COVID-19: natural or artificial?

147 million cases of COVID-19 patients were listed globally and 3.11 million of it were reportedly dead. Jobs have been lost, businesses have gone bankrupt, and global economies have been battered, leaving very few people untouched by this pandemic. However, despite the raging cases of COVID-19 around the world and its effect to economy, there has been speculation that the virus was developed in laboratories and released either accidently or as a form of bioterrorism. In simpler terms, some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick.

Scientifically, COVID-19 is natural because it is purported genetically engineered sequences, nature designed SARS-CoV-2 far better than humans ever could, experimental tools to engineer such a virus do not exist and it is highly unlikely the virus escaped from a lab.

Analyzing just four inserts in SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, the bioRxiv pre-print claimed that these inserts bore an “uncanny” resemblance to sequences also found in HIV’s gp120 and Gag proteins. Because the sequences could not be found in other coronaviruses, the authors asserted that similarities were “unlikely to be fortuitous,” and that they may have been intentionally introduced into the virus. But the truth is that the sequences the team looked at are so short that it is easy to find them just about anywhere. A quick run through the BLAST database, which compares nucleic acid and protein sequences, reveals that they can be found even in organisms like spiders (Araneus ventricosus) and the malaria parasite (Plasmodium malariae). In summary, the sequences are too short and too common to be significant (Navarro, 2020).

Laboratory experiments have so far shown that SARS-CoV-2’s RBD binds strongly to the host cell’s ACE2 receptor. And yet, computer simulations of the RBD’s mutations predict that this shouldn’t even be possible. In fact, the interaction is far from ideal; a different RBD mutation displays even better binding.If the coronavirus was genetically engineered, then logic dictates that scientists would have chosen the best RBD mutation. However, in this scenario, it is clear that nature has outsmarted us all—SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to be far better than humans could have ever imagined (Navarro, 2020).