Corona Is Not Bioengineered
(Corona and
Conspiracy Mongers)
Suresh Kodoor
We are confronting two deadly
viruses these days. One is of course the deadly COVID-19 Corona Virus and the
other is the more venomous and malicious ‘Conspiracy’ virus. We may soon find
vaccine for the first one. However, the second one may never find a cure as it
constantly mutates to various forms and the ‘lie DNA’ of this ‘virus’ has a
special knack of evading any ‘truth’ vaccine.
All the conspiracy stories doing
rounds around CORONA virus are not simple innocuous ones, especially the ones
that have its origin in the ultra-right ‘propaganda manufacturing labs’. These
lies have clear agenda and targets. The fact that the current pandemic is being
misused as an opportunity to reignite the jingoism and hatred with lies and
gross misinformation is of great concern as there may be many unsuspecting
takers to the stories, innocently ingesting whatever is served.
One of the conspiracy theories goes
like this. China deliberately unleashed the Corona virus on themselves and the
world so that the stock market will crash, following which China can buy all
the shares of all the American companies. Ridiculous it is, but, as usual,
blatant lies, misinformation, fake stories, manufactured data and fictitious
sources are skilfully stitched together to deliver the venom.
World Health Organization has named
the corona disease as Corona Virus Diseas-2019 or COVID-19 and the virus
causing the disease as ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2’ or SARS-CoV-2. However, many still
like to call it Chinese Virus, Wuhan Virus etc. to implicate China as the conscious
perpetrators of the disease though the US President himself has recently pulled
back from calling the virus as ‘China Virus’.
Is the SARS-CoV-2 a genetically
engineered virus manufactured in a lab as Biological weapon as these
‘Conspirators’ want us to believe? No. The answer is in absolute negative. The
scientific community has categorically ruled out the possibility that the virus
is genetically engineered and rather has established that it is a product of evolution
having undergone numerous mutations and got transmitted from the wild-life to
human. In fact scientists did get to the root of this conspiracy theory and had
comprehensively debunked them, as it is important to know the origin of the
virus in order to develop effective vaccines. How did the scientists rule out
that it is not engineered in labs? By analysing the genetic structure or to be more
specific the RNA sequence and the characteristics of the virus’s receptor-binding
domain (RBD), a feature of the virus that helps them to attach to the host
cells. The fact that the virus does possess the feature, acquired in the
process of its evolution, to evade human immune system also points to the fact that
it wasn’t created, neither deliberately nor accidentally, through cell-culture,
a process used in labs for conducting virological studies and experimental research.
The study has revealed that the
corona pandemic is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab. As per the
study published on March-17 in the Science journal ‘Nature Medicine’, the
genetic structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus reveals that it isn’t a mix and match
of any known viruses, as might be expected if it were human-made (Ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9).
The virus has unusual features that have only recently been identified in scaly
anteaters called pangolins, an evidence that the virus came from nature, reports
the study. Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps
Research Institute in California and a team of scientists from other research
centers carried out the study. Anderson has said “It was clear that the virus
wasn’t human-made. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with
already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties. But the
SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that differ from those of previously known
viruses, so they had to come from an unknown virus or viruses in nature”. The
paper says, “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone. This
is not a virus somebody would have conceived of and cobbled together. It has
too many distinct features, some of which are counterintuitive. One wouldn’t do
this if you were trying to make a more deadly virus. Similarity of SARS-CoV-2
to bat and pangolin viruses is some of the best evidences that the virus is
natural”. “This was just another animal spillover into humans. All the data
show it’s natural”, say the scientists who were part of the research team. Dr.
Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (USA) says
"This study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for
COVID-19". Most likely the COVID-19 virus arose from a recombination of a
virus found in bats and another virus, possibly in pangolins.
So, the story of China manufacturing
the virus is a total bogus and has been completely debunked through scientific
studies. Now, what is portrayed as the motivation behind such an action is even
more ridiculous. The fake narrative goes on to say that China bought in bulk the
shares of American Companies to take control of the US firms and the world
economy in general. This is not only absurd but in fact the American analysts fear
exactly the opposite, i.e would American investors go and put their money in so
many Chinese companies using this crash as an opportunity. In fact there are
also counter propaganda, especially in the Arab media, which portrays the
pandemic as an American plot to destabilise Chinese economy.
Did Chinese really buy shares of
American companies, either at Chinese exchanges or the American stock
exchanges? First and foremost, Chinese investors can’t buy American stocks in
the Chinese stock market. Why? The answer is simple. They aren’t listed in the
Chinese stock market. Chinese stock market was opened for foreign companies
only in the mid-2019 and no companies have been listed yet. So, Chinese investors
buying American Stocks from Chinese market is ruled out. Of course it doesn’t
matter to the fakers anyway. So, that leaves the possibility of Chinese
investors buying American stocks from the American market. Did it really
happen? Just a cursory glance of the American market indexes would reveal that
there was hardly any buying happening at all and rather the market indexes were
consistently hitting lower circuits undergoing severe crash. The index trends
reflect no such bulk buying at all. In fact, the American stock analysts and
policy makers fear exactly the reverse. Their fear is that US investors would
end up investing hugely in Chinese companies, that too of dubious background. The US had already started stopping its
investors from investing in Chinese companies as part of US-China trade war
even before the Corona outbreak. America is trying its level best to stop its
investors from investing money in Chinese companies. The US is also said to be
looking at limiting the ability of government pension funds to participate in
Chinese markets. US has been considering de-listing Chinese companies from US
stock exchanges as part of a ‘broader effort to curb US investment in China’. More
than 150 Chinese companies are listed on the major US exchanges, worth a total
of $1.2 trillion in market value as in February. If one goes by this theory,
not only US companies but also these 150+ Chinese companies would be equally
vulnerable to being bought over. Thus the fake narrative of Chinese buying
major stakes in the US companies has absolutely no merit in it.
Chinese stock market didn’t crash much
compared to many of the other world markets though it did indeed witness a
setback. The Chinese market benchmark the Shanghai Composite Index had marked
its recent highpoint 3115 on 13 January and slipped to 3095 on 20th January
when China officially announced the corona virus outbreak. It fell to 2746 on
Feb 3 after the market was opened after their New Year holidays. It is hovering
around that value even now in the mid March. What was the reason for the
Chinese markets to fare relatively better? One reason is that China has infused
$174 billion stimuli package to their economy and that kept the sentiments in
the Chinese market in good spirit. The tremendous progress China made in
controlling the spread of the pandemic also added to improved stock market
sentiments. There is one more likely reason for the less volatility seen in
China's share markets. The reason is that the foreign capital accounts for only
less than four per cent of the entire share market in China. So, there isn’t anything
to be bought over from the ‘foreign hands’ in the Chinese market. Rather, the
Chinese investors are in fact being encouraged to invest money in the Chinese
companies in the Chinese stock market to showcase the resilience of their
economy.
Again, for the fakers, the data
doesn’t need to be accurate, rather data is conveniently manufactured by hook
or crook to suit the fake narrative, and the truth remains the immediate
causality. For example, they would insist that Beijing didn’t have any corona
cases and that is a good enough proof for China’s hands behind the
pandemic. The fact is of course Beijing
was very much impacted as well. There
are of course many countries which are not impacted by Corona, including
Singapore. Hopefully the Conspirators won’t get any new ideas to run their
imaginations wild. The faker behind one of the stories wonders how Chinese
could create a vaccine and that is the proof that the formula of the virus was already
with them. The only problem with that statement is that only the faker seems to
know about the existence of such a vaccine while WHO has no knowledge about any
such vaccine existing at all till date. Same sources that project China
building a hospital in 2 weeks as proof of their prior-knowledge of the
pandemic will have no qualm in spreading fake message about a hospital being
built in Rajasthan in 2 days by Indian Army and going jingo about it! Well, the
conspirator wouldn’t even spare the US house speaker Nancy Pelosi. As per the
narrative, Ms.Pelosi is behind the deadly virus, engineered by colluding with
Chinese, in an attempt to cripple American economy by bringing down Trump. Of
course sky is the limit when it comes to fictitious fake stories.
The Covid-19 is a challenge to the
whole world. We need to be united in the fight against this deadly disease and
cooperation beyond national boundaries to promote pursuit of science and
knowledge alone will make us emerge victorious in this battle as well. All
those who indulge in fake propaganda to serve their narrow interests are only
harming this cause and are enemies of the humanity.
Suresh Kodoor
Ph: +91 9845853362
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