Hypothesis for CORONA’s origin

When faced with uncertainty and unpredictability we naturally struggle to fill in the void with plausible explanations. Making sense of what we see and coming up with credible theories represent a legitimate attempt to better orient ourselves in the new environment. The increasing number of CORONA infections and deaths, the massive disruption for our daily life and the economy made us fill in the unknown with different theories. However, when competing explanations fight for shedding light into the same mechanisms (i.e., the natural or artificial nature of a virus), only one takes the gold medal at the final ceremony.   

     Here I’ll try to briefly tackle an important question using a rather factual and scientific approach: What is the origin of CORONA? Where was she born in the first place? The buzzing rumors on this hot topic goes from being man-made to having a natural origin, from arising in China or elsewhere (US?), from being intentionally or accidentally transmitted to humans and wide spread. I’ll try to objectively present some facts and let you decide for yourself about your favorite hypothesis. Anyhow, experts are not surprised to see so many hypotheses flourish in this context, as a close source to the White House coronavirus task force mentioned that "every time there is an outbreak someone proposes that the virus or other pathogen came out of a lab" including the US intelligence.   

     Synthetizing the discourse regarding the viruses’ origin I found four main hypotheses that seem to circulate widely:

1) CORONA was manufactured in the lab as part of the Chinese bioweapon program,

2) CORONA was brought to China by the US Army during the Military Games held in Wuhan (October 2019),

3) CORONA (accidentally) leaked from one of the Research Labs in the Wuhan area and spread to the densely populated mainland China,

4) CORONA jumped from bats to humans (probably mediated by another animal) at one of Wuhan’s wet-markets, where wild animals from across the globe were kept in insalubrious conditions.       

     For each hypothesis I’ll present the facts using a chronological order and my best scientific–impartial-objective mode and let you analyze the evidence in a separate post. Finally, I’d like to emphasize that my approach is apolitical and biased towards favoring only what I consider solid scientific data, as I am motivated by no additional interests besides my quest for understanding and making sense of what happens with our world.