The Most Basic Questions

Was SARS-CoV-2 a threat? Are we sure?

Many aspects of the COVID Event remain unexplained and unresolved. With so little proven or agreed-upon about what happened in late 2019/early 2020, I see a need to pose some basic questions the public has bypassed or thinks have been answered.

There are well-intentioned people who think it wisest to concern ourselves chiefly with the response or the pandemic response and leave our leaders’ assertions about a disease-spread emergency involving a stealth & speedy pathogen out of any demands for truth & accountability - at least for the time being.

I disagree. What our leaders were responding to matters greatly, and always has. Without an alleged threat there would have been no response of any kind. How is it possible to say whether and to what extent a response was disproportionate & destructive if we’re not sure what the threat was, or if it existed at all? What if threat was a lie? Doesn’t that change everything?

For those who live in a country that participated in the Human Rights Heist of 2020, The Most Basic Questions for authorities & those who advise authorities about actions taken “in response” are

What was the threat, exactly? Can you prove the threat existed before you declared an emergency over it and ‘did something about it’?

The core claim put forth by the WHO & member countries was not, “There is a new virus!” or even, “There is a pandemic!” It was, “There is a threat posed by a new spreading coronavirus (2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2)!”

The Most Basic Questions about that particular allegation are

What threat(s) did SARS-CoV-2 pose - and for whom? How was the threat determined? When did the threat “begin”? Why & how did the threat necessitate pandemic and other emergency declarations?

There’s no way to answer the “SARS-CoV-2 as Threat” questions sufficiently without interrogating the entity named SARS-CoV-2 beyond “its” characteristics & origin. Below are examples of simple, straightforward questions that (unfortunately) have not been answered well, including by those who focus on the lab leak hypothesis. Follow-ups like, “Says who? How do we know? Why do we say so?” are inherent to each one.

Characteristics & Origin of SARS-CoV-2

• What is SARS-CoV-2 (structure/function)? 

• How distinct/singular is SARS-CoV-2 as a biological agent? 

• Where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?

• When did SARS-CoV-2 come into existence?

Causal Link Between SARS-CoV-2 and Illness/Disease

• Does SARS-CoV-2 cause illness? Is that illness distinct in any way?

• Does SARS-CoV-2 add risk of getting sick with a respiratory illness?

• Does SARS-CoV-2 add risk of death? For whom? Under what circumstances?

• At what point in time did SARS-CoV-2 start to add risk of illness/death (if it did)?

Mechanisms Involved with SARS-CoV-2

• How did SARS-CoV-2 get from a proposed point(s) of origin to other places? 

• How long did those journeys take? By what routes did it “travel” (if it “traveled”)?

• Does SARS-CoV-2 transmit or “spread” between animals and humans? Does it transit or “spread” between humans? 

Impact of SARS-CoV-2

• When did SARS-CoV-2 begin to affect humans? In what data or qualitative evidence should we have seen those effects first start to appear? (What should we expect to see, in retrospect?)

• Why did SARS-CoV-2 first appear in some places with higher incidence than it did in others? What accounts for the synchronous “arrivals” between geographically disparate places?

• How was it possible for SARS-CoV-2 to be “spreading” without having any impact on all-cause or respiratory disease death levels until after officials in a country declared an emergency? Why did it appear to “hit hard” or “explode” in some cities but not others, even where the cities have similar characteristics?

From a policy and accountability perspective, reasonable answers to these & similar inquiries should be pursued in the service of determining whether there was a threat. Serious responses incorporate relevant data, qualitative evidence, and a proposed chronology or sequence of events. Conjecture or speculation is fine for entertaining possibilities where evidence is non-existent, scant, discrepant, or incomplete.

Not fine: Pretending that things like furin cleavage sites, emails between scientists, PhDs forming factions, old grant proposals, scouring bat caves, fibbing about research funding, grandiose theoretical models, or activities in Wuhan or North Carolina laboratories constitute evidence of an actual threat to humankind. They do not and are very likely answers to either the wrong questions or less-important questions.

A year ago, I put The Most Basic Question this way:

What was the ‘Global Emergency’ that required a ‘Coordinated Global Response’?

I still see no signs of one, including in the U.S. city “hit hardest” by The Threat and am hoping that by asking better Basic Questions, we’ll end up with better - and accurate - answers.

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