Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN that he believes that Corona virus Originally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. But no team of experts World Health Organization, Dr. Anthony Fausi, and a number of virology experts, say there is simply no evidence to support such a claim.
“I don’t believe this came about somehow From a bat For human. And at the same moment, the virus came into humans, becoming one of the most contagious viruses we know for human-to-human transmission, “Redfield told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a taped interview in January.” Complete on Sunday. ” When a pathogen moves from one group to another, it takes some time to figure out how to become more and more efficient. “
Redfield, a virologist who led the CDC under President Trump, has repeatedly insisted that this is just his opinion, not a proven fact. “I am now allowed to take an opinion,” he said. According to Redfield, the extremely rapid transmission of the then-novel coronavirus, in his view, suggests that it was grown in a lab for a specific purpose. “In most of our labs, when we try to grow a virus, we try to help it grow better, and make it better, and better, and better, and better so that we can experiment and learn about it. Get the figure. ”The way I put it together,” he said of his theory.
Redfield, however, also said he believes the virus began to spread months earlier than once thought – perhaps from September or October 2019, a deadline backed by recent research. He may have spent the extra time circulating without detecting the virus, without “leaking” from the lab – which could help explain how he became “efficient” at the transition.
Dr Anthony Fawcett addressed Redfield’s comments at a COVID-19 response briefing on Friday and suggested that most public health officials disagree. He noted that if the virus escaped from a laboratory, it would mean that “it has essentially entered an outside human population that is already well adapted to humans.”
“However, the alternative explanation that is given by most public health individuals is that the virus was actually circulating in China, probably in Wuhan, for a month or more, when they were clinically recognized in late December,” Fuchs said. Said.
“If this were the case, the virus could have clearly adapted itself to a better efficiency of transmissibility during that period, it was identified at that time and at that time. Therefore, Dr. Redfield was referring to the fact that he was giving an opinion on this.” There were. For the possibility, but again there are other options – others that most people have. “
Understanding when the coronavirus first emerged is an important part of the epidemic puzzle, involving scientists from around the world. Team from WHO, Working down the nail. A recent study published in the journal Science found that “the period between mid-October and November 2019” was the “reasonable interval” when the first case of SARS-COV-2 in Hubei Province came to light.
“It is very likely that the SARS-Cavi-2 was hovering in the Hubei province in early November 2019 and probably in early October 2019, but not earlier.” But for weeks or months, its prevalence was low enough to evade notice. “By the time COVID-19 was first identified, the virus was firmly established in Wuhan.”
Christian G., director of infectious disease genomics at Scripps Research’s Translational Research Institute. Andersen told CBS News that the lab theory (any of Redfield’s comments) was “not supported by the available evidence.”
“It is clear that he was not only the destructive CDC director in U.S. history where he completely failed in his sworn campaign to protect the country, but by his remarks, he also showed a complete lack of basic evolutionary virology.”
Anderson was the lead author of a study published last year in Nature Medicine, which found that viruses are a product of natural evolution. Furthermore, through an analysis of public genome sequence data, scientists found “no evidence that the virus was created in a laboratory or otherwise engineered,” a press release from Scripps said.
“By comparing the genome sequence data available for known coronavirus strains, we can conclusively determine whether SARS-CoV-2 originated by natural processes,” Andersen said at the time.
Co-author of the study with Anderson and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health in Columbia, Dr. W. W. “A lot of us still don’t know about the virus, exactly how long it’s been circulating, there’s no evidence to suggest it was created in a laboratory,” said Ian Lipkin.
“The fact that we haven’t seen it before, doesn’t mean it was made in a lab,” he said. Lipkin pointed to the ability to mimic coronavirus in other animals, e.g. Eruption between mink, And emergence Very transmissible variables Worldwide – “without any modification from the laboratory” – as evidence to the contrary.
“The changes that have been made by the virus are not what we would have predicted,” he added, “even if we wanted to create such a virus, we would not know how to do it.”
Lipkin called Redfield’s comments “unfavorable”, especially as they saw an increase. Discrimination and violence Against Asian Americans During the epidemic, he said, “We should keep scratching our fingers and walking away.”
Anderson and his colleagues concluded that the virus was probably caused by one of two circumstances. The first is that the virus “evolved into its current pathogenic state through natural selection in a non-human host and then spread to humans,” the press release said. The second is that “the non-pathogenic version of the virus went from the animal host to the human and then evolved into its current pathogenic state in the human population.”
“We know that bats carry viruses like SARS-CO-2, so it makes sense that they came directly from bats. Like SARS, it’s possible that they came from an intermediate host – which we don’t recognize,” Andersen said. Explained. “There’s nothing quite unusual about the fact that we haven’t found such an intermediate host (even if one is present in the first place) and haven’t read about the literature if anyone says so.”
The current director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Valensky said in a briefing on Friday that the White House team was “looking forward” to a report from the WHO (UNH) that “is investigating the origin of the epidemic and SARS-Cavi-2 in humans.” Also China is not going to be next With information that can be key to a complete understanding.
“We don’t know its origins (reservoirs),” Andersen noted most “Including other recent issues like Ebola”, and the virus that has infected humans, and of which we have little idea, could take decades. “
“We know that the first epidemiological cluster of the case came from the Huanan market and we know that the virus was found in environmental samples – including animal cages – on the market,” he said. “Any ‘lab leak’ theory has to account for that scenario – which it can’t easily do without introducing a big conspiracy and printing it by Chinese scientists and officials.”
His stern conclusion: “Redfield doesn’t know what he’s talking about – plain and simple. It’s not surprising given his disastrous tenure as CDC director.”
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