-7

This is the article:

Lordchewy: "Exposing the Core Tenets of the Covid 1984 Regime, Part 2: Koch’s Postulates, Lack of Sars Cov 2 Isolation and of its Presence in Autopsy Reports", Medium, Jan 1, 2021

It claims that there is no evidence (i.e. a conclusive demonstration) that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogenic virus has been properly isolated as per either the Koch's or Rivers' postulates and no symptom specific to Covid-19 has been demonstrated in animals that have been infected with a SARS-CoV-2 isolates.

I like to know if the reasoning and the claims made in this article are valid. What's misleading here in the way the argument is presented? The article gives a number of references and seems well-written. It seems like there has been a lot of time invested in this article.

LangLаngС
  • 44,005
  • 14
  • 173
  • 172
Gaston Lagaffe
  • 101
  • 1
  • 2
    I quote from the article "_scientific establishment has not been able to conclusively confirm that Sars Cov 2 causes Covid 19_" Yet the World Health Organization [named 'Covid 19' the disease caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it). Looks like a very poorly documented article. – bradbury9 Jul 15 '21 at 07:30
  • [Related.](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50205/has-sars-cov-2-been-purified-in-a-lab-if-not-does-this-imply-that-the-pcr-test) – JRE Jul 15 '21 at 07:30
  • 8
    The “article” is an anonymous post on Medium by the user “lordchewy”. Hardly what you’d call notable… – Dan Romik Jul 15 '21 at 08:05
  • @Dan Romik the arguments in general are, I think, extremely popular. I think the other Q is basically a dup, though. – 0xDBFB7 Jul 15 '21 at 08:08
  • 9
    I note that one of lordchewy's other articles starts with "In light of my debunking of the germ theory of disease". That seems to confirm him as a crank :-( – hdhondt Jul 15 '21 at 09:49
  • The question seems awfully familiar. – Jerome Viveiros Jul 15 '21 at 15:41
  • 7
    Denialist claims that a *virus* hasn't been shown to follow [Koch's Postulates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch%27s_postulates) has [come](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/269/kochs-postulates-for-judging-if-hiv-causes-aids) [up](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10875/has-hiv-ever-been-isolated/50221#50221) [repeatedly](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10435/is-hiv-the-cause-of-aids/) here, and is repeatedly debunked for the same reason: Koch's Postulates pre-date the discovery of the first virus, and have since been replaced with more appropriate tests. – Oddthinking Jul 15 '21 at 21:22

1 Answers1

13

This claim seems to have originated from a profound misunderstanding of the word "quantified", perhaps an unfortunate consequence of the technical shorthand that scientists like to use.

The culture and isolation of SARS-CoV-2 was successful from the very first patient studied[q1] and is trivial and done all over the globe; here is just one of many protocols. Moreover, with CryoEM and synchrotron imaging, we have scans of the entire SARS-CoV-2 virion to a literally sub-atomic level - "isolation" is not very meaningful in this case.

Here is the paper verifying Koch's criteria for the original SARS-1 by infecting macaques. Here is the same procedure for CoV-2. Note the almost identical symptoms versus human hosts.

There is no ambiguity as to the relationship between COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2.

[q1]: "Three bronchoalveolar-lavage samples were collected...Virus isolation from the clinical specimens was performed with human airway epithelial cells and Vero E6 and Huh-7 cell lines. The isolated virus was named 2019-nCoV..."

Take care,

0xDBFB7
  • 1,934
  • 1
  • 12
  • 20
  • One could add that human challenge trials have been [performed](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2106970) in the meantime (in the UK) as well, so there's that level of verification too. Here's a participant's [account](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/01/human-challenge-people-volunteering-infected-covid). – Fizz Oct 18 '21 at 17:48