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Destinee Montoya
News Analysis #2
BIOL 1090-502
12 April 2020
Dispelling SARS-CoV-2 Conspiracy Theories
The main conclusion that the scientists came to was that the current coronavirus
pandemic that is circling the globe is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab. The
SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that completely differ from those of previously known
viruses, which allowed them to figure out that they had to have come from an unknown virus or
viruses that already existed in nature (Saey, 2020). The scientists were able to come to this
conclusion by conducting a comparative analysis of genomic data. They quickly realized that this
wasn’t a virus that could be conceived and cobbled together, it has too many distinct features,
some of which are counterintuitive (Saey, 2020). It had to have been something that came from
nature. After comparing the virus with other coronaviruses that were recently found in nature,
they figured out that it could be a mix of bat and pangolin viruses (Saey, 2020). With all this
evidence, it eliminates and dispels the conspiracy theories that theorized this virus was human
made or was grown in and accidently released from a lab. The primary source that they used was
from the Nature Medicine journal and was written by Kristian G. Anderson, Andrew Rambaut,
W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry.
The type of information/evidence has a lot of important implications on society and the
field of science. It’s going to impact and change the way that people perceive SARS-CoV-2 and
will hopefully teach them to turn to actual scientists for these types of answers instead of
unqualified conspiracy theorists on the internet. It will also hopefully change the way that people
are approaching this virus, especially how it concerns racism. With the outbreak that happened in
Wuhan, China, some people thought that it was a virus created and spread by Chinese people and
have been making extremely racist and xenophobic comments and attacks toward those from
China and other Asian countries. Hopefully, with this news, those attacks and comments will
disappear.
The scientists that were mentioned in the article were affiliated with a variety of
universities, such as the Scripps Research Institute, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University
of Edinburgh, Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, Marie Bashir Institute
for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, and Tulane University. If they were hypothetically
affiliated with a for-profit institution, I would most likely second guess their intentions in
conducting a study like this. I would start to question if their intentions were pure and for the
good of the public or if it was so they could gain something, like publicity or money. I think it
would at first change my view of this study and its conclusions, but I think that as long as what
it’s contributing isn’t trying to promote something/someone and is done so ethically, I would be
able to come around on my initial reaction. Based on what was stated in the article, I didn’t see
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that there were other scientists or policymakers that disagreed with any of the scientists that were
part of this study.
Reading this article definitely expanded my views of SARS-CoV-2. I didn’t have any real
suspicions that the virus was something human-made, but it was really interesting and eye-
opening to see the breakdown process of how they were able to figure out that it came from
nature, specifically from a mixture of bat and pangolin viruses. I chose to analyze this article
specifically because it’s a current event that I only knew a little bit about, so I wanted to educate
myself more about the subject and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. I believe that the
reporter did a pretty good job of giving background information for the story by providing the
necessary knowledge from the primary source to help readers better understand the story. An
example of that from this article was from the third and fourth paragraphs, which state how
Anderson got involved in the study, how the researchers initially thought the virus was being
spread by repeated infections jumping from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China into
humans and then being passed from person to person, and how the rumors/theories began to
spread shortly after the virus’s genetic makeup was revealed initially in January (Saey, 2020).
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References
Anderson, K.G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W.I. et al. (2020, March 17). The proximal origin of
SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine. Retrieved April 12, 2020 from
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9
Saey, T.H. (2020, March 26). No, the coronavirus wasn’t made in a lab. A genetic analysis
shows it’s from nature. ScienceNews. Retrieved April 12, 2020 from
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-
analysis-nature