parents in the wild have more time to hunt and nurse their babies. Warm weather helps to protect the babies.

Zoos in North America usually celebrate zoo babies’ month in May. Now all zoos are expecting a large second wave of births.

As compared to humans, the pandemic had a reverse effect on animals. Instead of distancing, they came closer. Giant pandas, generally lacking the drive and skill, managed to mate and produce babies in America and Hong Kong. At the Houston zoo, three weeks is all it took for one male bongo to impregnate three females.

Houston zoo, not wanting more mouths in the pandemic, separated a pair of hedgehog tenrecs. The couple was separated for 89 days. The zoo specialists thought 42 to 49 days was the gestation period. To their shock, after 89 days, the female gave birth to three babies.

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What the pandemic has made obvious is that animals need privacy just like we do. It is known that cheetahs, white rhinos, Yangtze turtles, whooping cranes and giant pandas have great difficulties conceiving in captivity. Shutting down zoos for visitors and jungles for poachers has worked wonders for the animal kingdom.

It may be better to free endangered and near-extinct species from zoos. Perhaps in the wild, they can more easily be fruitful and multiply.

Ravi 

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