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Results: Animal Passage and the COVID-19 Virus

Published on 08/02/2020
Anonymous
2306
Trivia
Does research which involves taking deadly viruses and enhancing their ability to spread quickly help researchers prevent a pandemic?
1.
1.
What is animal passage (gain-of-function)? In these experiments, a virus is injected into one animal, typically a ferret, which is considered a good stand-in for humans. When it falls sick, the slightly mutated virus from its body is injected into another ferret. The process is repeated until a ferret catches the virus simply by exposure to a sick ferret. This is called transmissibility, the ability of a virus to move from ferret to ferret or one person to another, the beginning of an epidemic. Did you know that viruses created through animal passage are hard to distinguish from viruses found in nature because no genetic engineering is required?
Yes
15%
335 votes
No
52%
1199 votes
Undecided
17%
401 votes
N/A
16%
371 votes
2.
2.
Animal passage experiments are controversial because they can create terrifying mutations that can escape from a lab. For the lab in Wuhan, no scientific papers were published on animal passage experiments at the lab, although it is possible that work was done and papers were not published before the pandemic began in late 2019. There were concerns about the safety procedures at the Wuhan lab. Diplomatic cables from 2018 show that U.S. embassy staff were worried about experiments conducted at the lab and feared that a virus could escape and cause a pandemic. Were you aware that Chinese authorities now censor scientific papers on the origin of the pandemic?
Yes
22%
518 votes
No
50%
1143 votes
Undecided
13%
306 votes
N/A
15%
339 votes
3.
3.
The Chinese government has said that the new virus occurred naturally. U.S. intelligence agencies initially agreed with that view. But in March 2020 they officially acknowledged the possibility that SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market. The Chinese wet markets have reopened. If the virus came from a lab, then do you think that it makes sense that China's government opened the markets again?
Yes
21%
475 votes
No
28%
657 votes
Undecided
34%
774 votes
N/A
17%
400 votes
4.
4.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in China's cosmopolitan city where the pandemic began, has collected more bat coronaviruses from remote caves than any other lab in the world. It has conducted experiments to genetically engineer viruses. In 2018, the Institute built a BSL-4 lab, the kind of facility for animal passage (gain-of-function) experiments, another procedure that creates mutations of viruses in a lab. Did you know that there are about 30 BSL-4 laboratories worldwide?
Yes
12%
272 votes
No
88%
2034 votes
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