New Controversial Scientists’ Paper on the Origins of COVID-19: What You Need to Know

The study was published in the journal Cell by key players in the debate over the origins of COVID-19, comes from a new analysis of hundreds of commercially available swabs originally collected by Chinese scientists in January 2020.

Scientists say new analysis indicates, down to a single market stall, that animals susceptible to the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and humans mingled at the Huanan market in what ultimately became the early days of the global pandemic.

Most of the authors of the article are open supporters of the market theory. origin of the virus from the very beginning. Many of them publicly criticized the possibility that the virus originated from an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and have sparked controversy due to their role in the debate.

Here’s everything you need to know about the new research.

What exactly are the theses of the article?

The new study does not clearly prove that there were infected animals at the market or that infected animals originally transmitted the virus to humans.

Instead, the samples tested document that SARS-CoV-2 RNA was intermingled with DNA and RNA samples from a range of exotic animals, including palm civets, Himalayan marmots, Malayan porcupines and raccoon dogs.

These clusters, which the authors call “hot spots,” were scattered throughout the market but were mostly located in the southwest corner, where wild animals were sold.

The Chinese government has released market data in 2022, which will enable researchers to conduct an in-depth analysis of the market origin hypothesis.

The results indicate that the virus may have originated from a zoonotic source at the Huanan market, or that people who were already infected with the virus had contact with animals that could have easily become infected themselves.

“It doesn’t prove 100% that these animals had SARS-CoV-2, but it does show that you can just say goodbye to the idea that these (coronavirus-susceptible) animals weren’t around at all when the pandemic started,” Michael Worobey, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study, told NPR.

Who are the authors of the study?

Twenty-three scientists participated in the study published in the journal Nature. CellBut the involvement of a handful of these scientists in some of the most controversial aspects of the origins debate may make the new study skeptical.

Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, Robert Garry of Tulane University, Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney and Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh were the subjects of a House Republican investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Andersen, Garry, Holmes, and Rambaut, along with their colleague Ian Lipkin, authored a paper titled “The Close Origin of SARS-CoV-2” published in Natural medicine in March 2020, arguing at the time that he “does not believe any scenario based on laboratory studies is plausible.”

However, public records requests and a congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19 revealed that the authors of the “close origins” paper were highly skeptical of an animal origin within weeks of the paper’s publication.

Evidence released by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic shows that Andersen spoke with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020, to express concerns that the virus may have been man-made.

But the next day, the authors of a forthcoming paper on “near beginnings” held a conference call with Fauci, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, one of the world’s largest research funders.

It was only after a phone call on February 1, 2020, that Andersen and his colleagues at the Close Origins Project began to change their minds and publicly promote the animal origins hypothesis, downplaying concerns about a data leak from the lab.

But Andersen, as recently as April 2020, questioned the possibility of lab data being leaked and the virus being genetically engineered behind closed doors in conversations with his colleagues, according to online messages released by Congress.

As recently as April 2020, Andersen was particularly concerned about research on SARS-like viruses being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in low-biosafety labs, calling it “definitely disturbing work.”

Both Andersen and Garry testified before the House Oversight Committee in July 2023, denying that NIH leaders asked them to cover up evidence of a virus leak from the lab or that they accepted bribes to do so. Washington Examiner reported last year that Andersen and Garry received a combined $25.2 million in research grants from NIH between 2020 and 2022.

What are the critics saying?

Skeptics of the new research, which aims to prove the hypothesis about the market’s origins, are quick to point out that the data collected by Chinese researchers about the market was collected specifically in the western part of the market, where live animals were regularly sold.

Thus, Chinese researchers had priority in data collection and did not necessarily collect a representative sample.

Jamie Metzl, a scientific historian and author of books on genetics and technology, is one of the most outspoken critics of the market origins hypothesis and a leading advocate for improving biosafety standards in the face of the pandemic’s impact.

Metzl said the data Andersen and his colleagues worked with for the new study were inherently biased.

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“It’s a vicious circle if we say that we have more positive samples concentrated on the western side of the market, when according to Chinese sources, that’s where most of the sampling was done,” Metzl said. Radioactive.

A second criticism of the new study is that it does not support the hypothesis that one particular mammalian species could have been an intermediate host that could have acted as a transitional animal to initiate infections in humans with a virus that most likely originally originated in bats.