- Santushti Raj Thapar
Updated: Jun 10, 2020
Santushti Thapar
Ph.D. Researcher & Writer

The Untold Story: Origin of COVID - 19
The coronavirus pandemic is the most severe and dramatic public health
emergency that the world has faced since the deadliest 1918 Spanish Flue -
influenza pandemic that led to over 50 million deaths over a two year
period of three strikes.
Despite the numerous recently published articles/videos on this subject
by WHO & Governments renowned Scientists, Tacticians / Statisticians &
Laymen, many controversies persist both among healthcare professionals
(as after autopsies, it has been established that they were on the wrong
track – ailment misdiagnosed and that Ventilators themselves were not the
solution but had become part of the problem) and the common people.
A recent development wherein Dr. Laxminarayan told The Wire that he
disagrees with the Indian Council of Medical Research’s official stand that
India is still in stage 2 of the epidemic and has not entered stage 3 is of
opposite viewpoints. Quibbling, it would now seem! The Government and
its advisors are undoubtedly making decisions after considering all the
information and contradictory advice floating around. Although without a
shadow of doubt, in its effort to reduce the rate of transmission, India &
several other countries worldwide took drastic measures and our
Lockdown included closures of literally all-productive activities including
educational Institutes and schools. Quarantine of travelers – Foreign and
Domestic repartees’ from out of the City or State and potentially affected
persons have become commonplace. Today, even self-quarantine is
promoted. Individual precautions like social distancing, wearing gloves
and face masks, and hand hygiene, including the recommendation of
covering the mouth, and nose with a tissue or bent elbow when coughing
or sneezing, are the norms that even children are now aware of. On this
too, a new controversy has arisen, wherein people are saying that in fact,
this is a form of ‘bondage’ being promoted by the main Conspirators to
further their profits by scaremongering. Their counter-argument is that
people's own immune system is being degraded and thus their dependence
on Pharmaceutical Drugs & Vaccine increases.
In spite of the above scaremongering, astonishingly, another controversy
has been unleashed by the advocates of ‘herd immunity’ prominently, the
British government which recently promoted the idea, to allow COVID‐19
to spread so as to build a “herd immunity” (a form of indirect protection
from the infection that happens to individuals when a significant part of a
population has been infected; until a vaccination is found). This
controversial strategy stands in contrast with World Health Organization
recommendations, which advice social distancing, et al, which itself is
now being questioned. In fact, the hypothesis that SARS‐CoV‐2 can infect
a significant proportion of the local population - inducing herd immunity
itself is suspect & remains an unproven solution.
As this lethal virus scorches its way across continents, reminding us of the
words of Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack / a crack in everything, that’s
how the light gets in.’’
But what if you find a wide gorge rather than a crack, and there is only
darkness rather than light getting in. Let us examine some additional
mindboggling & jaw-dropping controversies, to up the rate of your pulse
spontaneously: COVID 19 the unfounded claims:
The 2008 Nobel Laureate for physiology in medicine from France, Luc
Antoine Montagnier, caught the media’s attention when he recently
endorsed a COVID-19 conspiracy theory that, the virus is man-made. His
proclamation was subsequently magnified by various news outlets,
including many in India (e.g., The Week , The Hindu Business Line , and
Times of India ). Though, An article published more recently in the journal
Nature Medicine analyzing the new virus’s genome concluded that: “Our
analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a
purposefully manipulated virus.” In a 2010 interview, Montagnier said he
was leaving Europe to “escape the intellectual terror.” He added, “I’m no
longer allowed to work at a public institute (in France). I have applied for
funding from other sources, but I have been turned down.” Montagnier
himself is a controversial character but his writings and words can not be
ignored, It’s not exactly clear which manipulation and what escaping of
intellectual terror he is talking about. There is no evidence that anyone can
trust an allegation claimed by him or his writings. Moreover, the story of
controversies does not end here. Another thunder stroke will surely freeze
your breath; Judy Mikovits (right), virologist attacking Anthony Fauci in a
viral conspiracy video by Martin Enserink, Jon Cohen May, 8th 2020 (do
watch before it’s taken down). Anthony or Tony Fauci has become the
scientific face of America’s COVID -19 response, and he has astounded us
(possibly to conceal his own role) by saying, “the best evidence shows the
virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China”. On the
contrary, Mikovits also accuses Anthony Fauci, of being responsible for
the deaths of millions during the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Who is Judy Mikovits & Anthony or Tony Fauci? Anthony Fauci, the most
renowned physician head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for almost 40 years and a prominent member
of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force. Now, Judy Mikovits is
a virologist and a scientist who obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry and
molecular biology from George Washington University in 1991. By 2009,
she was the research director at the Whitmore Peterson Institute (WPI), a
private research center in Reno, Nevada.
In a video ‘Pandemic is Pandemic: Documentary on its hidden facts’ that
has exploded on social media in the past few days, virologist Judy
Mikovits claims the new coronavirus is being wrongly blamed for many
deaths. She makes searching assertions about the virus.
Judy Mikovits astonishingly claims that the COVID -19 virus occurred
somewhere between the North Carolina laboratories, Fort Detrick, the U.S.
Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and the Wuhan
Laboratory.
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated at WIV.
NIAID’s funding of a U.S. group that works with the Wuhan lab has been
stopped, which outraged many scientists.
In a 2010 interview, Montagnier said he was leaving Europe to “escape the
intellectual terror.” He added, “I’m no longer allowed to work at a public
institute (in France). I have applied for funding from other sources, but I
have been turned down.”
Montagnier had also argued like Judy during a TV interview with a French
TV channel that elements of the HIV-1 retrovirus, which he co-discovered
in 1983, can be found in the genome of the new coronavirus. He also said
elements of the “malaria germ” – the parasite Plasmodium falciparum –
can also be seen in the virus’s genome.
His full quote: “We were not the first since a group of Indian researchers
tried to publish a study which showed that the complete genome of this
coronavirus [has] sequences of another virus, which is HIV.” Similar
allegations have been confirmed by Judy Mikovits; and it now appears that
this virus was manipulated. This family of viruses was manipulated and
studied in a laboratory where the animals were taken into the laboratory,
and this is what was released, whether deliberate or not one can not say.
That it cannot be naturally occurring seems most likely. Somebody did not
just go to a market, got a bat, and the virus jumped directly to humans,
sounds a little far fetched.
That’s not how it works. That’s accelerated viral evolution. If it were a
natural occurrence, it would take up to 800 years to occur.
Although, as far as we are concerned it is also declared that these outbursts
dispel the myth concerning the origin of the outbreak of COVID‐19,
according to which the virus was synthetically created in a laboratory
unleashed to cause a global crisis. Indeed, although its origin is not
completely understood, it was demonstrated that the bat coronavirus
shared 96% of its genome with SARS‐CoV‐2, thus suggesting a bat origin
and a transmission to humans through an intermediate host.
Inference:
Pandemics are so fraught with misinformation; Pandemics have
historically been breeding grounds for fake news and conspiracy theories.
For example, in the 14th-century bubonic plague epidemic in Europe
fuelled a misbelief among Christians that the Jews were deliberately
poisoning wells and rivers with infectious “miasma”, leading to the mass
persecution of Jews. Even when Montagnier helped discover the HIV virus
(alongside Françoise Barré-Sinoussi) in the early 1980s, a prominent
conspiracy theory in the US was that HIV is a human-made virus that the
government had created to wipe out black people.
I don’t know whether the above-mentioned story is true or not but before
jumping to conclusions I suggest that they also make for an important time
to communicate good science, double-check suspicious comments, refuse
to accept claims without good reason, and not amplify pseudoscience
without suitable qualification. In the end, what to believe or what not - the
ball is once again in your court based on your own understanding and
study. For now, ‘Jaan bachani ho to’ stay with - kyunki Jaan hai to jahan
hai’ (Life is critical, so let us first protect it from the COVID 19 infection)
later we can get to understand more, once we get over this COVID 19
bullshit on whoever has made it, or whether it is naturally occurring.
References:
HEALTH , MEDIA , THE SCIENCES : A Nobel Laureate Said the New
Coronavirus Was Made in a Lab. He’s Wrong. The Wire, Felix Bast
22/04/2020. (Felix Bast is a science writer and an associate professor at the
Central University of Punjab. This article was originally published on
Medium and has been republished here with permission.)
What are unfounded claims about the coronavirus that causes COVID-19?
DAVID CALVERT FOR AP IMAGES
Luc Montagnier during the TV interview. Photo: YouTube.
Watch: 'India Could Be Next Coronavirus Hotspot, in Worst Case up to
60% could Be Infected’. (Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the
Washington-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy,
says India needs to sharply ramp up it's testing. Karan Thapar, 19 march,
2020)
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