Modelled Coronavirus

Imagine it as a film. A mystery virus with no known cure is ravaging the globe; families are told to stay inside; hospitals are overrun.

It originates in a commercial Chinese city, supposedly at a bustling produce market, where infection can spread easily. Just across the river towers an imposing laboratory, which just so happens to be one of the leading coronavirus research centres in the world, containing over nineteen thousand samples.

In a film, the answer would be simple. The virus began in one of the world's foremost authoritarianEnforcing strict obedience to authority. countries. Nobody's jaw is dropping when the hero discovers that the virus was genetically engineered as a swipe at world domination.

But we are not living in a film. And so claims from the FBIThe Federal Bureau of Investigation, which investigates crimes on a national level in the USA. and the US Energy Department in recent days that the virus was most likely caused by a leak from Wuhan's laboratories have been greeted with derision, confusion and controversy.

In the early stages of the pandemic, conspiracies that the virus had been engineered were rife. But scientific consensus stated that the virus had probably originated in bats, pangolins or minks and had spread naturally to humans (known as "zoonotic transmission"). Bats host a virus genetically very similar to SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers noted, though, that since Wuhan is 1,000 miles away from any viable colony, the more likely culprit would be an intermediary animal. In 2002, a human epidemic of the SARSSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a disease that makes it very difficult to breathe. virus was caused by virus transfer from bats to palm civets to humans.

And yet even more mysteriously, nobody has identified any potential intermediary species, despite extensive sampling from the WHO across farmed animals in all of China.

The WHO assessed the possibility that the pandemic was caused by a laboratory leak as "extremely unlikely", as such cases are exceedingly uncommon.

But proponentsSomeone who proposes something, or at least supports it by speaking and writing in favour of it. of the theory have focused on the fact that researchers in Wuhan were studying a coronavirus strain which is 96.2% similar to SARS-CoV-2, and that according to US intelligence, three researchers from the Institute were hospitalised with an illness displaying symptoms "consistent with Covid-19" in November 2019.

Furthermore, some scientists are convinced that features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome are not consistent with natural evolutionary processes.

They point out two traits in the genome's spike protein which are exceedingly rare in nature, which suggest that the virus could have been engineered to bind more tightly to human cell receptors and to have increased transmissibility from animals to humans.

The "lab leak" or bioweapon theory may be becoming more popular, but hard-and-fast believers are still in a tiny minority. Recently, scientists found a new, strikingly similar coronavirus variant in a colony of bats in Laos, and have theorised that its high transmissibility amongst mammals could mean that it travelled to Wuhan through China's vast wildlife trade.

Regardless of the pandemic's origins, many believe we should heed it as a warning of the potential devastation that biowarfare could wreak. Coronaviruses have been circulating for centuries and can still bring humanity to its knees. New technologies could create biological weapons capable of wiping us out entirely.

Yes: There is now so much evidence that the virus was engineered by mankind. It is no coincidence that China will not let researchers investigate its origins, and it is suspicious that scientists have not found an exact origin yet if it is natural.

No: As some scientists say, "nature is the best bioterrorist". It is highly unlikely that the virus was engineered - so many types of viruses are constantly evolving and circulating in nature that inevitably deadly ones like Covid-19 will happen sometimes.

Or... Even if a lab leak did take place, it is no guarantee that Covid was designed as a weapon. In fact, there is no evidence supporting this idea. In the worst case scenario, it is a result of poor lab practice or a simple human mistake.