What is the true origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, 2019nCoV, the CCP virus)? Many scientific publications seem to tell you that the virus was born from nature. How reliable are these publications? While, before I comment on that, I would like to bring out an important fact: all of such publications rely on a single evidence – the sequence of a bat coronavirus named RaTG13.
RaTG13 looks like a “close cousin” of the Wuhan coronavirus – the two are 96% identical throughout the whole sequence of the viral genome. If RaTG13 is a nature-borne virus, one can comfortably conclude that the Wuhan coronavirus must very likely also come from nature and must share a recent common ancestor with RaTG13.
But here is the problem: this RaTG13 virus isn’t real. The evidence of its existence, its sequence, was fabricated.
Quite a claim, right? What is the claim based on? How can anyone fabricate a sequence? Who dares to carry out such a deceitful action and is not fearful of being caught? One is entitled to ask all of these questions. Now, let’s dig into each of them and see how the answers provided here may stand.
Who dares to carry out such a deceitful action?
The sequence of RaTG13 was reported by Zhengli Shi, a researcher from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the biosafety level 4 (P4) lab for virology research. Dr. Shi is the top coronavirus expert in China. She has gained a nickname of “batwoman” because she and her team have a long history of capturing wild bats in caves all over for the purpose of detecting and sometimes isolating coronaviruses within them. As publicly stated, the goal of her research is to identify animal coronaviruses that have the potential of crossing-over to infect humans and thereby help the public avoid SARS-like disasters in the future.
Ironically, contrary to this self-portrait, since the very beginning of the current pandemic, Zhengli Shi has been singled out as THE suspect, who may have created the Wuhan coronavirus and, in doing so, caused a world-wide disaster. Interestingly, on Jan 23rd, 2020, just before this “rumor” started to soar though the roof, Shi published a paper in Nature (1), where she compared the freshly obtained sequence of the Wuhan coronavirus with those of other coronaviruses and thus delineated an evolutionary path of this new virus. In this publication, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, Shi reported this bat coronavirus, RaTG13, which pampered the public and seemingly helped shape a consensus in the field that the Wuhan coronavirus is of a natural origin.
As stated in the paper, RaTG13 was discovered from Yunnan province, China, in 2013. According to credible sources, Shi has admitted to several individuals in the field that she does not have a physical copy of this RaTG13 virus. Her lab allegedly collected some bat feces in 2013 and analyzed these samples for possible presence of coronaviruses based on genetic evidence. To put it into plainer words, she has no physical proof for the existence of this RaTG13 virus. She only has its sequence information, which is nothing but a string of letters alternating between A, T, G, and C.
Can the sequence of such a virus be fabricated? It cannot be any easier. It takes a person less than a day to TYPE such a sequence (less than 30,000 letters) in a word file. And it would be a thousand times easier if you already have a template that is about 96% identical to the one you are trying to create. Once the typing is finished, one can upload the sequence onto the public database. Contrary to general conception, such database does not really have a way to validate the authenticity or correctness of the uploaded sequence. It relies completely upon the scientists themselves – upon their honesty and consciences. Once uploaded and released, such sequence data becomes public and can be used legitimately in scientific analysis and publications.
Now, does this RaTG13 sequence qualify as credible evidence in judging the matter? Well, remember, a central part of the matter is whether or not this Wuhan coronavirus was engineered or created by ZHENGLI SHI. It is Shi, not anybody else, who is the biggest suspect of this possible crime that is grander than anything else in human history. Given the circumstances, wouldn’t she have a strong enough motive to be deceitful? If the evidence she raised to prove herself innocent was nothing but a bunch of letters recently typed in a word file, should anyone treat it as valid evidence?
RaTG13, if truly exists, should never be neglected by Shi for a period of seven years
Let’s now think about this from another direction. The sequence of RaTG13 is highly alarming – it clearly shows a potential of the virus to infect humans.
Within the spike protein of a β coronavirus, there is a critical piece named receptor-binding domain (RBD), which dictates whether or not this virus can use the ACE2 receptor on the surface of our cells and thereby infect humans. As a routine, when Shi’s team finishes collecting samples and confirms the presence of a coronavirus, the first thing they would do is to look at the sequence of the virus’ RBD. If there is resemblance between this sequence and that of the SARS virus (rarely so), their blood would boil because they have found something that may jump over to humans. It also means that top-journal publications are coming their way.
In 2013, Shi made her fame in the coronavirus field by publishing in Nature two bat coronaviruses (Rs3367 and SHC014), which share considerable sequence similarity with SARS in the RBD region (2). This work, for the first time, proved a bat origin of SARS. In the following years, her team continued to publish articles, featuring additional bat coronaviruses that share these important sequence motifs (3, 4).
