Human coronaviruses first known in the 1960s cause colds. But a viral video distorts early studies on non-unusual coronaviruses and cites unrelated patents to falsely recommend that American scientists created the viruses that cause SARS and COVID-19. The video is also not a series of official recommendations.
The exact origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, remains unknown. Many scientists believe the virus likely originated in bats and then spread to humans directly or indirectly, through contact with an animal. Such zoonotic transfers have already happened with the coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS.
A paper published in Science in July 2022 analyzed the available evidence and implicated the wildlife industry and the Huanan seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China, as the site of the overflow. The first cases of COVID-19, even those that are not known. Market link: They are clustering around the market, and animals vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs, are known to have been sold on the market in late 2019.
However, no intermediate animals have been identified. In the absence of evidence of animal-to-human transfer, some scientists say further investigation is needed and that there may have been an accidental leak in the lab, either from an herbal virus or from a lab-enhanced virus.
U. S. intelligence agencies The U. S. government is divided over the origin, with 4 entities plus the National Intelligence Council landing on an herbal origin, and the FBI and Department of Energy reportedly concluding that a laboratory origin is “very likely. “Two others are undecided. There is no evidence left for either hypothesis.
However, there is agreement that the coronavirus “evolved as a biological weapon. “
Many coronavirus scientists say that a lab is unlikely to escape and that a leak of a modified virus is highly unlikely, if not impossible.
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Scientists have been reading coronaviruses, a circle of relatives of viruses that infect animals and humans, for decades, the first known in chickens in the 1930s. In 1968, after the first known human coronavirus in 1965, virologists grouped them together in combination and named them coronaviruses for their corona-shaped surface, which also resembles the outermost layer of the sun called corona (corona is the Latin word for corona).
Seven coronaviruses are known to infect humans: 4 of them, known as non-unusual human coronaviruses (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1), cause mild to moderate symptoms of a cold. But coronaviruses gained more attention in 2003, after the emergence of SARS-CoV-1, the first coronavirus known to cause severe respiratory illness in humans, followed by MERS-CoV in 2012 and SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, in 2019.
Both SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV originate in animals and have spread to humans. While there is still no evidence of how SARS-CoV-2 began, many scientists also have evidence of zoonotic contagion. If SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, there is a general consensus that it was an accident. An intelligence report from EE. UU. de 2021 showed that all agencies agreed that “the virus did not evolve as a biological weapon” and “most” said the virus “was probably not genetically modified,” as we reported.
However, in a widely shared video deceptively presented as testimony before the European Parliament, David Martin, a monetary analyst, cited unrelated patents and misrepresented early coronavirus studies to falsely claim that scientists in the United States created the viruses that cause SARS and COVID-19 as a component. of a conspiracy to generate profits from vaccines.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this premeditated domestic terrorism,” he said of the COVID-19 pandemic (Mark 19:22). “This is an act of biological and chemical warfare perpetrated against the human race. . . [T]he monetary theft and monetary fraud,” he added, a quote he later shared in a Twitter post that has been retweeted more than 75,000 times.
Except Martin’s total argument is rubbish. Susan R. Weiss, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told us in a phone interview that her statements are full of inaccuracies and distort previous coronavirus research.
“There’s no basis for any of this,” he said. It doesn’t make clinical sense. “
Martin has pushed several conspiracy theories about the pandemic. In 2020, he was a central figure at the time of the “Plandemic” video, which also falsely claimed that the pandemic was planned, as we wrote.
Part of the appeal of Martin’s video, and which provides false legitimacy to his claims, is that at first glance it appears that he is speaking in front of the European Parliament and giving official testimony.
“[I]n my ears think that’s what the European Union is being told,” said one Facebook user, sharing the video, which shows Martin’s status next to a European Parliament flag in what could resemble the European Parliament chamber. .
“Must see: this is Dr. David Martin’s opening presentation on the origins of covid in 1965 and covid vaccines in 1990!” one Twitter user wrote. He speaks at the European Parliament’s Covid III International Summit in Brussels on 3 May 2023. Listen and be surprised. . . !”
In fact, five of the 705 members of the European Parliament attended the event, which took place in a hall of the parliament building in Brussels, as part of a three-day assembly organized by COVID-19 skeptics and anti-vaccine activists. All five MPs participated in movements opposing COVID-19 vaccines.
Natalie Kontoulis, the European Parliament’s press officer, told us in an email that the assembly “was an official occasion of the European Parliament. “He added: “Members of Parliament can freely exercise their mandate and assume the duty of its activities and content. “
According to the event’s website, the list of speakers included prominent spreaders of misinformation about COVID-19, and added Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, and Dr. Ryan Cole. The content of the event was turned into an e-book called “ICS 3 – The Whole Truth” and announced: a paperback is retailed for $29. 99.
Over the course of the roughly 22-minute video, Martin tells a scientific story suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses are the result of bloodless coronavirus experiments discovered in the 1960s.
“It’s anything that took a long time to prepare,” he said of the COVID-19 pandemic (frame 5:31). “In 1967, the year I was born, we did the first human tests to inoculate other people with modified coronavirus. Isn’t that amazing? 56 years ago: the overnight good fortune of a pathogen that has been engineering for 56 years.
But Martin, who deceives by suggesting that all coronaviruses can be the same, distorts a study that referred to infecting other people with a coronavirus that causes a cold. The virus had not been modified. More importantly, the concept that a non-unusual coronavirus may have been manipulated or engineered to create SARS-CoV-2 is incorrect.
“They’re too different,” he said, Weiss. No we have the capacity for one in the other.
About a minute later, he said, “Ironically, the non-unusual bloodless became a chimera in the 1970s. And in 1975, 1976 and 1977, we began to perceive how to modify the coronavirus by putting it in other animals, pigs and dogs. “.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Weiss told us.
First, as we said, there are several types of coronavirus. Some infect animals and others humans, and some can jump from one species to another, Weiss told us. “It turns out that the human virus . . . At least the bloodless virus, as far as I know, only replicates in humans. “You also can’t genetically change viruses at that time,” he explained. generation to do so, like cloning, did not yet exist.
Martin continues to deceive by saying that inoculating those supposedly changed non-unusual coronaviruses created a massive challenge in the red meat and dog industry, prompting Pfizer to patent its “first complex protein vaccine” in 1990. “Isn’t that desirable? It is not desirable that we have been told that “Well, protein spike is something new,” he said (Mark 7:44).
Except this patent was for a canine coronavirus vaccine, which targets a completely different virus from SARS-CoV-2. In 2020, we debunked similar claims that also the canine coronavirus with the virus that caused the pandemic.
Moreover, scientists have never said that coronavirus spike proteins are “new. “The rapid spike of new SARS-CoV-2 and the genetic series needed to design vaccines. Getting so temporarily is because scientists already knew that the virus’s spike proteins would be targets of smart vaccines. Vaccines.
Martin also falsely claims that SARS-CoV-1 was created in an American laboratory.
“Are you suggesting that SARS. . . can it simply be from a lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?No, I’m not proposing that. I tell you, those are the facts: We designed SARS,” he said. said. ” SARS is not an herbal phenomenon. The herbal phenomenon is called the non-unusual cold. . . SARS is a human-developed study that militarizes a lifestyle formula to attack humans.
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-1 was designed or originated in a laboratory. The virus emerged naturally in 2002 in China, when it likely passed from civets to humans, and its origins are related to bats.
Martin cited a 2002 patent as intended evidence. But the patent, which relates to an approach to creating viral vectors, relates to a swine coronavirus (viral vectors are used to deliver genetic data to cells). As before, the patent is not evidence that the SARS virus manufactured.
Martin also distorted the meaning of a line in the patent that says the approach can produce “an infectious coronavirus particle, defective for replication. “
“Listen to those words: defective infectious replication,” Martin said suggestively (Mark 10:18). “What does this word mean to those of you who are not familiar with the language?Let me break it down for you. Defective infectious replication means a weapon. It means anything intended to target one individual but without causing collateral damage to other individuals.
But he is still wrong. Faulty replication only that a virus particle could not replicate.
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