PAGE A10, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 11, 2021
The case that the virus emerged
from nature is falling apart
PUBLIC SQUARE welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes
Editorial Cartoon
You are not alone
Graduates, when you are handed
your diploma, that moment will mark
the end of this leg through your educa-
tion journey.
Those of you who graduated from
high school this week will either con-
tinue your education at college, others
of you will forgo further education and
enter the workforce or the military. You
young adults graduating from college
this spring likely have your next step in
mind, be it graduate school or starting a
career in your chosen field.
Whatever school you graduated it
is important to know that you are not
alone.
You are not alone because millions
of others of your age have shared the
same things over the past 15 months.
Much like the Greatest Generation, you
and your peers have a shared experi-
ence that has changed you for the rest
of your lives. Similar experience fosters
empathy, a trait that is currently in too
short of supply in our world.
You are not alone; your loved ones,
friends and mentors have a stake in
your success. There is no one who wants
to stand in your way. There will always a
hand ready to help you climb to the next
rung of life. Don't shy away from asking
for assistance.
Tap into the knowledge and wisdom
of those who have gone before you. Few
things are more validating for a person
than when you ask them to share what
Editorial
they know. The world becomes much
less uncertain and scary with people
who have your back.
Listen to the people who want you to
succeed, they, too, have been where you
are upon graduation. They, too, have
lived through a global pandemic that
upended our way of life.
You are not alone. We all need each
other as we go through live, one step at
a time. You've completed one step. Let
others help you onto the next step and
every step after that.
None of us are alone if we but dare to
reach out and grab a helping hand.
—LAZ
WHEATLAND PUBLISHING CORP.
142 Chemawa Road N, Keizer, Oregon 97303
Phone: 503.390.1051 • www.keizertimes.com
PUBLISHER
& EDITOR
Lyndon Zaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
FOLLOW US
ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
NEW DIGITAL
SUBSCRIPTION PRICING:
$5 per month, $60 per year
PUBLISHED
EVERY FRIDAY
Publication No: USPS 679-430
YEARLY PRINT
SUBSCRIPTION PRICING:
$35 inside Marion County
$43 outside Marion County
$55 outside Oregon
POSTMASTER
Send address changes to:
Keizertimes Circulation
142 Chemawa Road N.
Keizer, OR 97303
Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon
By MARC A. THIESSEN
Anthony Fauci told Congress last
week that, despite growing support for
the case that the pandemic emerged
from the Wuhan lab, he still believes it
came from nature. “I have always said
that the high likelihood is that this is a
natural occurrence,” Fauci said, “and I
still maintain that.” Like so many things
Fauci has told Americans about the pan-
demic, it looks increasingly like he could
be proven wrong. Not only is there still
zero evidence to support the theory that
the virus emerged from nature, there are
mounting signs that it did not.
In the 15 months since the pandemic
began, despite an exhaustive search,
no intermediate host—an animal that
caught the virus from bats and then
spread it to humans—has been found.
Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for
nearly 50 years at Science, Nature and
the New York Times—points out in his
exhaustive report for the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists that during the SARS1
epidemic, the intermediate host (civet
cats bred for human consumption) was
identified in just four months.
Is it possible the virus jumped from
bats to humans without an intermediate
host? Perhaps. But a bat coronavirus is
known to have directly infected humans
only on one known occasion—in April
2012, when six people cleaning bat guano
from a mine in China’s Yunnan province
fell ill. However, it’s implausible that bats
infected people in Wuhan. The city is
more than 900 miles from the bat caves
of Yunnan, and the bats’ range is just 30
miles. Moreover, temperatures in Wuhan
in the winter of 2019, when the pandemic
hit, would have sent the bats into hiber-
nation. But what if a person infected in
Yunnan brought the virus to Wuhan?
As Wade explains, that individual “must
have traveled . . . without infecting any-
one else. No one in his or her family got
sick. If the person jumped on a train to
Wuhan, no fellow passengers fell ill.”
That scenario is also highly unlikely.
Furthermore, if SARS2 jumped
directly from bats to people, then it
should still be good at infecting bats. But
it isn’t. Studies show that “tested bat spe-
cies are poorly infected by SARS-CoV-2,
and they are therefore unlikely to be the
direct source for human infection.” In
fact, Wade writes, there is no evidence
the virus ever infected bats. No original
bat population has been found. Indeed,
he points out, researchers have found no
evidence showing any creature—animal
or human—had ever been exposed to the
virus before the winter of 2019.
Then there is the structure of the virus
itself. Pandemic viruses don’t become
highly transmissible or deadly in a single
jump. As Wade explains, “The coronavi-
rus spike protein, adapted to attack bat
cells, needs repeated jumps to another
species, most of which fail, before it
gains a lucky mutation.” In the case of
SARS1, the virus mutated before it made
the jump from bats to civets, then it made
six further documented changes before it
became a mild pathogen in humans, then
made 14 more changes to become more
adapted to people, and then four more
before it was able to cause an epidemic.
other
VOICES
But, Wade continues, “when you look
for the fingerprints of a similar transition
in SARS2, a strange surprise awaits. The
virus has changed hardly at all, at least
until recently. From its very first appear-
ance, it was well adapted to human cells.”
This would make perfect sense if it was
engineered in a lab to become transmis-
sible to humans, but not if it emerged
from nature.
Not only is SARS2 missing these nat-
ural mutations, Wade writes, but it also
includes a surprising addition: a “furin
cleavage site” on its spike protein that
allows it to invade human cells. Why is
this surprising? Because SARS2 is the
only known SARS-related coronavirus
that has a furin site; the rest use a dif-
ferent mechanism to infect humans. It’s
improbable that SARS2 picked up its
furin site naturally, but Wade cites an
academic paper that points out “at least
11 gain-of-function experiments, adding
a furin site to make a virus more infec-
tive, are published in the open literature,
including [by] Dr. Zhengli Shi, head
of coronavirus research at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology.” That’s right, the
“bat lady” of the Wuhan lab—the one who
received funding via a U.S. contractor
from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases—experimented
with furin sites to make coronaviruses
more infectious for humans.
Bottom line? As former FDA commis-
sioner Scott Gottlieb recently explained,
evidence for a lab leak is mounting, while
the evidence for natural origin “has con-
tracted.” At this point, he says, the burden
should be on Beijing to “provide evi-
dence that would be exculpatory,” such
as virus samples, blood samples from
lab workers hospitalized with covid-like
symptoms in November 2019, and unfet-
tered access to the lab and its person-
nel. So long as the Chinese Communist
Party fails to provide that exculpatory
evidence, and obstructs an impartial
international investigation, then the
assumption should be that the Wuhan
lab was the source of the pandemic -- and
that Beijing must be held to account.
(Washington Post)
SHARE
YOUR
OPINION
TO SUBMIT
a letter to the editor (300 words),
or guest column (600 words),
email us by noon Tuesday:
publisher@keizertimes.com