The coronavirus did not escape from a lab. Here's how we know.

Page 11 - For the science geek in everyone, Live Science breaks down the stories behind the most interesting news and photos on the Internet.
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There is a marked difference between a University trained expert microbiologist and a person who dabbles in applied science. Look at the big picture. The POTUS has said publicly, that the virus was "artificially induced.." This was an indirect callout to Mr. Xi, informally notifying him and the PRC that the US had a handle on the origin of the current Covid-2 virus. The US is moving its business towards others and moving away from the PRC. The virus is the straw that broke the camel's back. The case is not "complicated." Again, once the smoke clears, the world will witness what transpired and has been transpiring at Harvard. Keep in mind, that Lt. Yanqing Ye of the PRC was charged with "conspiracy", not by "theorists", but by the FBI. We still opine that CoVid-19 had a reasonable possiblity of having been synthesized in Boston, "nkautz1". These arrests were not made in "haste." The Harvard lab had been under surveillance for a long time before the (3) arrest warrants were issued. Intelligence Officers do not try to find cancer cures. They conduct other business. As a majority of one, my vote is that the noted virus was synthetically formatted and produced.

Allright , now you've left yourself a margin for error , I presume? As that would be a responsible move considering neither of us has first hand witness of any of this. Surely you've left a few eggs outside of the basket, just in case new evidence comes to light that contradicts your convictions. Or will that be considered disinformation even if it comes through the same sources that provided you with your established position?

1 of the 2 Chinese arrested is Mr. Zheng , not a member of the PRC and not from Harvard:
Inside his checked luggage, wrapped in a plastic bag and then inserted into a sock, the officers found what they were looking for: 21 vials of brown liquid — cancer cells — that the authorities say Mr. Zheng, 29, a cancer researcher, took from a laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Under questioning, court documents say, Mr. Zheng acknowledged that he had stolen eight of the samples and had replicated 11 more based on a colleague’s research. When he returned to China, he said, he would take the samples to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital and turbocharge his career by publishing the results in China, under his own name.

The other is Yanqing Ye: According to court documents, on April 20, 2019, federal officers interviewed Ye at Boston’s Logan International Airport. During the interview, it is alleged that Ye falsely claimed that she had minimal contact with two NUDT professors who were high-ranking PLA officers. However, a search of Ye’s electronic devices demonstrated that at the direction of one NUDT professor, who was a PLA Colonel, Ye had accessed U.S. military websites, researched U.S. military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two U.S. scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science. Furthermore, a review of a WeChat conversation revealed that Ye and the other PLA official from NUDT were collaborating on a research paper about a risk assessment model designed to decipher data for military applications. During the interview, Ye admitted that she held the rank of Lieutenant in the PLA and admitted she was a member of the CCP.
 
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It's rather careless of a scientific journalist to have overlooked the obvious possibility that a virus can reside in a lab and NOT be man-made. Most virus's reside in labs and are not man-made. It would not be difficult for someone with access to purposefully or accidentally allow it to exit the lab. It's basic logic , the only reasons that "man-made" and "escaped from lab" would be spoken of as if to be mutually exclusive are the same reasons the virus would have left the lab, incompetence or deliberation.
In addition, while "man made by genetic engineering" can be judged as very unlikely by looking at the structure of the genetic code and the restriction map of SARS-CoV-2 and comparing this data with other known Corona viruses, "man made by using an evolutionary process" cannot be ruled out with such analysis. Virus propagation in a lab for research purposes to obtain more virus material for functional studies or deliberate molecular evolution using e.g. an hACE-2 transgenic mouse in a military lab could have created SARS-CoV-2 in an evolutionary process that is identical to how it happens in natural host animals like bats, pangolin or humans.
In my opinion, we will never be able with 100% certainty to tell whether the SARS-CoV-2 jump in nature to humans, whether it escaped by accident or deliberately from a research lab or was released from a military lab. My bet is that SARS-CoV-2 jump in nature to humans. It is not the first time it happened and it will not be the last time it happened.
 
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A persistent coronavirus myth that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan is completely unfounded. Here's how we know.

The coronavirus did not escape from a lab. Here's how we know. : Read more

This article has not debunked the theory that laboratory negligence could of lead to this pandemic. It is sad to see scientist trying to hide this possibility. Instead you are using the term engineer and using the argument that is impossible to engineer such virus. While you know for a fact that most biological weapons are taken from nature. They are not engineered but used to spread, destroy and contaminate. There are a long list of these pathogen which were your used in WWi, WWII, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam etc... They are a long list of biosafety level III and IV pathogens stored in P4 laboratories across the world. A simple human error may cause a Biosafety level III or IV virus to unleash in the environment. Hence if it was so hard to spread t as you have been showing in debunking videos, the scientist working in those laboratories would not need all these special protective equipment.

The protective equipment for a bio-safety level I laboratory (used in Hospitals, schools and your basic laboratories are different than Bio-safety level III and IV. Unfortunately the COVID19 Virus which is a combo of the Sars COV2 and MERS virus are level III virus. A very contagious strain which are kept in the P4 lab (laboratory for level III and IV). Our doctors, Nurses, were not equipped for a bio-safety level III nor level IV disease. This is why it spread rapidly. Hence if an evil terrorist needed to use this type of warfare, they would use level III and IV pathogen because they know that the majority of hospitals were never constructed to be Bio-safety level III or IV. Anyways don't mean to disappoint you but the possibility of theses pathogens being unleashed by accident or intentionally in nature still stands. Covid19 is a bio-safety level III virus look what it did. Imagine if the same incident would of occurred with a Bio-safety level 4 virus from these labs.

Please tell the truth about what happened so that we can build new hospitals, New schools New aircraft with UV light that can be used decontaminate pathogens (over night) just like Biosafety Cabinet 2A and 3. Most Biosafety Cabinets level IIA, III and IV has UV light and other devices to kill these pathogens after doing your experiments. Now because of terrorism or negligence we will need to change our infrastructure.
 
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Evolution of pandemic coronavirus outlines path from animals to humans

Conducting a genetic analysis, researchers from Duke University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Texas at El Paso and New York University confirmed that the closest relative of the virus was a coronavirus that infects bats. But that virus's ability to infect humans was gained through exchanging a critical gene fragment from a coronavirus that infects a scaly mammal called a pangolin, which made it possible for the virus to infect humans.
 
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While I don't believe that SARS-CoV-2 is man made or escaped from a research or military lab, intentionally or unintentionally, biological weapon R&D is a fact and everybody should know about it. In that respect I recommend the below book. This book was published 20 years ago and tells the story of the beginnings of biological weapons development in Russia. Of course today's biological weapons development is a lot more sophisticated. Never-the-less, this book gives a very good impression about these efforts.

Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
 
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NIH-halted study unveils its massive analysis of bat coronaviruses

Quotes from this article
And even the hundreds of viruses included in the current paper are only a fraction of what remains to be discovered, Daszak says. “We are looking at maybe 10,000 to 15,000 bat coronaviruses that are out there.”
There is plenty of evidence that some of these viruses are spilling over to humans all the time in southern China, Daszak says. In an earlier paper, Daszak and co-workers found SARS-related antibodies to coronaviruses in about 3% of people they sampled in China living near bat caves, suggesting they had been infected by some of these viruses. He argues that the world needs to change its approach and go from reacting to pandemics to trying to identify dangerous coronaviruses before they emerge.
 

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Explain the gain of function sequence of this virus if it is not man made. Examination of the protein sequence of the S glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 reveals the presence of a furin cleavage sequence (PRRARS|V). The CoV with the highest nucleotide sequence homology, isolated from a bat in Yunnan in 2013 (RaTG-13), does not have the furin cleavage sequence. Because furin proteases are abundant in the respiratory tract, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein is cleaved upon exit from epithelial cells and consequently can efficiently infect other cells. In contrast, the highly related bat CoV RaTG-13 does not have the furin cleavage site. (PRRARS|V) is an insert added sequence with a specific function, it is not a mutation at the end of the sequence. Being an insert rather then a mutation it is more likey to have been made in a lab. Gain of function research was outlawed in most countries.....not in China though.
 
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Being an insert rather then a mutation it is more likey to have been made in a lab.

Can you exclude that it may happen in Nature?
I did a quick search and found the following:

Quoted from the abstract:
A pattern of insertions and deletions in the hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase of different strains of influenza B viruses is observed.

Below is a paper related to insertion in corona viruses

From the Highlights
Metagenomic analysis identified a novel coronavirus, RmYN02, from R. malayanus
RmYN02 was the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 in most of the virus genome
Two loop deletions in RBD may reduce the binding of RmYN02 with ACE2
RmYN02 contains an insertion at the S1/S2 cleavage site in the spike protein
 
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Can you exclude that it may happen in Nature?
I did a quick search and found the following:

Quoted from the abstract:
A pattern of insertions and deletions in the hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase of different strains of influenza B viruses is observed.

Below is a paper related to insertion in corona viruses

From the Highlights
Metagenomic analysis identified a novel coronavirus, RmYN02, from R. malayanus
RmYN02 was the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 in most of the virus genome
Two loop deletions in RBD may reduce the binding of RmYN02 with ACE2
RmYN02 contains an insertion at the S1/S2 cleavage site in the spike protein

From the article on the flu: "A pattern of insertions and deletions in the hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase of different strains of influenza B viruses is observed."
The furin cleavage sequence (PRRARS|V) insert is not part of any pattern, and is a very specific gain of function insert, in a very specific spot. In the paper you provided on the flu you can see the pattern and progression that isn't there in the cov insert. I think it's extremely naive to not at least consider the possibility it came from a lab. I can't exclude the insert could have happened in nature but that's the same as saying you can't prove God doesn't exist, it's intellectually lazy.
 
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In an earlier post I said that I don’t think that it will be possible to determine with 100% certainty where the virus came from.

My opinion is also that it is possible to create a virus like the SARS-CoV-2 in the lab. I am a molecular biologist and have manipulated many kinds of vectors, but I am not a virologist and not a geneticist. From my experience I know that you can cover your tracks, that is removing e.g. restriction sites you created. You can also use molecular evolutionary techniques to drive function in the direction you want. You will not be able to detect that. And with incomplete coverage of corona virus sequence history it will be unlikely that it could be determined with certainty that such a virus was created in a lab.

So, while I believe that SARS-CoV-2 could have been created in a lab, I don’t believe it was. My opinion is that this virus jump to humans in nature without human help. Call me naive. I just don’t buy into all this conspiracy crap.

In general I don’t believe in anything that has not been proven. But I do have my hypotheses that I believe until proven wrong. I try to always have an open mind and I don’t take sides if there is not enough evidence.
 
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Let’s assume that an international team finds a pangolin in nature that harbors a virus which is the direct link to SARS-CoV-2. It is 100% certain that the virus from this pangolin community jumped to humans. Does that disprove the theory that the virus escaped from a lab due to negligence or deliberate release? No, it does not. In this hypothetical scenario, can we prove that the virus indeed was released from a lab? Knowing humans, it is very likely that the people involved would remove all traces, that is, throw away virus samples and erase note book and DB entries. So, if you then send an international investigative team into all research and military virus labs in the world they will come empty. Does that proof that the virus did not come from a lab? No, it does not. That’s why I am saying that it is unlikely that we will for sure find out what happened.

This means that it is very likely that, until the end of time, there will be humans who believe the virus came from a lab and others who believe that virus jumped in nature to humans. Just like there are still debates today about whether the earth is flat and whether Neal Armstrong was on the moon.
 

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This means that it is very likely that, until the end of time, there will be humans who believe the virus came from a lab and others who believe that virus jumped in nature to humans. Just like there are still debates today about whether the earth is flat and whether Neal Armstrong was on the moon.

It's very important for people to recognize that experts who have studied a topic for years, while that topic has been studied by other experts for many generations, carry more weight than those who read something on Facebook or watched a really interesting YouTube video.

Not every opinion is equal when it comes to issues of science. Experts may not have literally every answer to every question today, but using the skills that make them experts is how we've managed to gain the incredible knowledge we've used to cure diseases in the past.

There will, indeed, always be people who believe that because a scientist can't show a video of the virus moving from one species to humans, that every other guess as to how it came about is equally valid. However, our forums do have rules that will not allow that kind of intellectual noise to be posted here.

If folks have contrary perspectives and can cite verifiable sources, we welcome the info. If the "source" is a Facebook post or a YouTube video, that's unlikely to be peer reviewed, so we'll want to keep a healthy dose of skepticism.
 
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Peer review is not science, it is gatekeeping. "Cite my paper and you get in", or "I am working on something similar so let's squash this article". If you don't think this happens, you haven't been around very long.

Science does not preclude that the virus comes out of a lab, or that it was altered.

The so called experts at the lancet had to retract a "Peer Reviewed" article making the same claims as this silly article just five days ago. They failed to check its validity because it fit their agenda.

Your appeals to authority are pathetic.
 
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was published last March 21, 2020.

"
The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know.
By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief March 21, 2020
The persistent myth can be put to bed. "



but, read this recently



"COVID-19 virus has properties that have never been found in nature before
USA Jun 08, 2020, 02.22 PM(IST) Written By: Lawrence Sellin "



may please kindly provide answers
 
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Really, the main point as "proof" in the reasoning, the "nail", is that
"If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer MODELS SUGGEST won't work"?!?
So one cannot think out of the box, have to innovate bound to computer "models" which are coded frequently based in "assumptions" in an ver evolving field of knowledge, when not vastly flawed like Neil's epidemiologica "model" at Imperial College?
Gosh... What a "reasoning" this is lol #shame
 
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Here's a link to the nature article in case ppl want to come in here with the Grandmaster PhD degrees in konspiracy bullshiet. Although I doubt it will help. these osteocephalics have their mind made up that it's the imaginary boogeyman
"Osteocephalyc" is your mother. The "Nature" article is a mere OPINION of authors, they "believe" a scientist "wouldnt" have chosen a structure that "models" "SUGGEST" wouldnt be "ideal"! What IMPEDES a scientist to not "believe" in some "model" and proceed trying in some direction not so "valued" by the model? Hence what the "belief" of these authors PROVE that NO scientist have CHOSEN, (even by mistake) a structure the "models" wouldnt "suggest"?
Flawed logic, mere OPINION article, not "proof" of NOT being eventualiy man manipulated. Throw your ARROGANCE under the carpet and GROW to live in society, or at least learn tô RESPECT people If your parents didnt teach you about this.
 
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I have noticed reading the 2014-15 Wuhan lab study --- which combined BAT Coronavirus with human respiratory infectious SARS ---was funded in part by EcoHealth Alliance ( Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), see funding in "Acknowledgements" section . Here is the actual research paper link :

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985#Ack1

They reported it was ONLY 97% similar to Covid 19...but has very weak DNA strand links that allow the created virus to mutate extremely easily.

How is this 2015 WUHAN LAB CREATED VIRUS not related, then to Covid 19?
 

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Professor Petrovsky in Australia commented on this quite extensively.

He has developed previous successful SARS and Ebola vaccines as well as working on coronavirus vaccines and received extensive US Govt research funding over many years.

Prof Petrovsky also made clear he was not saying that the virus was made in a lab, but he also said he found it strange that so many researchers said it was definitely not created in a lab. It was too early to say that it was not developed via gain of function research or other lab recombination methods which could make it appear a natural viral mutation. Additionally he stated that certain elements of the virus made it very remarkable for a naturally mutated virus

Paper on Covid-19 from May 2020 - Cornell



Its worth reading the text related to the youtube video interview with Prof Petrovsky (much more than is quoted below)

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oiyTrJehvbU


Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses.

Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has completed a scientific study, currently undergoing peer review, in conjunction with La Trobe University in Victoria, which found COVID-19 was uniquely adapted for transmission to humans, far more than any other animal, including bats.

Professor Petrovsky, from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University who has spent the past 20 years developing vaccines against pandemic influenza, Ebola and animal SARS, said this highly unusual finding left open the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory.

“It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said.

“One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses.

“The same process can happen in a petri-dish. If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system.

“In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment.”

Professor Petrovsky was originally modelling the virus in January to prepare a vaccine candidate. He then turned his attention to “explore what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans” to understand the origins of the virus - and had a “surprising” result when none were well-adapted.

“We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise,” he said.
 
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In an earlier post I said that I don’t think that it will be possible to determine with 100% certainty where the virus came from.

My opinion is also that it is possible to create a virus like the SARS-CoV-2 in the lab. I am a molecular biologist and have manipulated many kinds of vectors, but I am not a virologist and not a geneticist. From my experience I know that you can cover your tracks, that is removing e.g. restriction sites you created. You can also use molecular evolutionary techniques to drive function in the direction you want. You will not be able to detect that. And with incomplete coverage of corona virus sequence history it will be unlikely that it could be determined with certainty that such a virus was created in a lab.

So, while I believe that SARS-CoV-2 could have been created in a lab, I don’t believe it was. My opinion is that this virus jump to humans in nature without human help. Call me naive. I just don’t buy into all this conspiracy crap.

In general I don’t believe in anything that has not been proven. But I do have my hypotheses that I believe until proven wrong. I try to always have an open mind and I don’t take sides if there is not enough evidence.
I can only ask a serious question that is easily answered.

"Do you believe a virulent contagion can escape containment, either by accident...or through the actions of someone who purposely intended to release it?"

Let's don't pretend that something has to be altered, or created in such a way that it is identifiable as "Man Made" to be a level 4 threat. Let's not pretend that labs that hold and actively work with naturally occurring contagions could not possibly by accident or by some diabolical plot introduce such contagions to the world outside of the lab.

Let's do not pretend that contagions cannot be forced to evolve in a natural way, so that they do not appear unnatural, but have been in fact "cultured" and manipulated by research or experimentation.

There are valid reasons that point toward the hypothesis that one or more of the three has indeed happened. I can also point toward the fact that all three have indeed occurred before , and are quite common The only uncommon element is the fact of one or more of the three ....resulted in a global pandemic.. But that isn't out the question either!

Let's not pretend that these facts have been purposely ignored and when the proposition has been made...It is instantly deflected by answering the question with... "We know it wasn't created in a lab..because..." Skipping right over the possibility it simply breached the safety protocols and escaped the containment of a lab. That in itself is a LOUD MESSAGE! Then add ( There were efforts to hide exactly what did happen at the BL4 lab in Wuhan China.
 
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Really, the main point as "proof" in the reasoning, the "nail", is that
"If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer MODELS SUGGEST won't work"?!?
So one cannot think out of the box, have to innovate bound to computer "models" which are coded frequently based in "assumptions" in an ver evolving field of knowledge, when not vastly flawed like Neil's epidemiologica "model" at Imperial College?
Gosh... What a "reasoning" this is lol #shame
It's the absence of identifiable human manipulation, such as gene splicing that drives the determination that it wasn't "engineered". However most mutations that occur naturally are indeed surprising to the point of extraordinary!
 
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I see 2 separate theories; (1) It was created at the lab and was released. (2) It was a natural occurring virus being studied in the lab and was released. I see many providing evidence that it was not created and that if true makes theory (1) unlikely. Is there any info that refutes the possibility of theory (2) that it was a natural virus being studied in the Wuhan lab and somehow got released?
 
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I see 2 separate theories; (1) It was created at the lab and was released. (2) It was a natural occurring virus being studied in the lab and was released. I see many providing evidence that it was not created and that if true makes theory (1) unlikely. Is there any info that refutes the possibility of theory (2) that it was a natural virus being studied in the Wuhan lab and somehow got released?

Look at my previous post on covid-19 which includes more info

Watch the video interview with Prof Petrovsky an Australian virus expert who has been funded extensively over many years by the USA NIH and developed successsful vaccines for Ebola, MERSs and animal SARs.

His covid-19 vaccine research indicates covid-19 looks too well adapted to human transmission to be a natural virus and it is unusual it has no better animal host prior to arriving at the human stage.

In any event you will see he says that the way many leading researchers have said it is impossible that covid-19 to be man made or man enhanced is strange and disregards lab recombination methods that are well known and leave little or no trace of human intervention

The video interview is a good summary of the facts about covid-19

Its worth reading the text related to the youtube video interview with Prof Petrovsky (much more than is quoted below)

View:
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oiyTrJehvbU


Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses.

Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has completed a scientific study, currently undergoing peer review, in conjunction with La Trobe University in Victoria, which found COVID-19 was uniquely adapted for transmission to humans, far more than any other animal, including bats.

Professor Petrovsky, from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University who has spent the past 20 years developing vaccines against pandemic influenza, Ebola and animal SARS, said this highly unusual finding left open the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory.

“It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said.

“One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses.

“The same process can happen in a petri-dish. If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system.

“In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment.”

Professor Petrovsky was originally modelling the virus in January to prepare a vaccine candidate. He then turned his attention to “explore what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans” to understand the origins of the virus - and had a “surprising” result when none were well-adapted.

“We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise,” he said.


Prof Petrovsky Paper on Covid-19 from May 2020 - Cornell


[2005.06199] In silico comparison of spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for the possible origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

 
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