Self spreading viruses

April 2022

Is there any such thing as a non-self-spreading virus? Or, to re-phrase the question using some of the alternative, interchangeable, technical terms which pop up: is there any such thing as a non-transmissible, non-self-disseminating, non-contagious, non-horizontally-transferable virus?

The answer is no. Viruses only exist by hijacking living cells and forcing them to churn out viral particles. Viruses wouldn't exist if they weren't self-spreading, transmissible, self-disseminating, contagious, horizontally transferable (and uncontrollable).

So, what are we talking about?

COVID theories - part 3

April 2022

COVID theories part III - The origin of Covid-19 better explained

A year on from the start of the pandemic there was still, by all accounts, a near-consensus view among scientists that the causative agent of Covid-19 lay in natural animals, but some free-thinkers were beginning to explore the unfashionable alternative: the laboratory-escape hypothesis.

Further analysis of the Covid-19 virus structure revealed "multiple peculiar characteristics" (Segret et al.). For example:

• The Covid-19 virus is poorly adapted for infecting bats or pangolins. Yet it emerged, apparently without any (natural) intermediate evolution, remarkably well adapted for infecting humans.

COVID theories - part 2

April 2022

Part II - Some key players in the Covid-19 drama

President of Ecohealth Alliance, Dr Peter Daszak, who worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for 15 years, declared long ago that "Most pandemics ... originate in animals". Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak he has claimed any suggestions that the virus might have come from a lab are "preposterous", "baseless", "crackpot", "conspiracy theories" and "pure baloney" because such "lab accidents are extremely rare", and "have never led to large scale outbreaks".

COVID theories - part 1

April 2022

Part I - The source of Covid-19: was it animals or scientists?

Ever since the first reports of a coronavirus outbreak in December 2019 in the Chinese megacity of Wuhan, the origins of Covid-19 have been steeped in controversy. Did the virus just pop out of nature by chance? Or, was it a human creation now running amok? The answer is vital to ensure controls are put in place to reduce the risk of this sad, global history repeating itself.