Coronavirus as accident

Coronavirus as accident (Коронавирус как аксидент) is hypothesis about pandemic covid19 of coronavirus in years 2019-2020.
This hypothesis assumes, that the new version of coronavirus, caused the pandemic, is result of occasional transfer of coronavirus from animals to humans and then, the mutation to dangerous form.

Hypothesis Coronavirus as accident oppose another hypothesis Coronavirus as bioweapon (Коронавирус как биологическое оружие).

Introduction

In the simplest (and most radical) version, the concept Coronavirus as bioweapon implies, that the pandemic covid19 of coronavirus in 2019-2020 is result of the accident, unwanted transfer of the virus from animals to humans and its spontaneous mutations that makes it dangerous for the human civilization.

The alternative hypothesis Coronavirus as bioweapon (Коронавирус как биологическое оружие) implies, that terrorists from the top of the totally corrupted Russian administration, promote the secret development of bioweapon and apply it since year 2019 both for the personal profit and for the geopolitical reasons, a part of their total hybrid war against the human civilization.

Evidences in favor of each of these two concepts are collected and interpreted in TORI.

This article collects publications in favor of concept Coronavirus as accident.

2020.02.06 Botao Xiao, Lei Xiao

https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf

Botao Xiao, Lei Xiao. The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. 2020.02.06.

Figure 1. The Huanan Seafood Market is close to the WHCDC (from Baidu and Google maps).

The 2019-nCoV coronavirus has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis 1,2. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human.

An article published on The Lancet reported that 41 people in Wuhan were found to have the acute respiratory syndrome and 27 of them had contact with Huanan Seafood Market 3. The 2019-nCoV was found in 33 out of 585 samples collected in the market after the outbreak. The market was suspicious to be the origin of the epidemic, and was shut down according to the rule of quarantine the source during an epidemic.

The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. There was possible natural recombination or intermediate host of the coronavirus, yet little proof has been reported.

Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4- 6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8.

Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing 4, 5. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study. The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 1, 9, 10. This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the 2002-3 pandemic 9. The principle investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, and reported the potential for human emergence 10. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory.

In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.

Contributors

BX designed the comment and performed literature search. All authors performed data acquisition and analysis, collected documents, draw the figure, and wrote the papers.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11772133, 11372116). Declaration of interests

All authors declare no competing interests.

References

1. Zhou P, Yang X-L, Wang X-G, et al. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7.

2. Wu F, Zhao S, Yu B, et al. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3.

3. Huang C, Wang Y, Li X, et al. Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The Lancet 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140- 6736(20)30183-5.

4. Guo WP, Lin XD, Wang W, et al. Phylogeny and origins of hantaviruses harbored by bats, insectivores, and rodents. PLoS pathogens 2013; 9(2): e1003159.

5. Lu M, Tian JH, Yu B, Guo WP, Holmes EC, Zhang YZ. Extensive diversity of rickettsiales bacteria in ticks from Wuhan, China. Ticks and tick-borne diseases 2017; 8(4): 574-80.

6. Shi M, Lin XD, Chen X, et al. The evolutionary history of vertebrate RNA viruses. Nature 2018; 556(7700): 197-202.

7. Tao P. Expert in Wuhan collected ten thousands animals: capture bats in mountain at night. Changjiang Times 2017.

8. Li QX, Zhanyao. Playing with elephant dung, fishing for sea bottom mud: the work that will change China's future. thepaper 2019.

9. Ge XY, Li JL, Yang XL, et al. Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor. Nature 2013; 503(7477): 535-8.

10. Menachery VD, Yount BL, Jr., Debbink K, et al. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nature medicine 2015; 21(12): 1508-13.

Figure 1. The Huanan Seafood Market is close to the WHCDC (from Baidu and Google maps).

2020.02.07 David Cyranoski

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2 David Cyranoski. Did pangolins spread the China coronavirus to people? 07 FEBRUARY 2020 Researchers in Guangzhou, China, have suggested that pangolins — long-snouted, ant-eating mammals often used in traditional Chinese medicine — are the probable animal source of the coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 30,000 people and is wreaking havoc worldwide.

Scientists say that the suggestion, based on a genetic analysis, seems plausible — but caution that the researchers’ work is yet to be published in full. “This is an extremely interesting observation. Although we need to see more details, it does make sense as there are now some other data emerging that pangolins carry viruses that are closely related to 2019-nCoV,” says Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Sydney, Australia.

The identity of the animal source of the coronavirus, named nCoV-2019, has been one of the key questions that researchers have been racing to answer. Coronaviruses are known to circulate in mammals and birds, and scientists have already suggested that nCoV-2019 originally came from bats, a proposal based on the similarity of its genetic sequence to those of other known coronaviruses. But the virus was probably transmitted to humans by another animal. The coronavirus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, spread from bats to civet cats to humans.

Now, the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou says that two of its researchers, Shen Yongyi and Xiao Lihua, have identified the pangolin as the potential source of nCoV-2019 on the basis of a genetic comparison of coronaviruses taken from the animals and from humans infected in the outbreak and other findings. The sequences are 99% similar, the researchers reported at press conference on 7 February.

A good candidate

Previously, researchers have noted that coronaviruses are a possible cause of death in pangolins1, and that nCoV-2019 and coronaviruses from pangolins use receptors with similar molecular structures to infect cells.

Even before today’s announcement, pangolins were a good candidate for being an intermediate species for the virus, so it’s very interesting that the researchers have found such a close sequence, says David Robertson, a computational virologist at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Pangolins are protected animals, but illegal trafficking is widespread, and some species are critically endangered. They are sold, controversially, for their meat and scales, and for use in traditional Chinese medicine, in which parts of the animal are used to treat ailments such as skin diseases, menstrual disorders and arthritis. Chinese law states that people selling pangolins can be punished by 10 years or more in prison.

The coronavirus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December, and is thought to have leapt to humans at a seafood and wild-animal market, where many of the first people to become infected worked. Pangolins were not listed on an inventory of items sold at the market — although the illegality of trading pangolins could explain this omission.

Last month, scientists in Beijing claimed that snakes were the source of nCoV-2019, but that theory was dismissed by other researchers.

Shen and Xiao did not immediately respond to Nature’s requests for comment, but Liu Yahong, president of the South China Agricultural University, told the press conference that the results would be published soon to help efforts to control the coronavirus.

Scientists hope that the paper will offer details including where the team found the pangolins with the similar virus. Arinjay Banerjee, a coronavirus researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, says that another crucial detail is where in pangolins the researchers found the virus — for example, whether it was isolated from blood samples or rectal swabs. This will help to determine how it might have been passed to humans and how such transmission could be prevented in the future.

“I can definitely believe it could be true,” says Kristian Andersen, an immunologist and computational biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Andersen says he has compared publicly available sequences of pangolin viruses and found that they are similar to that of nCoV-2019. “I look forward to the published report and data.”

doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-00364-2

2020.02.25 Helen Briggs

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51496830

Helen Briggs.

Coronavirus: The race to find the source in wildlife.

The race is on to find out how the deadly coronavirus jumped from animals to humans. Helen Briggs looks at how scientists are trying to trace the source of the outbreak.

Somewhere in China, a bat flits across the sky, leaving a trace of coronavirus in its droppings, which fall to the forest floor. A wild animal, possibly a pangolin snuffling for insects among the leaves, picks up the infection from the excrement.

The novel virus circulates in wildlife. Eventually an infected animal is captured, and a person somehow catches the disease, then passes it on to workers at a wildlife market. A global outbreak is born.

Scientists are attempting to prove the truth of this scenario as they work to find wild animals harbouring the virus. Finding the sequence of events is "a bit of a detective story", says Prof Andrew Cunningham of Zoological Society London (ZSL). A range of wild animal species could be the host, he says, in particular bats, which harbour a large number of different coronaviruses.

So how much do we know about the "spillover event", as it's known in the trade? When scientists cracked the code of the new virus, taken from the body of a patient, bats in China were implicated.

The mammals gather in large colonies, fly long distances and are present on every continent. They rarely get sick themselves, but have the opportunity to spread pathogens far and wide. According to Prof Kate Jones of University College London, there is some evidence bats have adapted to the energetic demands of flight and are better at repairing DNA damage. "This might enable them to cope with a higher burden of viruses before getting sick - but this is just an idea at present."

There's no doubt that the behaviour of bats allows viruses to thrive. "When you consider the very way that they live, then they are going to have a large array of viruses," says Prof Jonathan Ball from the University of Nottingham. "And because they're mammals there's a possibility that some of them can infect humans either directly or through an intermediate host species."

The second part of the puzzle, then, is the identity of the mystery animal that incubated the virus in its body and possibly ended up in the market at Wuhan. One suspect for the smoking gun is the pangolin.

The ant-devouring scaly mammal, said to be the most widely trafficked mammal in the world, is threatened with extinction. The animal's scales are in high demand in Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine, while pangolin meat is considered a delicacy by some.

Coronaviruses have been found in pangolins, some claimed to be a close match to the novel human virus. Could the bat virus and pangolin virus have traded genetics before spreading to humans? Experts are cautious about drawing any conclusions. Full data on the pangolin study has not been released, making the information impossible to verify.

Government officers seize civet cats in Xinyuan wildlife market in Guangzhou to prevent the spread of the SARS disease in 2004Image copyrightGETTY

Prof Cunningham says the provenance and number of pangolins examined for the research is especially important. "For example, were there multiple animals sampled directly in the wild (in which case the results would be more meaningful), or was a single animal from a captive environment or wet market sampled (in which case conclusions about the true host of the virus could not be robustly made)?"

Pangolins and other wild species, including a variety of species of bat, are often sold in wet markets, he says, providing opportunities for viruses to move from one species to another. "Wet markets, therefore, create ideal conditions for the spillover of pathogens from one species to another, including to people."

The market in Wuhan, which was closed down after the outbreak, had a wild animal section, where live and slaughtered species were on sale, including body parts of camels, koalas and birds. The Guardian reports that an inventory at one shop listed live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles.

As far as we know, bats and pangolins weren't listed, but authorities in China will have intelligence on what animals were being sold, says Prof Ball. "If the spillover's happened once, you want to know whether or not this sort of thing can happen again, because it's important from a public health standpoint," he says. "And so you need to know exactly what species of animal it's in and also what were the risks that gave rise to that spillover event."

Many of the viruses we have become familiar with in recent years have crossed over from wild animals. This is the story of Ebola, HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and now coronavirus. Prof Jones says the rise in infectious disease events from wildlife might be because of our increasing ability to detect them, growing connectivity to each other, or more encroachment into wild habitats, thereby "changing landscapes and coming into contact with new viruses the human population hasn't seen before".

If we understand the risk factors, we can take steps to prevent it happening in the first place without adversely affecting wild animals, says Prof Cunningham. Conservationists are at pains to point out that although bats are thought to carry many viruses, they are also essential for ecosystems to function. "Insectivorous bats eat huge volumes of insects such as mosquitoes and agricultural pests, while fruit bats pollinate trees and spread their seeds," he says. "It is imperative that these species are not culled through misguided 'disease control' measures."

After Sars in 2002-3, caused by a very similar coronavirus to the one now emerging in China and beyond, there was a temporary ban on wild animal markets. But the markets quickly sprang up again across China, Vietnam and other parts of south-east Asia.

China has again suspended the buying and selling of wild-animal products, which are commonly used for food, fur and in traditional medicines. Reports suggest this may be made permanent.

While we may never know exactly how or where the disease responsible for many deaths made the leap into humans, Prof Diana Bell of the University of East Anglia says we can prevent another "perfect storm". "We are bringing together animals from different countries, different habitats, different lifestyles - in terms of aquatic animals, arboreal animals and so on - and mixing them together and it's a kind of melting pot - and we've got to stop doing it."

2020.02.28 Denise Chow

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/where-did-new-coronavirus-come-past-outbreaks-provide-hints-n1144521

Denise Chow. Where did the coronavirus come from? Past outbreaks provide hints // Although finding the source wouldn't necessarily help scientists develop vaccines or other direct treatments, it could provide crucial pieces of information on how it emerged and evolved. Feb. 28, 2020, 7:00 PM JST / Updated May 7, 2020, 3:25 AM JST

As scientists and public health officials around the world scramble to contain the deadly coronavirus outbreak, some researchers are also racing to solve the enduring mystery of where the newly identified virus came from.

The coronavirus, which first sickened people in China in December, is thought to have passed from animals to humans, like many similar pathogens, but nothing has been confirmed yet by any peer-reviewed scientific research, global public health agency or academic expert. Beyond that, little is known about its origin.

Although finding the source wouldn't necessarily help scientists develop vaccines or other direct treatments, it could provide crucial pieces of information on how it emerged and evolved. And scientists are using lessons learned from previous outbreaks to know how to approach this one.

Early research suggests that the virus closely resembles a known coronavirus harbored in horseshoe bats, according to Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading in England.

"What is not clear is the steps that moved the virus out of the bat, into some intermediate source or sources, and then finally into man," Jones said.

The virus' origin has been the focus of conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation. In an interview with Fox News on Feb. 16, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., suggested that the coronavirus may have come from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak emerged. Others went further by raising the possibility that the virus was a leaked bioweapon.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

But scientists say the virus' similarities to known coronaviruses in animals — particularly bats — rule out the idea that it was created in a lab.

To trace a virus to its source, scientists typically look for clues in its molecular makeup. Chinese scientists published the coronavirus' sequenced genome less than two weeks after the first case in humans was reported — a lightning-fast development made possible by advancements in technology.

"This would have taken us six months to a year to do before," said Gene Olinger, a Maryland-based virologist at MRIGlobal, a scientific research organization that is helping to develop diagnostic tools for the coronavirus. "We had those first sequences almost immediately — that's unheard of." The virus' genome can't tell scientists everything about its source, but the string of DNA sequences functions almost like a blueprint for this type of detective work.

"The closest bat virus that we've seen is not able to infect human cells, so there had to be some intermediate animal," said Carolyn Machamer, a professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. "The bat virus can infect an intermediate animal, and during that replication, mutations arise that could promote infection in humans if they are in close contact."

Many coronaviruses are zoonotic diseases, which means they spread from animals to people. And there is precedent for coronavirus outbreaks that originate in bats and spill over into humans through an intermediate animal.

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003 is thought to have spread from bats to civet cats before the first human patient was infected. And Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, another type of coronavirus, which was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, most likely passed from bats into dromedary camels before spilling over into humans.

Public health officials suspect that the current outbreak may have originated at a live-animal market in Wuhan, where dozens of workers were infected at the outset. The market has been shut down, but tests on samples from the area have been inconclusive.

In early February, a group of Chinese scientists suggested that genetic analyses pointed to pangolins — scaly, long-snouted anteaters — as a likely source of the outbreak. Their research showed that genetic sequences of coronaviruses isolated from pangolins are 99 percent similar to those of the current variant.

Jones said the pangolin theory is plausible, but he cautioned that the findings haven't yet been confirmed by independent scientific research.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Researchers are also still unsure why this coronavirus was transmitted to humans. Mammals and birds are known reservoirs for coronaviruses, but the vast majority of them don't sicken people.

"There are plenty of coronaviruses that cause disease in animal species, but they're not thought to be a risk to humans," Jones said.

That mentality changed after the SARS outbreak, which spread to more than two dozen countries and killed 774 people.

"SARS was really the first human coronavirus to cause severe diseases," said Timothy Sheahan, an epidemiologist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. "Prior to that, coronavirus was only known to cause the common cold in people. Then MERS was discovered in 2012 and this virus emerges in 2019. So the fact that a new SARS-like virus has emerged to cause severe respiratory disease in people tells me this is likely going to happen again in the future."

Sheahan is working on possible antiviral drugs to fight the coronavirus, but he said the current outbreak demonstrates the importance of tracing the virus to its origin.

"Understanding the source of the virus will help us prevent spillovers in the future," he said. "From a public health perspective, it's important to flesh that out."

Historic context

There exist many, not only two, hypothesis about coronavirus. In order to systematize their testing (verification or refuation, dependently on the result), the hypotheses should be carefully formulated. Several such formulas are suggeted in this section.

1. Coronavirus as bioweapon. The dangerous modification of Coronavirus is created in China; then, using the published results, it had been reproduced in the Russian laboratories (perhaps, at the Pasechnik Institute or GNC Vector) and manufactured as bioweapon.
This is the only hypothesis that explains appearance of observed publication about the 2019.09.16.Explosion at the GNC Vector (Novosibirsk) and the following epidemic of respiratory illness in Siberia in 2019 November.
1.1. The Russian agents say, some abstract Boshirov and Petrov spreads the infection at Wuhan in order to make impression, that namely this city ix source of pandemic.
1.2. The same Boshirov and Petrov sread the infection in order countries, as part of the total hybrid war of the Russian usurper against the human civilization.
1.3. The Russian officials get benefits from the epidemic, so, they intentionally boost the spreading of coronavirus in Russia.
1.4. The bioweapon with coronavirus had been manufactured as "balloons", and one of these devices had been exploded 2019.09.16.

2. Covid19 pandenic is caused by natural coronavirus, that is reproduced snd distributed by the Russian agents of KGB.
2.1. Without their efforts, the reproduction coefficient of the virus would be less than unity. 2.2. The Russian officials control the spreading of infection, organic the long and dense "waiting lines" in hospitals, at the distribution of the "Carnation passes" and at the entry of subway.

3. Coronavirus as accident. The Covid19 pandenic is caused by natural coronavirus, but it spreads without bad will of terrorists, and the pandemic has nothing to do with development nor application of bioweapon.
Many publications about the respiratory epidemic at Siberia in 2019, as well as evidences about actions of the Russian officials happen to be out of applicability of such a concept.

Keywords

2019.09.16.Взрыв, Bioweapon, Coronavirus, Coronavirus as bioweapon, Corruption, Designate Russia as state sponsor of terrorism, GNC Vektor, Hague, KGB, Nuremberg-2, Pahanat, Pasechnik Institute

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