Has COVID-19 Launched a New Era of Deadly Pandemics?

Environmental devastation threatens to unleash new zoonotic diseases as well as long-dormant bacteria and viruses to deadly effect.

(Sign up for our free newsletter (www.fairobserver.com/newsletter) and follow us on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter)

There are many theories as to how COVID-19 began. Some of them are plausible, others are nonsensical. US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have done their bit to fan such theories. Many in the world believe that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was either released deliberately or leaked from a biological laboratory in Wuhan.

Daniel Wagner argues that horseshoe bats, the source of SARS-CoV-2, are not native to the Wuhan area. More importantly, they were not sold in the Wuhan seafood market, the place many scientists hold to be the source of the first infection. Importantly, both the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted research on horseshoe bats. So, the virus could have escaped from a laboratory and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peter Isackson points out that Wagner is relying on circumstantial evidence. He quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who takes the view that all signs indicate SARS-CoV-2 “evolved in nature and then jumped species.” It is highly unlikely that the virus could have escaped a laboratory. Isackson reminds readers that blaming a foreign power is an old game. The Americans have played it as well as anyone else. In the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy blamed communists for many of America’s ills. That distrust of communism remains. As a communist country, China is now the new Soviet Union. For many Americans, it is a national imperative to cut this evil power down to size.

John Feffer also counters the argument Wagner, Trump and Pompeo peddle. As he admits, “China could indeed be a great deal more transparent about its statistics, the origins of the virus and its response to the pandemic.” However, Trump and Pompeo have a vested interest in blaming China. It distracts voters from their monumental incompetence and allows them to pose as gallant patriots fighting a sinister rival. Trump has already claimed that China was raping the US and unleashed a trade war on the Middle Kingdom. He is portraying himself as the only one with cojones to take on the red fire-breathing dragon. So, he has a simple message: “To stop China, you have to stop Joe Biden.”

How Did COVID-19 Begin?

Most scientists hold COVID-19 is a classic example of cross-species transmission. A research paper in the Journal of Medical Virology examined the evidence to conclude that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to pangolins to human beings at the seafood wholesale seafood market in Wuhan. In this wet market, many animals, including marmots, hedgehogs, frogs, snakes, bats, birds, poultry and other farm animals were also sold.

Pangolins are endangered scaly anteaters. Eating or trading them is illegal, yet they are one of the most trafficked mammals in the world. In China and Vietnam, pangolin meat is considered a delicacy, and its scales are supposed to have medicinal properties. Based on reported seizures, between 2011 and 2013, nearly 117 million pangolins were estimated to have been killed. Importantly, experts believe that seizures represent as little as 10% of the actual illegal pangolin trade.

You can read the full article here: https://www.fairobserver.com/coronavirus/ip-singh-atul-singh-covid-19-origin-pandemic-history-antibiotic-resistance-climate-change-news-12188/

(Sign up for our free newsletter (www.fairobserver.com/newsletter) and follow us on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter)