I received an article by Whatsapp entitled:
“Exaggerated
risk of transmission of Covid-19 by fomite”
It was written
by Emanuel Goldman, and was sent to me on 8 July, 2020 by Datin Dr. N. Kandiah for
my opinion.
Dr. N.
Kandiah, is a senior specialist medical doctor who was my former colleague at the
Institute for Medical Research (IMR) in Malaysia
Dr. N. Kandiah and myself have published a few papers together when we were working in the same department for many years at the IMR.
Dr. N. Kandiah and myself have published a few papers together when we were working in the same department for many years at the IMR.
She sent me an article how scientists gave various estimates the length of time Covid-19 virus may survival on non-living objects (fomite) such as on door handles, tables and chairs before they can be transmitted "alive" to infect a person.
She sent the article to me through our regular WhatsApp chat for my comment.
She sent the article to me through our regular WhatsApp chat for my comment.
Here’s what
I think and reply.
Hi my dear
Datin Dr. Kandiah
Thank you
for sharing your question
First of
all I would rather prefer you ask me this question orally than in writing.
This is
because of the length of the answer needed to explain in detail.
Furthermore,
an oral answer is at least 10 times faster, and less effort for me
Nevertheless,
it may be easier for me to post my
answer temporary in my blog which can accommodate longer text than replying
through Whatsapp chat using our our smart phones
Coronavirus
are Pre-life Biomolecules:
First of
all, these scientists who were trying to measure the survival time of Covid-19
viruses on fomite were using unnatural
methods and environments.
Straight
away we need to know that all viruses including coronaviruses and pion
particles unlike bacteria and other microorganisms are not living particles whether
left for just an hour, for a day, a week or for months.
Coronaviruses
do not have DNA as their genome, but RNA. This means they can only translate
and not transcribe. Thus biologically they are ‘dead’ if they are unable to
multiply by themselves but need a living host nucleic acids and their DNA for
supply.
The RNA of
Covid-19 virus is far too short and simple to be considered living whether on
fomite or inside an animal / human cell.
The RNA of
the coronavirus is just a short 29,811 nucleotides in length. Compare this with
our human genome which is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences encoded as
DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and also in a small DNA
molecule found within individual mitochondria.
The total
length of our human genome is over 3 billion base pairs in comparison. It is
this complexity that gives us or other organisms the living properties of life
and bearing all the characteristics of a living organism
Each
SARS-CoV-2 virion is 50–200 nanometres in diameter (1).
Like other
coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 has four structural proteins, known as the S (spike),
E (envelope), M (membrane), and N (nucleocapsid) proteins; the N protein holds
the RNA genome, and the S, E, and M proteins together create the viral envelope
(2).
Based on
their relatively simple protein-based structure they are not capable of complex
chemistry that is characteristics and common in living organisms that gives
life.
Hence they
can only depend on a living host merely to duplicate themselves, but devoid of
all other characteristics of life as defined earlier.
Under such
situations I believe viruses including coronaviruses may be able to remain in
suspended animation indefinitely over very long periods of time outside a human
body, and yet still very potential if a chance becomes favorable for it to
infect from a fomite
They are
unlike other living organisms with cells and DNA that can duplicate themselves,
coronaviruses cannot do the same.
Definition of Life:
The
traditional definition of life is one that moves on its own, respires, respond
and is sensitive to stimulus, have its own metabolism, grows on its own, one that
reproduces on its own, feeds, excretes, and requires nutrition.
However, I would prefer to label this as the characteristics of life rather than its definition as we have little clue what is it that makes non-living molecules become alive and living.
See my other sites on "Mysteries of Life here:
1.
1. “The
Mystery of Life”:
2. Jesus
First Miracle:
3. Life
in the Universe: By Intelligent Design or by Accident:
Coronaviruses
and all viruses do not have these properties except multiply inside a living
host. It cannot feed and reproduces on its own, and hence they are not
considered as “living”
Since all
viruses including Covid-19 are largely pre-life inanimate protein particles
that has no life in them outside a living hosts it is meaningless for
scientists to talk about “survival time” on fomite.
Infection from Fomite?:
However scientists
claim that on fomite surfaces the amount of active virus decreases over time
until it can no longer cause infection (3), and surfaces are thought not to be
the main way the virus spreads (4).
However
they admit it is unknown what amount of
virus on surfaces is required to cause infection via fomite, but again some claimed the virus can be detected for up to four hours on
copper, up to one day on cardboard, and up to three days on plastic
(polypropylene) and stainless steel (5, 6, 7, 8).
Then they
went on to suggest (without evidence) that fomite surfaces are easily
decontaminated with household disinfectants which kill the virus outside the
human body or on the hands (9).
But none of
the scientists was able to demonstrate conclusively that the coronavirus were
“alive” before they became “dead” and no longer infective whatever the numbers
left?
Without being
able to demonstrate their infectivity it is not possible to put figures on
their “survival time”
We can put
a cat, a dog or any living creature inside a cage without giving it food and
water we can determine their survival time.
But we
cannot put a brick, a stone, a piece of
rock, a hammer, a pot or any inanimate object inside a cage and don’t give it food and water
it would be absurd to measure how long
will these inanimate objects can “survive” in the cage.
Such
experiment does not make sense. But these scientists were doing just that?
Unfortunately
in order to demonstrate their degrees of infectivity this can only be done
through human experiments which of course would be highly unethical to conduct.
Animal
models would not be suitable as the results may not be translated onto humans
just like the corona virus affect humans but not the bats, pangolins and civet
cats
Hence, to
me there is no question about using the term “survival time” to determine their
“infectivity” if they cannot demonstrate the relationship between survival time
and its infectivity on humans.
A Jumping Guest:
However,
one may say that they can remain in an animal reservoir in between a certain
period of time before jumping species to infect humans as a zoonotic disease.
There is
actually no definitive evidence yet to link this virus to an intermediate living animal reservoir, such
as a pangolin, to its introduction to humans. (10) (11), let alone surviving on-living
objects and fomite.
The virus
shows little genetic diversity and that the spillover event introducing
SARS-CoV-2 to humans was merely by favorable chance.
What was
even more interesting at least to me was that, on 3 July 2020, scientists
reported finding a major genetic risk
factor of the Covid-19 virus was inherited from archaic Neanderthals 60,000
years ago (13, 14).
If this
finding is true, the most interesting question I have asked myself is how did
this virus “survived” for 60,000 years without infecting any human beings? Did
they survive on fomite?
The
scientists who gave various “survival time” on fomite varying from a few hours
to a few days seems very uncertain
and very flicked-minded, making their
estimation highly unreliable.
They may not
even know that this virus may have been existence on Earth for a very long time
without infecting any animals or humans until now? Why then did they suddenly
become “alive” after a long, long period of latency?
What is
more interesting was, even before the outbreak in Wuhan in December, 2019,
COVID-19 virus was already found in sewage water samples in Brazil.
The finding
is two months earlier than the first official confirmed case of COVID-19 in the
Americas on January 21, and much earlier than the first reported case in Brazil
at the end of February.
This
finding was also much earlier than those found in Wuhan, suggesting this virus
did not originate from China.
Recently Dr.
Tom Jefferson from the University of Oxford believes many viruses lie dormant
throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favorable. That is more
likely and I do concur with him.
Since coronaviruses
like all viruses do not fall within the definition of a living organism, they
do not require nutrition, air, warmth, complex chemistry of metabolism, like
all other living organisms. Hence, they may be able to remain infective outside
a living host on fomite for very long periods of time.
All living
organisms must satisfy the following characteristics in that they respond to their environment, grow and
change, able to reproduce and have offspring, have complex chemistry, maintain
homeostasis, have structures called
cells and able to pass their traits onto their offspring
Coronaviruses
like all other viruses do not possess any of these life characteristics except
they can only reproduce themselves once inside a host cell.
In my
opinion they can remain almost all eternity in suspended animation until they
can find a suitable host like bats, civet cats and humans to infect and
multiply.
Once again,
the question on survival time of the corona virus outside a living body on an
inanimate surface or object such as on a door handle, on a seat or chair, or a
door…etc. is completely irreverent, and should never be asked let alone attempt
to determine because all viruses including SARS, MERS, Covid-19 are all
non-living protein particles like prions and they may remain dominant indefinitely.
They don’t
even display abiogenesis, meaning becoming alive and living from non-living
matter fomite such as from the floor, walls, tables, chairs or door
handles, which people touch or from the
chair people sit on.
The other
problem we have not solved is where did this virus come from? Some say it came
from the bats, others claimed it originated from the ant-eater (pangolin),
others believed from wild birds, and then transferred along the line to humans.
Although
four of the five patients from whom this virus was identified were associated
with a seafood market in Wuhan, the exact origin of infection is unknown. The
CoV could have been transmitted to humans through an intermediate carrier, such
as in the case of SARS-CoV (palm civet meat) or MERS-CoV (camel).
If that
finding was true, then where was this group of similar viruses hiding before
entering into these animals? Were they lying low and latent on fomite for
several million or 2-3 billion years?
They may
have been some ancient viruses that may have undergone multiple mutations to
give rise to this strains exactly like how various species of life were evolved
through very minute changes in their cellular mutations over millions of years
due to changing or hostile environments that necessitates such changes by
Natural Selection Finally they all emerged differently.
Read more
from Asian Scientist Magazine at:
Evidence
that they belong to the same virus, but mutated strains found in humans is
found in this example:
The
scientists first obtained bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid samples taken from
the patients isolated the DNA and RNA, then sequenced the genetic material.
Most of the viral sequences belonged to the CoV family of viruses, which
includes the SARS-CoV and the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related (MERS)
CoV.
But no one
so far is able to tell us from where did the camels, birds, bats, wild fowls, or
ass first got this virus?
Then when they
cannot answer, they started blaming the Chinese who created it in their labs,
and call it the “Chinese virus”
When there
were numerous objections to this conspiracy, they then claimed it started in the wild life
market in Wuhan.
But they
stopped short of explaining how a teenager American girl on the other side of
this Planet Earth, 12,500 km away across the Pacific Ocean got infected by this
coronavirus at the same time as those in Wuhan
But they
stopped short of claiming the bats flew
to America, or the pangolin and the camels crawled all the way from Wuhan to
America exactly at the same time to
infect this girl, or did the girl touched some fomite parcel sent to her from China within a
few hours of the virus ‘survival time”
I just
cannot imagine how confused these scientists were to come out with all sorts
of theories, conspiracies because none
can explain where did this virus first originated, and how did it suddenly became “alive” from nowhere
- be it from fomite or from animal hosts
The third
problem with specialist scientists is that they all look at the problem only from
their own narrow-blinded specialist.
This is
like the 4 blind men trying to describe an elephant.
I think
scientists who describe the origin of this virus need also undergo a specialized courses on astrobiology, evolutionary biology and the
origin of life to understand where all
life, including pre-life RNA and DNA biomolecules like viruses as precursors to
life that first originated on Earth or outside this planet.
These
viruses, be they SARS, MERS, or
SARS-Covid-19 or any of the millions of other
viruses may have been already been in existence here on Earth on their own without any living hosts for 3 -4 billion years
Life from Outer Space:
Astronomers
and astrobiologists estimate that high above Earth there is an estimated 100 –
400 metric tons of cosmic dusts peppering down on Earth every day, some of
which are carriers of viruses or some life forms.
Almost all
do not require any living host to “survive” their long journey in space in suspended
animation at a frigid temperature of near absolute zero temperature for 4.5
billion years since these precursor biomolecules of life are not living and
they do not need air, food, water or any energy to keep them “alive” in latent
suspended animation. They may remain inactive on space fomites for thousands of
millions of years kept at just 3 Kelvin, a temperature so cold where even all
molecular movement freezes.
There is
some possibility that these coronaviruses may not have originated on Earth but
may have been seeded on this Planet from
outer space although some scientist refuted this possibility.
The first
scientist who proposed the panspermia origin of life as coming from another
world was Arrhenius who in 1903 visualized that life may have been seeded to
earth by spores carried by meteorites.
The
Panspermia theory was also supported in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Sir
Fred Hoyle, the renowned British cosmologist and mathematician together with
Cambridge University physicist Chandra
Wickramasinghe who suggested that Earth is continuously been bombarded by pathogenic
bacteria and viruses from space
It is
possible to conceive even before all life began on Earth 3500 million years ago
viruses were already here 300 million years earlier when the first RNA world
(chemical fossils) appeared as viruses without any living life then to host
them.
They all “survived”
for a few thousand million years on fomite which was the sterile ancient oceans and on a sterile land so to speak.
The first
prebiotic chemistry was only possible 4000 million years ago after the
accretion of earth.
Bacteria
and photosynthesis only appeared 3,500 million years ago and the first
eukaryotes and sexual reproduction was possible only between 2,700 – 1,900
million years ago.
Once again,
there were no living creatures then, and yet the viruses were already there.
They were
thriving in the primordial oceans considered as sterile and void of all life,
and yet these viruses were able to “survive”
Abiogenesis
is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, and to the best
of my knowledge on the origin of life this is highly improbable, and this also
applies to coronaviruses including Covid-19
Summary:
The
duration of time outside a living host such as on fomite is indeterminable.
Their existence may have already been sewage water, in the ancient oceans and
seas for a few billion years, until they undergo multiple mutations into
various forms of viruses, each better adapted by Natural Selection, and yet remain
infective for long periods of time.
Then they jumped
from one animal species to another until around 2003 they emerged as SARS in
humans, after which they may have undergone further mutations in other animal
such as camels, before emerging as MERS
They may
have undergone further mutations in bats, pangolins and civet cats before visiting
humans as our guests under favorable conditions.
I hope my
brief explanation answers your question. It would be much better for me to give
an oral answer or a slide presentation to your question where I can fill in the
necessary technical details for scientists to elaborate on them.
I suppose
this short and simple account should suffice for the time being
Thank you
once again for your question and for sharing your question
I would
appreciate if you could write a comment here
lim ju boo
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