No Fearmongering – just the facts and science
By LJ Cote, BSN, exclusively for People For Justice Canada.com: link: Click here
The Real Nuts and Bolts of Virus Variants: The word ‘variant‘ conjures fears of unexpected and freakish changes. In reality, change or mutations, are a natural part of any virus life cycle that rarely impact outbreaks dramatically. [5]
Today, the virus variant story is being used to:
- ramp up the fear factor,
- justify prolonged restrictive lockdowns, and
- overcome the growing resistance to experimental “Gene Therapy” as identified by Dr. David Martin and other scientists.[9]
The nuts and bolts you need to know
FACT 1: Coronaviruses have co-existed with humans and animals worldwide and continuously undergo countless changes (mutations) which generate variants.[2][3] The life of any virus is difficult. Why? Viruses cannot survive outside a host because they cannot self-replicate. Viruses don’t want to kill their host; this would be suicidal. Instead, they want to optimize their hosts’ cell production mechanisms.
FACT 2: Variants arise when the replication process goes wrong or the virus must adapt to changing conditions. Unlike science fiction movies, virus changes are natural. All variants are very similar to the original virus because that was the initial source for replication.[4]
FACT 3: Scientists have known of the human coronavirus since the mid-1960s, however, over the last half-century, it never received today’s unprecedented press cover. In 2003, the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV was said to responsible for an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that began in mainland China and spread to other countries.
FACT 4: In 2012, the coronavirus known as MERS-CoV was identified as the source of an outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Korea, and other countries.
FACT 5: Both these outbreaks, 2003 and 2012. Were said to be a result of a “new” coronaviruses. Both these outbreaks were more deadly that today’s the so-called SARS-CoV2. Yet neither even considered global lockdowns, isolating the healthy, massive business, education and healthcare closures and masking of the general population. How were the global pandemics handled? The sick individuals were isolated from the general population to prevent spread. In fact, the SARS-CoV virus just disappeared most likely due to changes that weakened the virus.
Deeper Dive into the Science
SARS-CoV-2 virus variants (aka changes) are a routine aspect of life for any RNA virus. Why? An RNA virus reproduction is fundamentally error-prone because it uses RNA polymerase for replication.
Thus, their genomes accumulate changes (errors and adaptations) during every copying cycle.
While this amazing capacity to change drives the virus’s evolution, most changes unfavourably impact on some aspect of the virus’s function and it dies off by natural selection. Most likely what happened to the SARS-CoV in 2003.
While a virus’s speed of transmission or virulence may eagerly appear in a virus population, it will not spread in great numbers unless it is to their advantage.[7]
Indeed, across a broad band of viruses, such as coronavirus it is unusual to find those that have changed or expanded their mode of transmission over short evolutionary time-scales despite high rates of change.
The prevalent claim that this virus will become more virulent and appear as massive deadly waves is not supported by science. This phantom of a ‘super killer’ virus is baseless because the evolution of virulence is a highly complex topic that has inspired extensive research on evolutionary theory and debate.[8].
A common impression is that virulence will only change — either upwards or downwards — if it increases the transmission rate of the virus, which effectively means an increase in the number of virus ‘offspring’. However, high virulence may (although by no means always) reduce transmissibility if the host is too sick to expose others.
Without information on the precise evolutionary forces and selection pressures in operation, predicting how virulence might evolve is an extremely difficult and perhaps futile task. Changes with its resulting variants, are not indicative of outlandish and devastating new viral characteristics.
NOTE: At the time of writing this, there has never been proof of the isolation, purification or culture of a SARS-CoV2 virus which is said to cause Covid-19 disease. [1]
References
[1] Canadian public health officials have no record of SARS-COV-2 isolation/purification performed anywhere, ever, https://peopleforjusticecanada.com/2021/01/05/canadian-public-health-officials-have-no-record-of-sars-cov-2-isolation-purification-performed-anywhere-ever/
[2] Shou, Su et al., “Epidemiology, Genetic Recombination, and Pathogenesis of Coronaviruses,” Trends in Microbiology 24, no.6 (June 2016) 490-502, https://doi.org/10,1013/j.tim_2016.03.003
[3] Jie Cui, Fang Li, and Zheng-Li Shi, “Origin and Evolutions of Pathogenic Coronaviruses,” Nature Reviews Microbiology 17 (2019):181-92 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-018-0118-
[4] Nathan D. Grubaugh, Mary E. Petrone; and Edward C. Holmes, “We Shouldn’t worry when a virus mutates during disease outbreaks”, Nature Microbiology 5. 529-530(2020) https://rdcu.be/ce7aH
[5] Holmes, E. C. The Evolution and Emergence of RNA Viruses (Oxford University Press, 2009). https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/59/5/610/1648162
[6] Your Genome, “What is a genome?” https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-a-genome
[7] Yuan, L. et al. Science 358, 933–936 (2017) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6365/933
[8] Bull, J. J. Evolution 48, 1423–1437 (1994). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1994.tb02185.x
[9] Dr. David Martin, It’s Gene Therapy, Not a Vaccine with Dr. David Martin; 2021; The Western A. Price Foundation: Wise Traditions, https://www.westonaprice.org/podcast/its-gene-therapy-not-a-vaccine/
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