Charles Heskett Rixey (born 1983)

LinkedIN (Apr 20, 2023)

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My experience:

Experience

EVIDENCE TIMELINE

2020 (March 6/7) - Traveling back from Prague, passng through Madrid, and landing in the United States on March 7.

" When I landed on 3/7 after traveling back from Prague through Madrid, there were 20 confirmed deaths in the United States. In all likelihood, COVID-19 will pass 2003-04's flu record around a week from today, 50 days from 3/7."

2020 (March 8) - Gets sick with COVID

" I got sick the day after passing through Madrid, just before Italy and Europe began to lock down. My fevered brain decided to put my past CBRN experience to use, and ever since March 10th I've compiled, analyzed and published articles and graphics, in order to bridge the gap between news cycles and actual scientific progress. to use the time to research and support a collection of information regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic."

2020 (March 10) - Start of Rixey's mission to research and support a collection of information regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic

2020 (April 9) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Hello world!"

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2020 (April 9) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "My purpose" (later became its own blog post on April 12 ...) 

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I have chosen to offer this website as a forum for information about the current COVID-19 pandemic, in an effort to provide meaningful, factual and useful content during what will continue to be a destabilizing time. There is no indication that our media will soon get better at filling the knowledge void they’ve created; as a result, confidence in those who deliver our news has hit rock bottom at the exact moment in recent history when we need responsible media the most.

My past experience and current observations lead me to believe that the big picture of the pandemic is poorly understood, and there has been so much conflicting information floating around that it has been very difficult to see what awaits us beyond the immediate horizon. My goal is simply to provide resources so that each of us can approach the coming months with intention – as perspective widens, willpower to overcome circumstance increases. The opposite is also true, in that fear increases when awareness decreases, and in the aftermath of societal upheaval a vacuum appears that will be filled, by one voice or another.

Just as the Native American parable states, courage and fear are interrelated; now is the time to feed courage and starve fear.

My goal is to learn and prepare, because those who expect “normal” to return are going to be disappointed. The odds of future waves of infection are high, and a lot of changes will have to be made in order to keep the engine running once flu season arrives in the fall. The statistics paint a clear picture, in that the near-simultaneous global response saved millions of lives; it’s also clear that applying the same medicine several times will negate the economic prosperity that fuels innovation in medical technology. Being able to see a storm coming is meaningless if all you can do is watch and wait, and America’s economy has been even more critical during the last decade of malaise in a majority of the developed world. In particular, the last few years of higher growth gave a bigger cushion to land on, but after witnessing unemployment go from historically low to historically high in six weeks it would be foolish to expect us to fully recover before the re-emergence of a global peak in cases.

So, our responsible way forward is to plan for the worst and accept the need for major changes as soon as possible. Our goal should be to do whatever is necessary to limit death or economic calamity as we wait for the development of a vaccine. Pretending otherwise might make the next 12 months less stressful, but “flattening the curve” is more important – applying the same measures as in 2009 (H1N1) aren’t enough, because 60.8 million cases of COVID-19 will produce 2 million deaths, not the 12,000 from 2009. That number doesn’t include the effects of hospitals at capacity for long periods, which effectively increases the mortality rate of any serious ailment.

We are victims of our own success. The unprecedented scale of our response in taking swift, global action is helping to fuel criticism of overkill, but flattening the curve limited the exponential demands that would’ve dwarfed the current struggles to care for everyone in Italy, Spain or New York. Specifically, that scenario would have played out everywhere at once. There’s a reason this type of outbreak represented the worst-case scenario in strategic planning; our only saving grace is that the CFR is closer to 3% than 15%.

Our time requires leaders, who are honest. But each of us should recognize that the choice is ultimately a reflection of how much we value our older family members, because children in schools is a possibility this fall, but our economy will have to allow space for older workers to be productive and safely distanced. How many teachers over 50 are in our schools. Nurses over 40? Our most experienced people are the most vulnerable, because a 2% CFR at 60 assumes enough medical care to provide for everyone that needs it.

Our responsibility is to understand how little separates us from 60,000 dead vs. 2 million in the US; creating ways to incorporate this lesson while returning to work and school is a small price to pay, if 2 million Americans can receive a routine vaccine next year because they didn’t die this year. There a lot of people pondering how much sacrifice is worth accepting in order to prevent that scenario-my advice would be the same as it always would’ve been in the past: if you’re not sure how you feel about it, you should go seek wisdom from your parents. Their perspective may be different.

2020 (April11) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : More Democracy means more COVID deaths

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2020 (April 11) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Number of deaths starting from confinement"

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2020 (April 13) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Life interrupted"

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Very soon, we will be faced with whatever punishment is coming after the

implementation of a global lockdown. There have been so many effects on our daily lives

and income that we truly have no past example to reflect upon.

This chart shows 9 possible trajectories for our US GDP through the year, based on how

effective our response to the pandemic is. These models allow companies to consider

various options so that a semblance of planning can return, but McKinsey's (a globally

respected consulting firm) model fails to address the possibility of a full return of the

virus this winter.

It's hard for me to be too disappointed about such models, however, when everyone is

trying to make sense of images like this:

Unemployment "Curve?"

It's hard to truly encapsulate how unique this event is in modern history; but in the last

four weeks the record for new unemployment claims was broken by 700% at first, and

then that record was broken again. (4 & 6 million in two weeks, followed by 6.6 last week).

In a month, we went from record-low unemployment to the worst level in 85 years,

topped only by the depression: 3% to 13%.

Tomorrow, i will explore specific aspects of the economy, followed by an inspection of

social distancing and its efficacy against the spread of COVID-19.

C.H. Rixey

2020 (April 19) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "The Corona Conundrum: How deadly is it - really?"

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There is a titanic struggle between two forces at the moment - concern over the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and concern for the economic effects of the continued global lock-down. Both sides are basing their arguments on the same basic statistics, but there is really no way to accurately analyze Case Fatality Rates without testing large random samples of people in an antibody study ..

The CFR is the percentage of cases that ultimately prove deadly, and it has driven policy far more than any other statistic, because our models could be far more accurate if we could properly project this pandemic. The anger over our continued lock-down is fueled by the notion that the CFR will greatly decline once asymptomatic people are properly measured, and two recent studies have hinted that this is the case; one from Santa Clara County, California and one from England (since i first started typing this, more have been released). In Santa Clara, they tested 3,000 residents for COVID-19 antibodies and found far more than would explain the 1,000 reported cases; home to 2 million people, Santa Clara includes San Jose, and based on their results they estimated that between 48-81K people had actually been infected and mostly been asymptomatic.

That is encouraging news, but the implied CFR would be in the neighborhood of an average flu strain, close to the .0193% of HlNl during the 2009 pandemic (in which 57 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide contracted that flu strain). That's a stark contrast with the 5.42% current rate for the US and 12% in the UK, and the difference can be partially explained by the invisible cases described above.

But there's still a piece of evidence to the contrary that's being ignored, and I decided to go through the CDC's historic influenza records to dig deeper. The Santa Clara study led to an estimate of approximately 1.5-5% rate of current infection, and so I decided to calculate the impacts of infection rates at 2.8%, 5%, 10.8% and 17.43% (pulled from the Santa Clara study, my butt, a 35 million guess and the infection rate for H1N1, respectively). My personal, unsophisticated guesstimate would be a CFR of .7-.9%, with a low around .4% and a high around 1.5%.

Why am I skeptical? Because the number of fatalities from confirmed cases is 39,090 - only 9,000 less than the most deadly flu season in the CDC's memory (since 1918, of course), in 2004. The A(H3N2) B strain has consistently produced strong flu seasons in the last 20 years, but the timescale is very different; the average 23,000 death-season picks up in October and declines in March, a six-month window. When I landed on 3/7 after traveling back from Prague through Madrid, there were 20 confirmed deaths in the United States. In all likelihood, COVID-19 will pass 2003-04's flu record around a week from today, 50 days from 3/7.

It's possible that COVID-19s preads at record speed, in the middle of the most drastic lock-down imposed in modern history (and by modern I mean a few centuries), but to yield 40,000 deaths in 43 days would mean that either a) somewhere between 120-200 million Americans have already been infected (per swine flu mortality), orb) COVID-19is deadly at a historic rate.

You can probably guess my pick. I didn't just guess, though - i took the state numbers of cases and calculated the correlations between 18 variables, including population density (after I finish cleaning up the density for every city above 50,000 people, in the US (about 750) I'll exchange urban density for each state instead).

There are far too many partisan assumptions that could be drawn incorrectly from this data, but 65+ state proportions of pop. are far weaker as a correlation than income, foreign birth, or total population - Texas, with two of the five largest metropolitan areas in the US, goes against each of these correlations and Florida isn't far behind (data in my more expansive chart to be published later today). I'm eager to return to work, but whether I go solo or join some consulting firm, I've prepared myself for the rise in deaths and infections that could fallow.

It's far too late/early to dig deeper at the moment, but I want to emphasize that the only interest I have is in providing unbiased personal observations based on factual evidence.

...

On the estimation of Case Fatality Rates for COVID-19 (3/22): [,,,]

Their overall estimate for SARS-nCoV-2's case fatality rate (CFR) in China was 2.4% (crude), 3.0% (among all infected) and 3.6% among symptomatic patients.

Their overall estimate for SARS-nCoV-2's case fatality rate (CFR) in Italy was 1.3% (crude) and 3.3% (overall). Additional estimates were provided for northern Italy specifically.

The rapid increase in reported deaths from Italy after 3 March lends weight to our estimates, but indicates that the number of deaths will continue to increase for some weeks, despite strict social distancing measures.

Additionally, dichotomization into asymptomatic and symptomatic is a simplification; SARS-CoV-2 causes a spectrum of symptoms, likely depending on age, sex and comorbidities. Serological surveys will be needed to better characterize asymptomatic infections [25]

2020 (May 11) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Wake me up when September ends... Optimism & Urgency in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine"

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On August 31, 2005, the punk band Green Day officially released the 4th single from their American Idiot album, "Wake Me up When September Ends." By then, the song was already very familiar to radio audiences, because it was both good and controversial; the music video depicts a young couple wrestling with the fallout of the college-age boyfriend's decision to join the Marines, while his girlfriend experiences a whirlwind of emotions.

I must admit that the song was powerful in my house, because on August 31st, 2005 I had just arrived in Anbar Province, Iraq with my Marine unit; my wife was 7 months pregnant with our daughter and had to adjust her route home to Texas from North Carolina because Hurricane Katrina had just vaporized a portion of 1-10 north of New Orleans. That fall, my emotions ranged from pride at having worked with the Anbar poll workers to facilitate the election and sadness because of what I had missed back home. I was comforted by the genuine tears of gratitude as hundreds of poll workers returned to our base with giant carts filled with ballots, and the image of that stream, passing in the dark with ink-stained fingers held high, was not diminished by the proportion of volunteers who had bloody bandages as an additional souvenir.

The juxtaposition of tragedy and triumph is reminiscent of our current global predicament. Lost amid the emotional and political noise, this week saw a wave of positive developments in the fight to discover and produce vaccines and other treatments for COVID-19. The worldwide efforts are proceeding at record pace, with 3 or 4 American, European and Chinese firms already in advanced trials and several dozen other projects hoping to join the club. This article from Wired (5/8) discusses the current picture: https://www.wired.com/story/frontrunners-emerge-in-the- race-for-a-covid-19-vaccine/   .

So, what will happen when September ends? Neither the question nor the song reference were randomly chosen - and the best way to understand the importance of that milestone is to glance back to the Swine flu pandemic in 2009. Although influenza and coronaviruses are not related, the HlNl pandemic emerged in December/January, spread very rapidly during the summer, and lacked a specific vaccine - traits that SARS-nCoV-2 (so far) currently exhibits as the pandemic continues into its fifth month. My last post, the "CoronaVirus Conundrum," compares mortality trends with HlNl and shows how different the death tolls would be if an identical number of infections materialized with COVID {Jl,000 vs.1.083.000 with 57 million casesl

In early October 2009, the CDC estimates that 22 million Americans had contracted HlNl during the pandemic. In early November, the new tally stood at 44 million.

Monoclonal Antibody therapy is not new, and many of the most effective treatments for cancers, Crohn's disease and Hepatitis C (often referred to as 'biologics' in commercials) in the last two decades were a product of this pipeline. Because side effects can be more pronounced, vaccines remain the simplest alternative for typical pandemic infections, but I have no doubt that COVID-19 is deadly enough (for susceptible populations) to justify their use. The production timeline at full-scale is shorter as well.

In sum, unprecedented efforts have been paying off, as the world races to develop vaccines and treatments in record time. The optimal response is for multiple treatments to emerge and be applied by the medical community as quickly and as broadly as possible. Our economies won't mentally recover until viable solutions are implemented, but our media and politicians have fueled the sense of pessimism instead of offering hopeful updates. My recommendation is for people and businesses to prepare for the worst this winter, but my gut tells me that the future looks brighter than it did a few weeks ago.

-Lastly, a poll of unemployment claimants (about two weeks behind today) revealed that more than 80% of the unemployment claims at the end of April were characterized by the individual as "temorary" I "furloughed;" should those numbers continue to play out, it would indicate that the economy can rebound much faster than the overall rate would suggest. How tragic it is, to see how few of our leaders are working to reassure us - compared with those seeking to exploit fear for their own purposes.

At least we can look forward to expressing our will in November, since we will likely be close enough to the end of the tunnel for its light to illuminate our choices.

2020 (May 24) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Hurricane Pandora: COVID-19 ... The latest research on how COVID-19 kills, and why it's so effective at it."

by -C.H. Rixey  / "Prometheus"  /  Saved as PDF : [HW00BE][GDrive] 

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Cautious optimism has been spreading across the world in recent weeks, as economies begin to move, people shift towards normal routines, and and communities begin to take stock of the damage left in the wake of the storm.

While 1,536 research teams work feverishly to produce vaccines or other treatments, others have been feverishly painting a picture of what makes the virus tick; the more I learn, the more convinced I become that 1,536 projects is not overkill.

First, it should be clarified that COVID-19 is a truly 'novel' virus - although the widespread use of face masks subconsciously reinforced the connection with the flu, scientists are learning that it is tricky to even label it as a 'respiratory virus.' A growing proportion of doctors and researchers now favor the argument that our current pandemic is the result of a perfect storm of infectivity characteristics and an unprecedented ability for the SARS-nCoV-2 virus to latch onto certain types of cells. The most persuasive evidence in favor of this theory is the fact that it helps explain one of the biggest mysteries of the pandemic - symptomology.

In early January, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of a new coronavirus, having correctly identified COVID-19 as the underlying cause of a pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan. For more than a decade, epidemiologists and policymakers had been aware of the threat of a novel corona/flu virus pandemic, but the most likely scenario involved the flu, because SARS and MERS had been so deadly that they couldn't spread fast enough to compensate, once quarantines were put in place.

COVID-19b, y contrast, appears to have hit the trifecta, by being highly infectious, broad in its symptoms, able to spread in asymptomatic individuals for 2-10 days, and also a near-perfect fit with the receptors of three types of cells: epithelial, endothelial and enterocytic. The loophole is the ACE2 receptor, one of a variety of types of cell proteins that performs tasks like reducing blood pressure. So, why is the ACE2 so special?

The answer is that it isn't - it's found all over the body, because those cells can be found in major organs like the nasopharynx, oropharynx, lungs, stomach, small intestine, spleen, liver, kidney and brain.

One of the most puzzling elements of the pandemic has been the emerging awareness of odd symptoms appearing all over the body; most pathogens operate within relatively narrow niches, but this corona virus appears to be more flexible. Rather than being driven by respiratory symptoms specifically, the infection seems to produce symptoms as a function of its point of entry. The first two targets are the lungs and blood vessels, and the longer the infection lasts, the more diverse one's symptoms become. That makes COVID-19 a kind of Pandora's Box - once opened, it will spark internal chaos until its symptoms reach the tipping point.

The ACE2 receptor theory would also explain why COVID-19 infection is so much deadlier in adults 50+ than every other age group combined. The ACE2 receptor is common among cells that line the blood vessels, pancreas, kidney & lungs - weak points for those with cardiovascular problems, diabetes and COPD. Other research indicates that ACE2 affinity makes it harder for immune systems to differentiate between SARS-nCoV-2 and the human cells around it, which can further intensify the immune response and precipitate a "cytokine storm," an often-fatal, overwhelming immune response that ultimately delivers the final blow through organ failure and death.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from these findings is that the pandemic is still largely misunderstood, and politicians remain determined to cast blame on the opposition for the spread of the virus. The truth is that America leads the world because of demographics, not assumptions. The United States enjoys a high standard of living and relatively good healthcare. The former fuels obesity and the latter fuels longevity. It's no coincidence then, that our number of confirmed cases leads the world; it's a symptom of our society at large. It's a demographic reality, not a political statement.

At the moment, it feels like we are in the eye of the storm, unable to forecast what the trailing edge of the hurricane will bring. The good news is that vaccines and treatments are in development, and many existing drugs have shown promise. ACE inhibitors (medicines that lower blood pressure) are being used in many cases, because blood pressure rises when ACE2 levels fall, thus upsetting the balance between the two.

In sum, COVID-19 is a perfect storm of chaos; infectious enough to cover the world, deadly enough to kill large numbers, with an extended incubation period and the ability to spread during that asymptomatic phase. It targets the organs where most pre-existing conditions emerge, while spreading through the ACE2-receptors in cells that help mediate blood pressure. Finally, in immunocompromised individuals, it hastens the process of the immune over-reaction.

The prospect of a vaccine in the near term is exciting, but until proven therapies emerge we should remember the lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic: as time passes, mutations appear, and that can be a blessing or a curse. In 1918, it was a summer mutation that led to devastation across the globe that winter; our best course of action is to plan for the curse and hope for a treatment blessing.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/path.5471 

2020 (July 26) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "An Inconvenient Truth"

by -C.H. Rixey  / "Prometheus"  /  Saved as PDF : [HW00B9][GDriv] 

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COVID-19 & politics is a touchy topic, but my analysis is bi-partisan - our corridors of power are infected by opportunistic vampires. How bad is COVID? As bad as it needs to be to win an election, of course.

I feel inspired to throw in a remake of a familiar quote, which came to my fevered brain while reading the news in March (still relevant):

"You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink;

You can lead a fool to insight, but you cannot make him think:'

In April, I posted a table to illustrate expected total deaths from COVID-19, by examining a variety of possible CFR's (Case Fatality Rates) and providing totals for each rate based upon the % of the US population infected. It has been widely understood that, if most people who contract COVID-19 never show symptoms, then the very high CFR's from confirmed cases represent artificially inflated snapshots.  [... incomplete sentence here ...] 

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The frustrating reality is that humanity's usual method for calculating such figures has been to study the evidence once an epidemic has run its course. In March, there didn't appear to be much optimism or expectation in this effort, reminiscent of how resigned experts looked when explaining the length of time needed to produce vaccines - as if literally nothing could be done to streamline a 'rather' bureaucratic process.

I doubt most people are going to refrain from all of the potential candidate vaccines until June 2021, just as I imagine the FDA will magically overcome some of their typical objections to emerging medications. I fully support their courage in graciously choosing not to stand in the way just this once - because my opinion "this isn't really the flu" hasn't changed over the last 3 months. It's a shame the rest of the political class can't decide whether it's a decent flu or some mixture of bubonic plague+ebola+anthrax; the concept of "the middle" is anathema these days, but just as with any other variety of vampire, I imagine there comes a point at which circumstances make their fear of a vegetable easier to digest.

Or maybe garlic is just that terrible, since 125,000 deaths have yet to spur consensus on the diagnosis. Thankfully, as my wife can attest, I am not encumbered by the presence of vegetables - but while Atlas refused to shrug I decided to go research the CDC's influenza records. I didn't have to be a scientist to spot the difference between the flu and COVID; I just counted. In the last 15 years, the average number of flu deaths has been rising because the more dangerous strains have been circulating more often than not, whereas the 3 previous decades experienced lower CFR's and thousands of fewer deaths. The re-emergence of HlNl in 2009 was terrifying for many experts, since death tolls for the "usual suspects" had been reaching record levels since the late 1990's, but a year later 10,500 had died (est.), out of 57 million infections in the US.

The dire projections stemmed from the fact that the first global emergence of the HlNl strain was in 1918; the novel influenza devastated a world without antibodies, producing 675,000 deaths in the US and 17-50 million worldwide (1-3% of infections).

Whether your ideal "safe space" is a gun range or a campus lounge, if you weren't born before man landed on the moon (FYI: 1969), then statistically COVID-19 is like the flu. But 100% of you have parents, family members, etc. that are vulnerable; an average-sized Thanksgiving for my family (15-20) would produce 2 deaths with 100% infection. The attached 3-D graph portrays the data from my latest iteration of CFR projection (another picture below). Any column lower than the halfway point of the graph means that the US CFR and/or infection rate are higher or lower than that mark, respectively. I can make that claim because the 3rd variable is total deaths - it's the only known variable and the absolute minimum, since CDC research continues to show far more deaths than expected in the overall mortality statistics from all causes, after accounting for confirmed cases.

For the CFR to be the same as HlNl (.018%), the total infection number would have to reach 700 million; America is the greatest country on Earth, but even our 110% effort would be 350 million people short. The .2% typical flu CFR would only require 70 million infections, but HlNl (highly infectious) took a year to reach 57 million - with no global lockdown, social distancing or people outside of hospitals wearing a mask.

The graph indicates that the likely answer falls somewhere in the middle, .5%-.9%, leaving us on pace for "only" 300-350K deaths before flu season. If a vaccine doesn't fully arrive by February, only random mutations or absolute quarantine would prevent this pandemic from eclipsing the Civil War and Spanish Flu as the deadliest event in the history of the United States. Congress could just pass a law requiring all businesses to allow employees 50+ to work from home and subsidize both sides for a year, to nullify most of the negative impact.

How depressing it is, to know that our situation has not yet become scarier than a vegetable to the vampires. I can't confirm that our current Congress is composed of soulless, blood-sucking leeches who feed off of innocent victims under the cover of darkness, but it's clear that they managed to spend trillions of dollars in stimulus with little pause for reflection. And, now that I think about it, there's a more obvious and understandable explanation: If I were a member of Congress, or almost any elected leader, the last thing I'd want to see is whatever was staring back at me in a mirror.

2020 (July 30) - Blog RixAnalytics.Com : "Using Occam's Razor to Open Pandora's Box: The Origin of COVID-19?"

by -C.H. Rixey  / "Prometheus"  /   Saved as PDF : [HW00BM][GDrive] 

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Many researchers have long believed that a lab accident is the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, but China has endorsed the search for animal transmission and rejected any real investigation into the possibility. In the last six weeks, however, an increasing number of scientists have openly questioned the lack of curiosity from their peers & elected officials - but new evidence has been published that provides a simple and direct answer to the world's biggest question. It turns out that a few details didn't make the cut when the SARS-nCoV-2 genome was sequenced in January, but on 7/15 a pair of researchers published their analysis of a Master's thesis describing an unknown illness that killed 3 of 6 miners after they had been infected in a cave. Spoiler Alert: the simplest answer that explains the stability of the COVID-19 virus (its lack of exponential mutations that results when a virus first transitions to human hosts) is that the virus had made the jump 7 years earlier - further evolution most likely occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where China's "Batwoman" and a team of researchers had brought samples from the cave, 800 miles to the south, to add to their collection and conduct research in 2013. Much of the debate over provenance has been framed by the speed of virus evolution, but natural mechanisms can account for the gap with or without genetic modification (see the article dated 7/14 for specifics).

The purpose of this article is to aid in the dissemination of the findings announced by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD; the article is the latest of a half-dozen COVID-19 pieces published since February. I have included links for all of the papers referenced/researched in order to write this article, including ones with opposing view-points (provided at the bottom of the page).

For those who are curious about my purpose or experience, I offer a short summary of my background: I spent 14 years as a Marine in the field of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) defense, with 7 total years spent under the auspices of the Department of State. In the latter capacity, I led a section of Marines tasked with training, equipping and assessing the embassy security guards' readiness against WMD threats; my tenure included the events of the Arab Spring, Benghazi, Mumbai, the rise of ISIS/ISIL/IS and the use of chemical weapons within Syria. In between stints at DOS, I spent 3 years as a Warrant Officer Instructor & Curriculum Developer for the USMC CBRN School; re-structuring the course made me intimately familiar with the Biological Weapons Convention, the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, and the lessons learned from the SARS, MERS and Ebola responses.

After experiencing the onset of the pandemic in Europe during a course trip to Prague ('Business in the EU', one of the final requirements for my MBA) I've spent most of the period after 3/7 researching and analyzing the progression of the crisis, and operating a non-profit website to compile unbiased information (research articles selected from the LitCovid database of the National Institutes of Health - now over 35,000+ papers) and analytics. The quality and relevance of modern journalism, already in decline, has become so partisan that even scientific developments are stripped of context and judged by how their conclusions support or weaken political objectives. I felt compelled to take on the project in March, and this article represents the most neglected, controversial and impactful facet of COVID-19 I've researched; the letter at the end of the article contains my thoughts from May, but any pride stemming from the potential accuracy of my early analysis is offset by the implications for post-COVID diplomacy.

The introduction from my 5/28 response to a friend's query:

"The ultimate question posed by _______ is the same one that many researchers have been asking themselves as this crisis has continued to play out - the question of provenance. The truth is that it's being asked because it's a logical conclusion that explains a variety of phenomena related to the pandemic; furthermore, scientists are scared to dig too far down the rabbit hole because they fear that their own governments might be more afraid of Chinese reprisal than the truth. After all, learning that the Chinese were negligent is probably the best-case scenario.

First, it is not unprecedented for pathogens to be accidentally released from a lab that is studying them. As CBRN Marines, we were encouraged to read a book about Lab 257, a testing facility on Plum Island, just off of the northern coast of Long Island. I now find it ironic that the book was chosen as a part of our reading list, since the US government denies several of the allegations within it. Primarily, the author accuses the lab of being responsible for the source of modern global-scale Lyme disease outbreaks, the epicenter of which can be traced to a sudden cluster of cases in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. The boldness of the claim belies the simplicity of the argument - that a major outbreak of a historically rare disease began there because Old Lyme sat across 7 miles of water from Plum Island; prior to 1975, cases were usually geographically distant from each other and so rare that it was difficult to diagnose since most doctors had never seen or heard of a case. Today, Lyme disease is endemic throughout the U.S. and the world.

Therefore, when COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan in late December, it was only natural for researchers to scan the surrounding environs in order to shed light on what might have sparked its emergence in Wuhan rather than somewhere else. It's not surprising that the Chinese government leapt at the opportunity to blame the Wuhan live-market, and by some measures the connection makes sense. However, it didn't take long for researchers from China to determine that the theory doesn't account for all of the identified cases, including the very first ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31986264/ )."

Pandora's Box

When I wrote that private message on May 28th , the primary focus of origin research had centered on connecting the dots for a presumed zoonotic (animal) jump or series of jumps, because direct transmission from a bat to a human would be much less likely due to the relatively weak link between bat and human cell/immune systems - as opposed to the similarity between humans and pigs (a la swine flu). Despite a broad effort, no local coronavirus strains came close to indicating a recent ancestral connection with SARS-nCoV-2, the RNA virus that causes C0VID-19 infection. The prime target species, pangolins, registered a genome similarity of 93%, which in viral terms represents a huge gulf in time and evolution, whereas the Wuhan Institute of Virology had bat samples above 96.3%; this is a correlation getting stronger in the direction of direct transmission.

However, there are at least two other major issues that have vexed scientists seeking zoonotic transmission, and the first is incredibly simple yet seemingly ignored - even if a bat managed to travel 800 miles from Yunnan Province to reach Wuhan, it would have probably been hibernating at the time a transmission took place in November. The more complex issue is based on the very low incidence of mutation observed despite more than 16 million confirmed cases; this is clear evidence that C0VID-19 is already well adapted to human hosts. It's so well adapted, in fact, that it's statistically impossible for C0VID-19's infectivity prowess to have come via gene editing, because no simulated virus has come close to matching the complexity nature has provided.

I must note that one of the primary pieces of the Latham/Wilson hypothesis is the argument that newer techniques for nudging genome changes in viruses have been developed, and the most common option simply uses human cells to force evolutionary changes to strengthen affinity for human hosts by pairing them together over and over again. This method speeds up evolution without requiring manual editing, accomplishing similar results with zero human fingerprints.

Occam's Razor

This article is far from a complete review of the Latham/Wilson findings, much less of the other articles I've included, but in order to maintain the slightest pretense of brevity I must move to the alternative proposal that the pair argues can provide far more answers than a wild goose chase for pangolins and civets in southern China.

The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the world's leading authorities on coronavirus research; her stature grew dramatically after her team discovered the animal source of the original SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, living within certain species of bats that inhabited a cave in Yunnan Province. 10 years later, her institute had become the epicenter and repository of coronavirus research and hundreds of different strain samples gathered over several expeditions. She led her team to Yunnan once again in 2013, and among the samples gathered were the two closest relatives of the virus that caused our global pandemic. The presence of such a close cousin was bound to intensify the natural scrutiny that emerged as a result of the laboratory's presence within the city that sparked the pandemic.

Whispers of the 2013 cave mystery have been slowly growing in intensity, as evidenced by the 7/4 story that ran in London's Times. Detailed versions of the 'accidental-lab- release'-theory have become more common as well, but the 7/15 article by Latham/Wilson has provided additional evidence and the most plausible explanation by far. It's persuasive enough that I've decided to publicly comment, so that their article (and 12 other related items) can begin to reach a broader audience.

Why does my CBRN/Marine/Historian/Analytics intuition find this proposal so plausible? The best answer is that China has meticulously ignored, obfuscated, erased or 'forgotten' many of the details within the timeline laid out by Latham and Wilson:

Actions speak louder than words, especially when China isn't saying much to begin with. Even the publication of the full gene sequence in early January was unplanned; Shi's team had completed the task more than a week before the milestone was announced, but an unauthorized release from another research group forced the hand of the WIV. Not until January 23rd did the WIV release the full sequence of RaTG13, a virus it had held for seven years. And, ignoring the 2013 outbreak leads to greater attention being given to the search for an intermediate species; why would scientists want to focus on a less attractive theory, when the possibility exists that the first emergence of human COVID was in 2012, not 2019?

Latham and Wilson's article ( https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/aproposed-origin-for-sars-cov-2-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/ ) deserves greater attention, so why haven't more media outlets investigated the most plausible analysis of the pandemic's genesis? China's intransigence is unusual, because many possible outcomes could help exonerate the country from suspicions regarding the origin of the pandemic.

The alternative is that China's silence is a natural result of being stuck in a corner, unable to offer any evidence that could clear their name because none exists. The reluctance to consider a lab accident has raised eyebrows in Europe and Australia, and the theory represents the application of Occam's Razor to the mystery of COVID-19's birth?

The Razor principle has highlighted a possible solution that demands a thorough investigation. Continued Chinese resistance would further imply that their unwillingness to help discover Pandora's opened Box stems from the fear that investigators might find their fingerprints on the lid.

(

My full private response of 5/28, written to a group of experienced & interested peers:

"The ultimate question posed by _______ is the same one that many researchers have been asking themselves as this crisis has continued to play out - the question of provenance. The truth is that it's being asked because it's a logical conclusion that explains a variety of phenomena related to the pandemic; furthermore, scientists are scared to dig too far down the rabbit hole because they fear that their own governments might be more afraid of Chinese reprisal than the truth. After all, learning that the Chinese were negligent is probably the best-case scenario.

First, it is not unprecedented for pathogens to be accidentally released from a lab that is studying them. As CBRN Marines, we were encouraged to read a book about Lab 257, a testing facility on Plum Island, just off of the northern coast of Long Island. I now find it ironic that the book was chosen as a part of our reading list, since the US government denies several of the allegations within it. Primarily, the author accuses the lab of being responsible for the source of modern global-scale Lyme disease outbreaks, the epicenter of which can be traced to a sudden cluster of cases in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. The boldness of the claim belies the simplicity of the argument - that a major outbreak of a historically rare disease began there because Old Lyme sat across 7 miles of water from Plum Island; prior to 1975, cases were usually geographically distant from each other and so rare that it was difficult to diagnose since most doctors had never seen or heard of a case. Today, Lyme disease is endemic throughout the U.S. and the world.

Therefore, when COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan in late December, it was only natural for researchers to scan the surrounding environs in order to shed light on what might have sparked its emergence in Wuhan rather than somewhere else. It's not surprising that the Chinese government leapt at the opportunity to blame the Wuhan live-market, and by some measures the connection makes sense. However, it didn't take long for researchers from China to determine that the theory doesn't account for all of the identified cases, including the very first ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31986264/ ).

Four months later, the official position of China continues to be that COVID-19 jumped from animal to human within the live market, despite the lack of any bats available for sale there. Furthermore, there wasn't an expected genetic marker from a intermediary species, something which could've substantiated that direction of investigation; instead, the evidence showed that human-to-human transmission was occurring prior to contamination in the market.

Based on that premise, the real question is figuring out where the first human case came from, but as the virus began to spread outside of mainland China the ruling party severely restricted publication or research of any information regarding the origin of the virus, and all articles are now subject to pre-approval from a government censor before they can be released.

As it stands, I don't lean in the direction of an intentional release, because that would run counter to the regime's long-standing goals in the region and globally. Instead, it seems far more likely that our current pandemic is the result of an 'oops' similar to Plum Island in 1975 - an accidental release of something actively being researched. It's disturbingly easy to imagine that some unnamed scientist, operating within China's brand-new (and only) BSL-4 laboratory, within mere miles of the Wuhan live market, somehow brought the virus home one night. The real story is what is spreading, not how it started.

Scientists have concluded that the current coronavirus is in fact a slightly mutated form of a strain first discovered in 2013, announced in this article from Nature:  https://www.nature.com/articles/nature1271l . This connection was acknowledged on the Netflix special episode regarding the COVID-19 crisis, ultimately meant to be part of a series. Researchers had been mining betacoronaviruses in bats in China ever since SARS highlighted the danger 18 years ago, and that 2013 strain in particular was notable for its receptors capable of binding to a human's ACE2 cell proteins with high affinity, needing only a nudge to do so. Ultimately, the strain was ignored because its other features didn't indicate potential for a nearterm threat, but within two years China had successfully advocated for (and received approval) the right to build a BSL-4 laboratory. On one hand, I would've seen those developments as a positive, since it would mean greater collaboration and oversight amongst the scientific community, especially for a country that is certainly suspected of harboring an active biological weapons program. The ultimate result, however, is that the 2013 species came to be stored in one of the world's largest cities, to be studied along with other coronaviruses and various samples of other high-threat pathogens.

I have no doubts that the virus originated from one of the two Wuhan laboratories, but it's very difficult to ever determine if the genome was tweaked without access to them, and I don't think there's any evidence left to find (or people to testify, for that matter). I can assure you that there is zero interest amongst the members of the House Intelligence Panel to investigate anything prior to the November election, as that would run counter to their preferred narrative of Trump's failure with COVID-19.

There's been a lot of conjecture about vaccines, Bill Gates, etc., but I don't see the need for any impetus beyond China's desire to gain competitive advantage. I don't think they had to work to tweak the genome, since the mere combining of various and humans within a research facility increased the likelihood of the jump being made - and a researcher who accidentally exposed himself would've been desperate to hide that knowledge from his authoritarian government.

The odds of the virus emerging from somewhere else are so small compared with the likelihood of escaping from one of the Wuhan Jabs that it only makes sense for China to have cut off all information leading down that pathway."

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