For the past several years, everyone from the United States government to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), universities, a host of scientist and agencies from around the world are currently trying to determine the origin of the coronavirus. Why is it important to know where it came from especially since it has become less lethal than the original strain and we now having viable vaccines? Because it remains one of the deadliest viruses we have encountered in America and around the world. 

COVID-19 was fast moving virus that killed over one million of America’s citizens, and resulted in skyrocketing fatalities worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 767,518,723 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of June 28, 2023, and 6,947,192 deaths as of April 2023, with approximately 1.1-million Americans who died from the virus. This all occurred in a relatively short period of time. The pandemic wrecked havoc on our economy, causing massive lockdowns, school closures, and a loss in the future potential of our young developing minds due to school closures. It also created backlogs in the supply-chain for a wide array of goods and services. 

The COVID -19 pandemic contributed to inflated gas prices, job loss, inhumane treatment of family member’s corpses, widespread hospitalizations, and an exhausted healthcare system and medical work professionals. It was the causation of a host of shortages from food, home supplies, and essential home goods. The virus was responsible for an uptick in violence and protest, as well as mental health issues among other concerns. To date, we have not fully recovered from the effects of this dreadful disease—financially, mentally or physically. 

locating the origin of SARS-CoV-2 matters greatly. Determining how this virus emerged could enable us to predict and prevent outbreaks from reoccurring in the future. If we are not prepared, the next virus could be even more challenging and result in greater fatalities, significant disruptions in our daily lives, both in the U.S. as well as around the world. 

According to the National Institute for Health (NIH), under a grant approved by (NIH) and the EcoHealth Alliance, which provided a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which  bats are possible candidates for the spread of the virus. 

Jamie Metzl testified to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability regarding how the Chinese government destroyed samples, hid records, imprisoned Chinese journalist, and prevented Chinese scientists from saying or writing anything on the origins of the pandemic without prior government approval, according to the the Committee on Oversight and Accountability. The primary purpose of the study was and currently is to determine how this viral entity was able to contrast into the human population, and spreading so quickly around the world. China sought to understand how animal coronaviruses, especially “bats” coronaviruses progressed in the environment and have pointed to Bats as a primary suspect. 

How did China get the blame for releasing the corona virus? It was through strong evidence pointed to a potential lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in 2019. This theory suggest an accidental release linked to gain-of-function research involving experimentation which aims at altering the function of an organism’s transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Plus, the first known cases of the disease were reported in Wuhan. According to the U.S. Committee on oversight and accountability, “Nicholas Wade—the former science and health editor for the New York Times, and the former editor of Science and Nature—testified how Dr. Fauci and Collins used unverified data to dismiss the lab leak in favor of natural transmission. 

Chinese research involved in studying the diversity of the virus in bats, coupled with monitoring people who were gainfully employed in the live animal markets or other occupations having exposure to live stock or other environments having high exposure with live animal markets. Researchers also examined exposure to wildlife to determine if individuals had been exposed to bat coronaviruses by way of being bitten or saliva of an infected bat coming in contact with the eyes, nose, mouth or an open wound of a host. 

The data would be analyzed to predict which discovered virus or parasite pose the greatest threat to mankind in future. According to the study by EcoHealth, coronaviruses utilize a protein called spike to bind to a protein in the surface of a host cell to facilitate infection. Some coronaviruses, including SARS0CoV-1: the cause of SARS outbreak in 2023, and SARS-CoV-2: the cause of COVID-19 pandemic which effected the U.S., and the world population greatly. These viruses uses the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) protein to enter and effect host cells. 

To study animal coronaviruses circulating in nature, the investigators replaced the spike protein from a well-characterized bat coronavirus WIV1-CoV, with the spike protein from recently discovered animal coronaviruses found in bats in China. Using techniques common in virology experiments involving a single round of infection in several cell lines, and in some cases, in mice genetically modified to express the human version of ACE2. All other aspects of the mice, including the immune system, remained unchanged. 

The ACE2 transgenic mice were used to determine if spike proteins from bat coronaviruses discovered in China were capable of binding human ACE2, and therefore whether the bat coronaviruses themselves, already present in the environment could potentially infect humans and cause the COVID-19 disease. 

To date, it is not conclusive that COVID-19 Coronavirus came from the Wuhan Lab or bats. Getting to the bottom of this matter will be a slow methodical process because the scientific community is afraid to speak out on the issues due to strong political influence. Additionally, the possibility that future grant applications will be turned down. Grants are handled through a system of peer-review committees. It takes a single scientist to vote against you wherein you can be turned down for a much needed grant. Politics and scientist are like oil and water. They don’t work well together.

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE PROGRESSION OF THE COVID-19 DISEASE 

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in or around December 19, 2019, a cluster of patients in China’s Hubei Province in the city of Wuhan, patients experience an atypical pneumonia-like illness that did not respond to the standard treatment. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) Office in China is told about several cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology with symptoms including shortness of breath and fever in Wuhan, China, that appeared to be connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. 

In early 2020, the wholesale market is closed amid worries in China of the 2002 – 2004 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) outbreak in China. Later in January of 2020 China identified a novel coronavirus as the causation of the outbreak. Immediately thereafter, the U.S. placed a travel precaution to people traveling to and from Wuhan, China. 

Cases began popping up all over with the WHO scientist saying that human to human transmission was not surprising given their knowledge of respiratory pathogens. The Chinese government officials confirm that human to human transmission is driving the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in China. WHO’s International Health Regulation Emergency Committee met and decided not to declare the 2019 coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Instead, the committee decided to monitor the situation and reconvene in ten days to review and re-evaluate in January of 2020. That decision was ultimately reversed and all flights to China was cancelled until further notice. 

Procedures were put in place to protect the American citizens. However, they were not without protest. To aid the American people through this crisis, Joe Biden’s administration issued a series of stimulus checks to the American people to help With their finances, as well as issue free COVID-19 home health screening test to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus early in patients. The death tolls in America and throughout the world began to rise exponentially. 

The Trump administration launched “Operation Warp Speed,” an initiative designed to quickly produce a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The actual development of the vaccine was credited with bringing the numbers of cases and deaths down and ultimately stopping the spread of the virus. 

• For a complete timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, go to: cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html#:~:text=The%20

Which now brings us back to the origins of the virus. Although this information is not fully confirmed, there is some evidence that suggest that SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV originated in bats according to the National Institute of Health (NIAID) who said, SARS-CoV spread from infected civets to people, while MERS-CoV spread from infected dromedary camels to people. However, currently the origins of SARS-CoV-2 which caused the Covid-19 pandemic has not been fully identified. The scientific evidence thus far suggest that Covid-19 likely resulted from some unidentified animal host such as bats or a breach by humans in the China laboratory.  

SUMMATION: WIV1-CoV (a chimeric virus that replaced the SARS spike with WLV1 within mouse-adapted backbone…) is not known to cause infection in humans but has shown in the laboratory to infect both human cells and ACE2 transgenic mice (mice that have had DNA from another source placed into its DNA), making it an ideal tool to use for these studies. 

Questions have been raised as to whether this NIH-Funded research contributed to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2  in the U.S. However, there is very little confidence that an accidental leak from a laboratory caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wuhan Market samples had animal products and COVID-19 contained within its study that pointed to genetic material from raccoon dogs an alternative origin. The search continues, so stay tuned.