Did the Covid virus jump naturally from an animal species to humans, or did it escape from a laboratory experiment? In this essay, science writer Nicholas Wade explores the two scenarios and argues that, on present evidence, lab escape is the more likely explanation. His inference is based on specific research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Institute’s lack of adequate safety precautions, together with the continuing absence of any direct evidence to support natural emergence. The essay discusses the failure of the mainstream media to penetrate the self-interested assurance of virologists that lab escape was a dismissible conspiracy theory. It also notes how the politicization of discussion impeded consideration of the scientific facts.
Walkley Award-winning journalist, Sharri Markson is the Investigations Editor at The Australian and host of prime-time show Sharri on Sky News Australia. The origins of Covid-19 are shrouded in mystery. Scientists and government officials insisted, for a year and a half, that the virus had a natural origin, ridiculing anyone who dared contradict this view. Tech giants swept the internet, censoring and silencing debate in the most extreme fashion. Yet it is undeniable that a secretive facility in Wuhan was immersed in genetically manipulating bat-coronaviruses in perilous experiments. And as soon as the news of an outbreak in Wuhan leaked, the Chinese military took control and gagged all laboratory insiders. Part-thriller, part-expose, What Really Happened in Wuhan is a ground-breaking investigation from leading journalist Sharri Markson into the origins of Covid-19, the cover-ups, the conspiracies and the classified research. It features never-before-seen primary documents exposing China's concealment of the virus, fresh interviews with whistleblower doctors in Wuhan and crucial eyewitness accounts that dismantle what we thought we knew about when the outbreak hit. With unprecedented access to Washington insiders, Markson takes you inside the White House, with senior Trump lieutenants revealing first-hand accounts of fiery Oval Office clashes and new stories of compromised government advisors and censored scientists. Bravely reported and chillingly laid out, Markson brings to light the stories of the pandemic from the people on the ground: the scientists and national security officials who raised uncomfortable truths and were labelled conspiracy theorists, until government agencies began to suspect they might have been right all along. These brave individuals persisted through bruising battles and played a crucial role in investigating the origins of Covid-19 to finally, in this book, bring us closer to the truth of what really happened in Wuhan.
"Chan and Ridley write with an urgency...that inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats. . . . They powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature." (New York Times Book Review) Understanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of humankind. Viral is the most incisive and authoritative book about the search for the source of the virus. A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened. In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometres away in the city of Wuhan. They grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or wildlife, no chains of early cases in travellers to the city, no smouldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus to its new host—human beings. To try to solve this pressing mystery, Viral delves deep into the events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that can be coaxed from the very text of the virus’s own genetic code. The result is a gripping detective story that takes the reader deeper and deeper into a metaphorical cave of mystery. One by one the authors explore promising tunnels only to show that they are blind alleys, until, miles beneath the surface, they find themselves tantalisingly close to a shaft that leads to the light.
What might COVID-19 mean for, and reveal about, China's place in the world? The coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan, home to the leading lab studying the SARS virus and bats. Was that pure coincidence? This book explores what we know, and still don't know, about the origins of COVID-19, and how it was handled in China. We may never get all the answers, but much is already clear: China's record as the origin of earlier pandemics, and its struggle to bring contagious diseases under control; its history as both a victim of biological warfare and a developer of deadly bioweapons. When Covid broke out, Wuhan was building science parks to realise Beijing's ambitions in biotech research. Whoever achieves global leadership of the gene-editing industry stands to harvest great power and wealth. China has already challenged Western technological supremacy with 5G and in other industries. Yet this tiny, invisible virus has cruelly exposed a critical flaw in the Chinese political system: obsessive secrecy. The West wanted to trust the PRC, hoping that, as it prospered, it would become an open society. Made in China reveals how Beijing's leaders have betrayed that trust.
Since the identification of the first cases of the coronavirus in December 2019, there has been a significant amount of confusion regarding the origin and spread of the so-called 'coronavirus', SARS-CoV-2, and the cause of the disease COVID-19. Conflicting messages from the media and officials across different countries and organizations, the abundance of disparate sources of information, unfounded conspiracy theories on the origins of the virus, unproven therapies, and inconsistent public health measures, have all served to increase anxiety in the population. Where did the virus come from? How is it transmitted? How does it cause disease? Is it like flu? What is a pandemic? In this concise and accessible introduction, a leading expert provides answers to these commonly asked questions. This revised and updated edition now also covers how the virus mutates, how important these mutations are, how vaccines work, and what we can expect in the near and long-term future.
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.
Fear has consequences, for individuals and for communities. And in times of stress, such as during epidemics, prejudices and primeval fear, always beneath the surface, can resurge to haunt us. In this book Zhou Xun and Sander L. Gilman examine how four groups have been blamed for causing or spreading the COVID-19 virus: the residents of Wuhan and Black African communities in China; Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the USA, Britain and Israel; African Americans and the UK's BAME communities; and White right-wing groups in America and Europe. 'I Know Who Caused COVID-19' explores stereotyping and the false attribution of blame, as well as what happens when a collective is actually at fault, and how the community deals with these conflicting issues.--
This guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).
“Meaty, well-written.” —Kirkus Reviews “Timely and informative.” —The New York Times Book Review “By far the best book I have ever read on humanity’s deep history.” —E. O. Wilson, biologist and author of The Ants and On Human Nature Nicholas Wade’s articles are a major reason why the science section has become the most popular, nationwide, in the New York Times. In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity’s origins as never before—a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade offers nothing less than a uniquely complete retelling of a story that began 500 centuries ago.
