Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper:<p>1. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans.<p>2. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which make coronaviruses more infectious and virulent in humans, and (2) laboratory capabilities for successfully creating chimeric viruses (e.g. moving one specific protein sequence from a bat SARS-like virus to human SARS virus) to test their hypotheses.<p>3. Each of the unique and unusual features of SARS-CoV-2 appears somewhere in this line of research.<p>4. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the outbreak began, were intimately involved this line of research.<p>Taken together, the publicly-available evidence indicates that a select group of virologists had the domain knowledge and laboratory capabilities to create chimeric viruses which possess each of the unusual features of SARS-CoV-2, and that select group of virologists was concentrated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology located at ground zero for the pandemic.<p>The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.<p>They do not make any statement about how the virus first infected a live human and spread into a pandemic, but conditioned on their biogenesis hypothesis being true, one would then assume an accidental lab release from WIV as the most likely explanation.
Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I’ll just quote her: “Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That’s why we have so few pandemics!!<p>But <i>conditional on being in a pandemic</i> the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!!<p>There’s no conspiracy, just statistics”[0]<p>That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is certainly suggestive that it escaped from the lab, though that doesn’t mean it was necessarily “man made.”<p>[0]<a href="https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1281960135796101120?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1281960135796101120?s=21</a>
This is a really big claim, so some background checking:<p>The paper was published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics[0] (this accepted version is materially different from the original link posted here).<p>Only thing I could find about Birger Sorensen's was his Linkedin page [1a] and the Immunor page where he's listed as the Chairman [1b].<p>Angus Dagleish looks legit, although it's notable that he did stand for Parliament in 2016 as a UKIP candidate, according to Wikipedia[2].<p>Can't find any primary sources for Andreas Susrud.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527/S2633289220000083a.pdf/biovacc19_a_candidate_vaccine_for_covid19_sarscov2_developed_from_analysis_of_its_general_method_of_action_for_infectivity.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...</a><p>[1a]: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/birger-sorensen-174a20b/?originalSubdomain=no" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/birger-sorensen-174a20b/?origina...</a> btw, if this is considered doxxing, let me know and I can remove the link.<p>[1b]: <a href="https://immunor.com/about-immunor/board-of-directors/" rel="nofollow">https://immunor.com/about-immunor/board-of-directors/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Dalgleish" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Dalgleish</a>
Of the five salient points they make here, I would argue that they are a lot less strong than the authors believe them to be.<p>Point 1 can also likely be made for the original Sars-CoV, and probably is irrelevant. If they show CoV-2 is <i>more</i> human like than the earlier, then they can begin to make the point.<p>Point 2 is a gigantic leap of faith - I don’t understand how they connect amino acid inserts into the sequence to gain of function experiments. It makes no sense!<p>Points 3 & 4 are related: The extra charge on the RBD. If you look at the previous virus, it has a much smaller positively charged patch, and this expands in CoV-2, which makes an evolutionary drift in this direction entirely reasonable. It’s not a wholesale integration of a brand new feature. This charged patch is actually important for binding to heparan sulfate, which gets involved with a bunch of viral entry events (eg AAV, Chinkunguya virus, some other coronaviruses I think). There’s a few recent preprints that discuss the HS relationship with Cov-2, and can go a long way to explain the tropism of the virus. The HS can overcome lower expression of ACE2, by possibly supporting the attachment.<p>Finally, point 5 is where they throw out DC-SIGN as a receptor. While there are high mannose glycans on the virus particle, I don’t know of anyone proposing this as a receptor for the virus. There is no biochemical/experimental evidence that they show to support this idea.
> A Norwegian virologist has made claims about the non-natural origins of the new coronavirus. These claims were, reportedly, in an earlier draft of the paper, and Dr Sørensen has since repeated them to Norwegian press.<p>> The final version of the research paper, which has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, doesn’t actually make any claims about whether the virus was natural or man-made in its current form.<p>> The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially engineered.<p><a href="https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla...</a>
This is the immunology equivalent of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams". It's embarrassing to see it here, especially in a community with pretensions of bringing "disruption" to biotech. It would take a long time to catalog all the nonsense here but I'll just say that short subsequence (6aa) BLAST is meaningless and this subsequent claim is just word salad: "Such high human similarity also implies a high risk for the development of severe adverse events/toxicity and even Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE)"<p>(there's no relationship between the capacity for ADE and self-similarity of amino acid content)
This paper is not evidence, it is speculation based on an inability to see a path other than gain-of-function lab work. These coronaviruses are slow to evolve due to their proofreading capabilities but they recombine readily. The natural path, therefore, is a wild animal (likely pangolin, civet, raccoon dog, or even human) that is simultaneously co-infected by two viruses that recombine.<p>The problem with genome data centric analysis is that no distinction is made between RNA samples and virus isolates. Key evidence for the gain-of-function hypothesis, is one or more lab isolates that match long segments of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, including non-coding segments.
Better link with context <a href="https://www.minervanett.no/angus-dalgleish-birger-sorensen-coronavirus/the-fight-for-a-controversial-article/362519" rel="nofollow">https://www.minervanett.no/angus-dalgleish-birger-sorensen-c...</a>
When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger.<p>I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to spreading between humans? Intuitively, that doesn't make sense.<p>Also the fact that the WHO has kept changing its story about this virus from the beginning is not reassuring at all. At this stage, as crazy as it is, I'm inclined to believe the conspiracy theorists because the official version comes across as even crazier.
Has this paper either been peer-reviewed or submitted for peer-review as a preprint?<p>I have a PhD in chemistry and I certainly don’t feel like I’m qualified to judge the quality of the work or the track record of the authors, scientifically.<p>I think this paper’s deserves a thorough airing and evaluation, but I don’t think Hacker news is a forum well equipped to produce a high signal to noise evaluation on such a highly charged claim, to say the least.
So what would evidence, rather than speculation, look like in this case? A SARS-CoV 2 genome sequence dated before December 2019? Somehow identifying patient zero and corresponding records of their exposure at the lab? I’m skeptical that any hard evidence will be found. It seems to me the origin is likely to remain speculative indefinitely.
This article is poorly argued.<p>For example, in their point 1 they feel that since an aspect of the virus is well-adapted for humans it was not the result of evolution. However, viruses jumping between species happens naturally... <i>because</i> an aspect of the virus happens to be well-adapted for the new host species.<p>In fact, in this argument they seem to misunderstand the fundamental mechanism of evolution: a random aspect of a replicating organism provides an advantage in an environment, allowing the organism to thrive. For any random aspect that provides an advantage there might be thousands, millions, or more that do not. The existence of a particular unlikely successful aspect is not an argument against natural evolution. We expect many successful aspects to be highly unlikely.<p>Another example is in the conclusion:<p>> Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong<p>I think they rather significantly overstate how “parsimonious” their explanation is, but setting that aside, they scarcely address the alternative. In this article they address ways in which the virus might have been created by scientists, but do not address the ways in which the virus could have evolved naturally. You can’t conclude X is more likely than Y if you only consider the likelihood of X but not Y. So, e.g., they would need to survey the science around how viruses evolve and jump species naturally and show how it does not explain this virus.<p>There are plenty of more flaws in this article. But I’ll stop here. It’s probably pointless to argue with reason anyway, since the people putting forward this kind of nonsense already don’t care about reason.<p>Anyway, if this is the best case that the virus was artificially created, we can probably all rest assured it was not.
Lets throw them a bone and say they're right, what do we do next? What actions do or can we take? Secure the labs? Shouldn't that be done regardless?
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/</a><p>Just look at the prior chinese coronavirus-related studies, they did antibody tests in villages near bat caves for SARS-like coronaviruses, some of villagers had antibodies in 2015 despite no reported SARS infections ever near the area.<p>Simplest conclusion:
Zoonotic diseases sometimes jump from bats to humans in Chinese rural areas. The case clusters stay inside the isolated communities and stop naturally due to low population and lack of super-spreader events that can kickstart an epidemic.<p>In 2019 it happened again, but this time a villager who was infected visited Wuhan => pandemic
It is interesting to think about the origins of Covid-19 with Bayesian statistics in mind. We believe that the virus originated in Wuhan, and the two competing "mainstream" theories are whether the virus came from a wet market or a bio lab.<p>I don't know exactly how many wet markets exist in China, but I would guess that there are thousands spread across China. A wet market is simply a place where fresh produce/meat is sold (think farmer's market). "In Hong Kong, for example, there is a widespread network of wet markets where thousands of locals shop everyday for their meat and vegetables. There is one in almost every district and none of them trade in exotic or wild animals." [1] Of these $\Theta(1000)$ wet markets, probably a few are located in Wuhan.<p>Notably, there is only one level 4 bio lab in China, and it happens to be located in Wuhan. [2]<p>You can't conclude anything with absolute certainty doing this kind of probabilistic analysis, but this line of argument swayed me to seriously consider the possibility that the virus originated in the lab.<p>And, of course, note that we do not have to assume any malicious intentions. It's easy to imagine a virus accidentally escaping the lab, regardless of whether it evolved naturally or with some human intervention to facilitate research. A State Department cable from 2018 wrote that the lab "has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.” [3]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronav...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.livescience.com/china-lab-meets-biosafety-levels-new-coronavirus.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.livescience.com/china-lab-meets-biosafety-levels...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state-department-releases-cable-that-launched-claims-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-chinese-lab/2020/07/17/63deae58-c861-11ea-a9d3-74640f25b953_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state-depar...</a><p>Footnote: Yes, I know that $\Theta(1000)$ just means "some constant" from a mathematical perspective. But I think the idea is clear, even if the mathematical statement taken at face value conveys no information.
Has it been peer reviewed? Otherwise not being an epidemiologist it is hard for me to judge weather the scientific argument presented by this paper is sound.
Impossible for non experts to interpret, but deserving of an equally careful and thorough response in any rebuttal claims.<p>> Conclusion<p>> We have deduced the internal logic of published research which resulted in the exact functionalities of SARS-CoV-2,<p>> including the convergence of agreement from difference classes of source,<p>> the timings of the stages of the research,<p>> and
the development of documented capabilities by named institutions and individuals.<p>> <i>These meet the criteria of means,
timing, agent and place</i> in this reconstructed historical aetiology to produce sufficient confidence in the account to reverse
the burden of proof.<p>> Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need
to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most
especially when, as we have indicated, we note puzzling errors in their use of evidence.<p>> In our companion article, in a
similar forensic manner we will explore the primary evidence used to sustain the hypothesis of zoonotic transfer.<p>> In neither
this article nor the next do we speculate about motive.
Evidence is a very bad word to use here. It's a hypothesis from (mis) interpretation of data. Virologists say it's not unnaturally evolved<p><a href="https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384" rel="nofollow">https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-or...</a>
Found a blog a while back where they linked to all the research papers the Chinese lab in Wuhan was doing. Very interesting read.<p>Basically they were studying animal to human virus transmission by bio engineering bat viruses to infect human cells.<p><a href="https://project-evidence.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://project-evidence.github.io/</a>
That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."
This seems to me to be a dangerous paper. It's effectively an opinion piece, pre-published, requiring a high degree of domain expertise to even read, with a clear conclusion in the title that you can see being used to deflect attention from the massive job the world has at hand (not that we shouldn't ask hard questions)<p>Why am I qualified to comment? Well, I’m a medical doctor (which frankly means jack shit for the ability to parse this paper) but got there through a major in biochemistry and molecular biology (which is a partial toolkit).<p>Unlike their paper on Biovacc-19 (0) it has not been accepted or submitted for publication yet (not enough to rule it out immediately because there is an increasing trend to pre-publication with the rate of research publications in this space as well as problems with traditional publication methodologies)<p>Without going too far the dissection, I would just point out that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 is natural in origin, this nature article describes this well (1).<p>Worth specifically responding to is their claim that<p><i>The co-receptor dependent phagocytic general method of action for infectivity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be specifically related to cumulative charge resulting from inserts placed on the surface of the Spike receptor binding domain, right next to the receptor binding motif.</i><p>Inserts <i>placed</i> is a poor choice of descriptor in my opinion. The Fox Newsification of research findings. Well, you can see the 4 additional amino acids that give rise to the change in isoelectric point in the spike protein in the nature article, and much greater minds than mine have dissected this genetically and decided that such a mutation is possible through evolutionary methods alone.<p>They specifically say they disagree with the findings of the nature paper so to go on any longer risks drawing my bow in this area further than I am comfortable, but I would sum it up by saying that in science it is always good to have dissenting voices (such as with climate science for all the good that that does), but with just how fraught the world stage is at the moment I don't believe this dissenting voice deserves much attenion<p>[0] <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527/S2633289220000083a.pdf/biovacc19_a_candidate_vaccine_for_covid19_sarscov2_developed_from_analysis_of_its_general_method_of_action_for_infectivity.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...</a>
[1] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9</a>
I just showed this to a friend of mine who is a biochemist and he sent me this —<p><a href="https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla...</a>
I am just astounded that anyone is taking this seriously. Epidemiologists have been warning us for decades about the increased likelihood of infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans with the exponential growth of the population and therefore, industrial-scale farming of animal. The intense proximity of animals and humans in these circumstances combined with the shortened lifespans of the animals involved means a virus that both spreads quickly and infects humans would thrive in such a situation.<p>This speculation is as irresponsible as it is baseless. You know as well as I do it would mean World War III.
Between this and the active surpression of research on the topic in China through intimidation and the ongoing denial and destruction of evidence, I see no reason why we ought to give China the benefit of the doubt.
Its likely that Viruses like COVID-19 have come and gone over time, and been completely unnoticed.<p>The difference being now that we have much older and elderly populations, often with chronic health conditions and deficiencies, kept alive 'artificially' by modern healthcare.<p>For example, approximately 50% of COVID deaths are to people in nursing homes. Without this population, the virus would be put down as regular influenza/pneumonia, albeit an unusually virulent strain.
<a href="https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla...</a><p>Do we know that this is the final version of the paper that was published?
<a href="https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla...</a><p>Not sure this is the final draft of this paper. Do we know that it is?
I wonder if this is a good point to be made against the paper's claims, given that viruses like MERS-CoV are not exactly proven to be natural in origin and even about HIV a lot of similar claims have been made over the years:<p><i>Gunnveig Grødeland, vaccine researcher at the University of Oslo, is one of the scientists voicing their disagreement with Sørensen. She explains that what Sørensen referred to as "inserted sequences" can enable the development of a more serious disease, but this is not unusual in nature: "Examples can be found in other viruses including subtypes of influenza (including "bird flu"), HIV, and several human coronaviruses (MERS, OC43, HKU1)."</i><p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controversial-coronavirus-lab-origin-claims-dismissed-by-experts/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controver...</a>
What is important is that this needs to be investigated and the world needs to take measures to protect us from total future annihilation in a similar situation
A while ago (18 June) former biology professor Bret Weinstein said the same in a Joe Rogan podcast [0], that there are several indications that seem to point out the virus is engineered.<p>One of the most interesting point he brings up, at least from my perspective, was the following:<p>- Bats are outdoor animals<p>- As such a corona virus that mainly targets bats should have little trouble spreading outside<p>- However if a virus has been studied in a lab, so perhaps the virus has mutated to spread more easily indoors and "forgot" how to spread outdoors<p>- Hence this could be the reason why at the moment this corona virus seems to have trouble spreading outside<p>- The virus originated very closely to a lab that is known to study virusus<p>But Bret also brings up other points.<p>Also, what I found very interesting about this podcast and related to the development of vaccines, is his statement on lab mice and the possibility that laboratoria currently use mice that might have been (perhaps unknowingly) conditioned to produce desirable results in tests [1].<p>---<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=6770s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=6770s</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=9597s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=9597s</a>
Do viruses closely related to SARS-Cov-2 do all the "unusual" things it does? Do they cause brain damage, reproductive damage, anosmia without congestion, strokes, and unusual clotting activity? If not, I would be reassured by someone explaining to me how a natural pathogen could pick up all these features at the same time.
This version has not been peer reviewed, the peer reviewed version has many of these claims about it's man-made-ness removed<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb-discovery/article/biovacc19-a-candidate-vaccine-for-covid19-sarscov2-developed-from-analysis-of-its-general-method-of-action-for-infectivity/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527" rel="nofollow">https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb-discovery/articl...</a><p><a href="https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla...</a>
Even the title seems intentionally written in a misleading way...the OP correctly kept the original title but it is by design misleading with that use of which
The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created.<p>There's a reason we haven't seen a virus like this in a century - because it's so unlikely that a new virus will appear in any given year with both a high rate of transmission and a high fatality rate.
Look, when most virologists/epidemiogists look at this "evidence" and consider it too flimsy and flawed, then I wonder why people here are so eager to jump on it as "I'm not a biologist, covid19 is so unusual, it's obviously man-made". HN is embarrassing right now.
I ran a blast query against the cov2 glycoprotein that binds to human ACE2, and it just pops out of nowhere in 2020. There is a difference of like 30 amino acids from anything that came before, which is much too great to be explained by the coronavirus wild mutation rate of 1 nucleotide every thousand years. So, possibilities are it is a strain that has evaded researchers till now, some natural phenomenon vastly accelerated its mutation towards infecting humans, or it is genetically engineered.
Wait, didn't Chinese authorities said when this all started that there was a minor outbreak in the BSL4 lab, but it's under control? It's just when the "under control" didn't work, they started to cover things up.
Also weird is Fauci both promoted this sort of research and oversaw the funding line that went to the Wuhan lab that funded a very similar research in 2019. My theory is this is an accidental lab outbreak, and Fauci is advising because he knows the cause and is trying to undo his mistake.
This forbes blog piece contains a compilation of refutations attempt for the said theory
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controversial-coronavirus-lab-origin-claims-dismissed-by-experts" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controver...</a>
A unrelated(?) repo of material about Covid-19's source, last update was May 2: <a href="https://project-evidence.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://project-evidence.github.io/</a><p>Regardless of the source of this one, it is only getting _easier_ to engineer these extraordinarily valuable weapons. The 24x7 induced fear response is the real threat, not the virus.<p>Excess deaths are the only real measure: <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm</a>
This is very unlikely. The technology to design a virus reliably just isn't there.<p>What is much more likely is that a lab was studying coronavirus isolates from animals, and had a failure of containment. This has happened multiple times before (eg. with small pox).<p>But even then it is a moot point, because there is no way China, or any country for that matter, would admit they unleashed a global pandemic. Can you imagine the fall out?
The evidence is pretty compelling and I’ve suspected something was up the whole time in fact I began social distancing November of last year after hearing reports of a mystery virus. At some point in my life I met a mechanical engineer while helping out a friend who lost his job. This guy happened to be his neighbor and was the only one who was willing to run an electrical cable to my friend’s unit for a small sum since his electric got cut off. This guy explains he was working in a lab that did continuous culture experiments and explained how it worked. He had the blueprints in his unit so I had no reason to doubt him and paperwork from the lab. Long story short he quit due to military influence on the project and was pushed out over his concerns which were ethical in nature. He opened my eyes to the fact a virus can be evolved rapidly and made extremely resistant without specific genetic modification. A little bit of googling and I could see the same company was involved in research going on in that Wuhan lab. The point here is how do we define “modified” as it is certainly possible through rapid continuous cultures and selective survival of strains any virus can be modified. This happened in the early aughts and so it’s been nearly two decades this research technique has been in play. If it wasn’t for that chance encounter I’d naturally be more skeptical about possible modifications of the virus but just so happens that I’m not as a result.