Under the heading "Let's talk about the science" is invited to discuss the publication of a group of scientists, virologists, are busy working on the analysis of the genetic code of the new coronavirus COVID-19. Research is conducted on the basis of the deciphered the genome of the coronavirus, who are infected today (according to official data) nearly 600 thousands of people across the planet.
One of the representatives of the research group is an Australian virologist Edward Holmes, who works at the School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney. The main issue, which is studied by scientists, It reads as follows: if COVID-19 - coronavirus, which is characteristic of the animal world, under what conditions it could be transmitted to humans.
Edward Holmes is a co-author of four works on the new coronavirus, which have been published in major scientific journals from the beginning 2020 of the year.
In one of his works Dr. Holmes writes about the conditions of monitoring, in which the coronavirus can be transmitted from animals to humans. According to an Australian scientist, an intermediary, which allowed a person to pass coronavirus, He became pangolin. He steppe or Malayan pangolin. This animal is from the order of placental mammals, habitat which is very wide - from China in the east to Ghana and Liberia in the west. At the same time the number of pangolins is rapidly declining in the world - primarily due to the, that they are considered as food in many countries of the world, as well as the source of those or other funds for traditional medicine. So, in China and Vietnam of pangolin scales manufactured substance, which, as local healers claim, "Can be used to treat asthma and cancer". No clinical evidence of its effectiveness is not, but on "substance" of demand is not reduced.
Professor Holmes writes, wildlife that contains an incredible amount of different types of coronaviruses, which may occur in humans. One such method - the use of the flesh and other parts of wild animals for food or as a medical (psevdomeditsinskih) medicines and cosmetics.
Holmes:
astoundingly, but pangolin viruses contain genomic regions, which are very closely linked to the “human” viruses. The most important of these is the domain, receptor binding, that determines, as the virus can attach and infect human cells.
In this case, Mr. Holmes and colleagues (eg, with scientists from the University of New Orleans) emphatically states, that about any "artificial synthesis of the new coronavirus out of the question".
from the statement:
Coronavirus was not technologically created biological agent. Using comparative analysis of genomic data, scientists show, that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) not a laboratory design or purposefully controlled virus.
Notably, that this statement contradicts Article, published in 2015 year in the journal Nature (in him, by the way, published himself Edward Holmes). Then the material was reported, that synthesized a new virus - as a collection of the SARS virus and respiratory bats. And if this virus will go beyond the lab, its distribution, as the author wrote, it would be impossible to predict. What virologists at all needed to synthesize a "biological bomb", no one really can not answer so far.
Holmes also claims, genome COVID-19 supposedly "makes it clear, that the new coronavirus has exclusively of natural origin ".
Edward Holmes:
Actually, I've been warned, that animal coronaviruses can sooner or later be transmitted to humans. To do this, you need a combination of several factors, including the specific biological parameters transporter.
Australian professor with Chinese colleagues took air samples and biomaterials at the Wuhan market and said, that "significantly possible to say, coronaviruses that have adapted to overcome the boundaries of species ".
But so far no concrete scientific evidence of their theory, including direct genomic analysis COVID-19, Holmes does not provide the public.
And in China, his paper criticized, insisting, that the market in Wuhan to infection with a coronavirus has no relationship, "The reason, that certain products of animal origin are sold on it for decades, and November 2019 year no infections of this type do not cause ".
It is worth recalling, Beijing accuses the US next: novel coronavirus in China were brought American soldiers, who took part in the international military games. After approximately two weeks after the Games in China, and was diagnosed the first case of local infection - the so-called "zero" patient.
