The coronavirus pandemic that emerged in Wuhan (China) has given rise not only to numerous hoaxes about the real extent of the disease, but also to conspiracy theories about the supposed origin caused by the outbreak, due to obscure economic or political reasons, which lack a basis scientific A “COMPLOT” OF BILL GATES
Through Twitter and Facebook a false idea has been extended that attributes the outbreak of this virus to a plot promoted by businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and planned through a British laboratory.
This theory has been encouraged by members of the anti-vaccine community and the QAnon movement, founded by supporters of Donald Trump who believe that the president of the United States, with the discrete help of the Armed Forces, faces “globalist elites” who seek undermine the essences of the country.
Billionaire George Soros, prominent Democratic leaders … and Bill Gates would be some of its prominent members, according to this movement.
Among the messages that have contributed most to disseminating this theory, a Twitter thread published last week by a QAnon follower, who is responsible for planning the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) to a British scientific institution, the Pirbright Institute, stands out. for a patent that he applied for in 2015 to develop a coronavirus, granted in 2018.
The truth is that this patent, number 10130701, has nothing to do with the Wuhan outbreak: The goal of the Pirbright Institute is to use that “attenuated form of coronavirus” as a vaccine to treat or prevent respiratory diseases in farm animals, especially chickens
As the institution itself has specified, Pirbright does not work with human coronaviruses and its researchers have not even developed the vaccine against respiratory infections in birds for which they applied for patent 10130701.
The conspiracy theses that ensure that Wuhan’s coronavirus is an interested creation have also been fueled by messages that relate Pirbright’s patent to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds the British institute.
At this point, different theories spread across the networks accuse Gates of being interested in generating the coronavirus to obtain economic return on his investments in vaccines or simply to generate chaos in the US at a political moment in which Trump seems unstoppable.
In reality, the coronavirus patent granted to Pirbright has no relationship with Gates. Its foundation is one of the organizations that contribute funds to projects of the institute (created by the Research Council of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology of the United Kingdom), but does not finance any work related to patents. Only a program on antibodies to cattle.
A VIRUS INVENTED BY THE MEDIA
Other lovers of conspiracy theories claim these days that the Wuhan outbreak is actually an invention of the means to sow panic.
Your argument? That coronaviruses cause colds and millions of infected worldwide suffer only mild symptoms.
“Let them tell the 2.2% of deaths caused by this virus …”, reflects Dr. José Antonio Pérez Molina, of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (Seimc).
The one identified in Wuhan has been officially recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “new coronavirus” and is the seventh of those identified so far capable of infecting humans: Four of the above caused symptoms similar to a cold and two others were more serious diseases, such as SARS, also originating in China, and the MERS of the Middle East.
Pérez Molina explains that there is a wide variety of coronaviruses – named for the spine-like formations that surround them – and, although many of them cause mild respiratory infections, Wuhan’s – like SARS and MERS – “has jumped from one species to another and in the human organism it is more virulent. “
On how quickly the disease is spreading, this expert points out that, although coronavirus infections have always existed, it is now easier because Humanity is concentrated in large nuclei and travels faster than ever: You can go around world in less than 24 hours, a shorter period than the incubation of an infectious disease.
Therefore, Humanity is now much more exposed to pests, and even more so in Asian populations that, by cultural tradition, maintain close contact with live animals intended for consumption, says Dr. Pérez Molina, a physician at the Disease Reference Center Tropical of the Ramón y Cajal Hospital.
“In a market like Wuhan’s, there can be tens of thousands of contacts every day,” he says.
… OR MANUFACTURED IN A LABORATORY
One of the most widespread alternative theories argues that the virus has been manufactured in a laboratory. This, although possible, is difficult to achieve in a controlled manner, according to experts.
“Developing a virus that produces a new infection, difficult to control, is not that simple,” says Pérez Molina.
However, the Spanish microbiologist Francisco Martínez Mojica, “father” of the CRISPR genetic editing tool, points to the possibility that the coronavirus may be a “mutant virus” and has “escaped” from a Wuhan laboratory.
“I would not be surprised if it was simply a mutant virus,” Mojica told the press Friday, who argues that “a few alarms have already been raised from another research center” in the US about a possible lack of “security requirements” in this Wuhan research laboratory “with pathogenic viruses”.
Viruses mutate very much and, when they are not controlled exactly, “you do not know where they” can attack you, and this may be a case of these, “explained this scientist from the Spanish University of Alicante, several times favorite to the Nobel Prizes.
THE CARRIER WAS A MURCIÉLAGO
Many believe that the origin of the disease is the bat and, in fact, the head of the Chinese team of experts investigating the coronavirus, the renowned pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan, has explained that it is very similar to one found in bats in 2017.
However, Zhong points out that the virus would not have reached humans directly, but through an “intermediary” animal that has not yet been identified.
A disease spawned to sell vaccines
Finally, there are users convinced that this disease has been manufactured by pharmaceutical groups interested in selling vaccines.
However, right now, thanks to the fact that the Chinese authorities are making all the information about the outbreak public, any laboratory in the world can work on making a vaccine to market it later.
China quickly released the 2019-nCoV genome sequence so that any laboratory in the world can develop diagnostic methods and vaccines.
In fact, a large number of researchers are already working in different parts of the planet in the development of vaccines for Wuhan’s coronavirus. Among them, those of the Peter Doherty Center in Australia, which have managed to reproduce the virus, and those of the American hospital Mount Sinai, in collaboration with the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) of Spain.
Anyone can consult all the updated data on the characteristics of the virus and its evolution through the WHO websites or the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
These data detract from the arguments of those who think that the coronavirus could have been created in a laboratory by those who intended to sell the vaccine later.
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