“The Observer” and “Going Viral” highlights NHG’s Dr. Peter Daszak’s research into pandemic origins

Summary

Two articles in The Observer and Going Viral highlight Nature.Health.Global's President Dr. Peter Daszak, and how conspiracies and politics have undermined pandemic prevention

Two pieces this week by historian and journalist Mark Honigsbaum delve into vital  research on pandemic origins, emphasizing the valuable work of NHG’s Dr. Peter Daszak. They underscore the impact of misinformation on COVID-19 origins, shedding light on the critical role of factual information in combating anti-science narratives. Dr. Daszak’s contributions and the focus on virus transmission from bats in Wuhan highlight the necessity of scientific efforts, as discussed in The Observer and Going Viral articles. Two articles this week by historian and journalist Mark Honigsbaum highlight the importance of research to understand the origins of pandemics, and how this has been undermined by conspiracy theories around the origins of COVID-19. Specifically, The Observer and Going Viral shed light on NHG’s Dr. Peter Daszak and his significant contributions to pandemic research, emphasizing the critical need for factual information in combating misinformation surrounding the current global health crisis. Two articles this week by historian and journalist Mark Honigsbaum highlight the importance of research to understand the origins of pandemics, and how this has been undermined by conspiracy theories around the origins of COVID-19.

 

Writing in the oldest UK newspaper, The Observer, Mark reviews the documentary movie Blame, and puts it into the context of current geopolitics. Blame (see recent NHG post) was directed by Oscar-nominated and Sundance Award winning director Christian Frei, and tells the story of how a critical international collaboration to understand the risk of coronavirus pandemics has been disrupted by conspiracies and politics.  As Mark puts it, referring to a press conference in April 2020 in which then-President Trump first pointed a finger at scientific research as an alleged cause of COVID-19:

 

“A few days later, Trump followed through on his threat, effectively ending Daszak’s multi-year collaboration with Shi. In an instant, Daszak went from being a respected expert on emerging infectious diseases to a media hate figure. Shi, meanwhile, was labelled “bat lady”. As Republican politicians and rightwing conspiracy theorists called for Daszak to be prosecuted, he was dragged before Congress to testify about his role in supposedly facilitating “gain of function” experiments at Shi’s lab.

It was nonsense. As 41 leading virologists pointed out in an article in the Journal of Virology last August, “there is currently no verified scientific evidence to support the lab-leak hypothesis”. By contrast, an estimated 66,000 people in south-east Asia are infected with Sars coronaviruses each year because of human-bat contact. And although almost all result in asymptomatic infections with little or no further transmission, we know that in the past 25 years at least three different coronaviruses have spilled over from animal reservoirs and ignited epidemics or pandemics.”

 

Mark’s article also touches on how current US politics have stricken fear into the heart of scientists. He points out that Dr. Philipp Markolin’s new book “Lab Leak Fever” cannot yet be published in the USA because of publishers’ fears of being politically-targeted. A similar issue surrounds the film:

“Whether Blame will be screened in the US and UK is also uncertain…That is a pity, for, as Frei and Markolin show, the attacks on EcoHealth Alliance and the dissemination of Covid conspiracy theories have fuelled distrust in science. That makes it even less likely that members of the public will comply with lockdowns or other restrictions when the next pandemic virus inevitably emerges from the natural world.”

 

GOING VIRAL – the natural origin scenario

 

To accompany his Observer piece, Mark Honigsbaum published an article on his Going Viral blog that took on a simple challenge – can we explain how exactly a virus can spill over from a bat to a person, to end up causing a global pandemic. In it, he pieces together the hard scientific evidence that we have about the origins of COVID-19, in the perspective of the rich, diverse landscape of Southeast Asia and southern China

He points to the presence of “badger” carcasses in the freezers in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan – as reported by the China CDC; to analyses of the spread of human cases of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, matched with DNA fingerprints of wildlife from the market epicenter; and to the huge volume of wildlife bred in farms across the region and shipped thousands of miles into city markets for the food trade.

 

Mark takes us on a viral stream from the caves of Thailand, Yunnan Province, and Laos, via guano collectors, bat hunters, wildlife traders, truck drivers, ferret badgers and raccoon dogs, to the first human cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan. He reminds us that, while bats are nocturnal and often unseen, they are, in southeast Asia, ubiquitous, diverse, and very active. As Dr. Daszak points out

“If you go to Malaysia and sit by the edge of a river with a street-light nearby, all night long you’ll see bats of different shapes and sizes flitting past and eating insects. They’re extremely abundant, extremely diverse, and so are their viruses.”

 

I hope you get a chance to read these two important pieces. At Nature.Health.Global. we’re committed to continuing research to identify and do something about the risk of future pandemics. We’re also committed to protecting science and scientists under attack from conspiracies and politics. Please join us in these worthy goals by joining our mailing list, and donating to our cause.