A call for GRACE midst COVID-19, China, bats, and bugs

This is not the usual direction we head in with our ministry, and I want to make it clear we are not taking any stands or stances … except for truth and grace. Those are directions we always aim for.

Here is what is verifiably known. There IS a lab in the vicinity of the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. Not far from there is a cave chock full of bats, many who were found to carry coronaviruses of various kinds. Bats have long been known to carry diseases, along with many birds and various other animals (think rabies, for example, or bird flu, or swine flu).

Research on coronaviruses in bats was indeed being—openly—studied. Here is just one published study, by Chinese researchers in 2017, available for any to read: Extensive diversity of coronaviruses in bats from China.

Scanning electron microscope image, in false color, showing COVID-19 viral particles (yellow) as they emerge from the surface of a PATIENT'S cell (blue and pink)

Labs around the world study such things all the time and for good cause. MIT scientist Jonathan Runstadler wrote in an article in 2018 that his lab, “along with others around the world, is working to understand how and why new influenza viruses may grip us again. To do so, we need to go far beyond human hospitals and into the wild, where viruses persist in animal populations. As disease ecologists, we aim to understand the dynamics of pathogens in the environment and their interactions with hosts. By understanding more about what’s happening with viruses in animals, we believe we can be better prepared to evaluate, predict and respond if an infection spills over to humans, making people sick.”

The 2009 influenza (H1N1) pandemic, or ‘swine flu’ originated in pigs from a very small region in central Mexico. Flus of bird origin have come fairly often, and thankfully scientists work diligently to create vaccines to inoculate us against them.*

Bats happen to host a far higher number of zoonotic viruses (those that can pass from animals to people or, more specifically, that normally exist in animals but can infect humans) than other animals, many of which have caused human disease and outbreaks. A 2019 study warned that bats could cause the next coronavirus epidemic in China, due to their geographic proximity to several urban hotspots.

The jury is still out on whether the current novel coronavirus ‘escaped’ this particular Wuhan lab, although we do know lab safety has been a problem in China. But if it did happen, they are hardly alone in experiencing such accidents.

A USA Today investigation back in 2016 for instance, revealed an incident involving cascading equipment failures in a decontamination chamber as US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers tried to leave a bio-safety level 4 lab that likely stored samples of the viruses causing Ebola and smallpox. In 2014, the agency revealed that staff had accidentally sent live anthrax between laboratories, exposing 84 workers. In an investigation, officials found other mishaps that had occurred in the preceding decade.

Now to tackle the idea promoted by some that the virus was ‘created’ in a lab: a bioweapon of mass destruction. Bio-terrorism and biological warfare have existed for eons … starting at least 14 centuries before Christ (gosh, He must be weeping), when the Hittites sent infected rams to their enemies.

While treaties and declarations to cease and desist in their creation have been signed and ratified, they have just as often been violated. Here’s just one doozy: the US Navy’s Operation Sea-Spray, when the coast of San Francisco in California was sprayed with two types of bacteria, Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcesens. These bacteria are supposed to be safe, but Bacillus globigii is now listed as a pathogen, causes food poisoning, and can hurt anyone with a weak immune system. As for Serratia marcesens, 11 people were admitted to hospital with serious bacterial infections after the San Francisco test and one person died.

We could go on and on with instances of this, in trials on innocent civilians (or sheep on a Scottish island) and in war, but the point is humans can make mistakes, or be outright bad, too often. Worth thinking about is how almost always, the malicious behaviour stems from fear. Fear that someone else might be seeking to control, to overpower. Fear of the unknown.

Now more than ever we need GRACE. If we think others are out to harm or control us, why might that be? More than likely, because they fear their ‘other’ (which may be you) seek to harm or control them.

I still, however, don’t think a lab in China already studying coronaviruses in bats would have any need to ‘create’ a novel coronavirus when all they had to do was find another infected bat.

All we know for certain right now is we have a global pandemic, impacting every person on the planet, and only common sense hand-washing, sanitizing and physical distancing—for as long as it takes—will get us through.

The blame game gets absolutely no one anywhere. Let us pray together in our collective isolation, extend the grace our Lord to the ‘other’ in our lives, and check our sources before hitting the ‘share’, ‘forward’ or ‘believe’ buttons.

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* All modern vaccinations are made from inactive, or severely attenuated (weakened) versions of the virus or bacteria they are designed to help your immune system fight. Hooray for the people of science who developed life-saving vaccines such as against polio and other horrid plagues of the past. At its peak in the 1940s and 50s, polio paralyzed or killed over half a million people worldwide EVERY year. That was until the Salk vaccine was developed in 1954, and as that became widely available, cases of course declined.