Theory that Covid emerged in the laboratory is harmful, says author of ‘Contagion’ in new book

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After interviewing almost a hundred scientists from all over the world and reconstructing step by step the process of discovering the virus that caused Covid-19, the American writer David Quammen says that hypotheses about a supposed origin of the disease in the laboratory are most likely nonsense.

“It’s sometimes tricky to help the public understand this. But scientists have a hard time predicting the characteristics that would make a coronavirus a global threat,” he explains.

“The virus most similar to the one that caused Covid-19 identified before the pandemic had 96% genetic similarity with it. This means that the differences between one and the other correspond to 1,100 different sites of viral genetic material. How would a scientist know that it was necessary make all these changes at the same time? The answer is that he would never know — but these changes happen all the time through natural selection,” he says.

Author of some of the most important popular science books in recent decades, Quammen has just released “Sem Fôlego”, an account of the duel between science and the pandemic in recent years. Quammen’s work was even described as prophetic when the “new coronavirus”, as it was called at the time, began to spread across the planet in the early months of 2020. In “Contagio”, a book published by him almost a decade earlier, the author details how pandemic (disease-causing) pathogens arise from wild animals and points to coronaviruses as prime candidates to cause a global disaster, as indeed it did.

In general, Quammen builds his narratives based on a lot of field research, visiting laboratories, bat-infested caves and forests, among other places where discoveries are happening in real time. With “Sem Fôlego”, however, the restrictions on international travel during the pandemic meant that he had to act in a different way.

“I worked on the book for a year practically without leaving my office here in Montana, next to Boots’ tank,” he jokes, referring to a ball python he and his wife adopted years ago (the couple are also tutors). of some dogs).

“Of course I knew that many books would end up being written for the pandemic. To try to do something different and get around these travel limitations, I decided to write a book in which the virus is the main character. A book that was about the science of the virus and about the scientists who discovered it”, explained Quammen in a videoconference with the Sheet.

The virtual format also had some advantages. “I managed to interview a lot more people than would be possible in person, and long conversations over the internet end up bringing a certain intimacy with those on the other side, curiously. I also liked not being describing myself in the center of the action, as happens when I talk about the work of field in a forest, for example.”

He also points out that, in the end, both well-known researchers and young graduate students were essential to efforts to understand the pathogen.

Starting with the initial attempts to decode the genetic material of the virus that would become known as Sars-CoV-2, the narrative ends at the end of 2021, with the arrival of the omicron variant on the world stage. “It is a story that, of course, will continue for a long time. Just look at what is happening in China now — their ‘Covid zero’ policy turned out to be unfeasible and extremely costly”, he exemplifies.

Although he rejects hypotheses about the origin of the virus that he calls “nefarious” —the idea that it would have been engineered in the laboratory, intentionally or by accident—, Quammen considers plausible the idea that there may have been a deliberate concealment of evidence about its genesis.

One of the studies cited by the author postulates that Chinese government officials could have covered up carelessness with the trade in wild animals in the market in Wuhan, where the pandemic began. Asian wild mammals are among potential reservoirs of dangerous pathogens, and China’s government has committed to controlling this trade.

“This failure to put the law into practice would be a motivation to sterilize the market and destroy the evidence,” he says. “It is a very difficult market to suppress, because it is commercially and socially important in different parts of the world, including China. The truth is that, when we talk about viruses of animal origin, it is as if we had bullets that pass by our head. all the time. Thing is, this one hit us right in the chest.”

Considering what is known about past pandemics, Quammen says he is not surprised by the amount of misinformation still circulating about Covid-19 and the fact that many political leaders seem to have learned nothing from the pandemic. “It’s up to us to do everything possible so that the public can understand how science works”, says the author.

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