Coronavirus: Reality And Way Forward

So much has been said about what has simply become popularly known as Coronavirus. For an ailment as old as less than three months, the kind of desperate attention it has attracted has been quite overwhelming. In fact, it is comparable only to what was experienced when HIV/AIDS first came to the fore in Nigeria in the early 1980s, particularly in terms of the mystery surrounding what it really is, and its fatality.
This mystery surrounding the virus, like it was in the days of HIV/AIDS, has resulted in different people giving their own version of how the virus originated, what its symptoms are, how it can be contracted, and how deadly it is, based especially on what information is at their disposal. Some of this information is actually based on hearsay.
The most popular one of how the Coronavirus originated is that it was got from a bat soup, or soup made from snake. In what could be seen as a flip side to this, the impression widely given is also that the Coronavirus was got from the Chinese habit of eating raw things: rat, frog, fish, cockroach, etc.
Coronaviruses according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) were identified in the mid-1960s and are known to infect humans and a variety of animals (including birds and mammals). Since 2002, two Coronaviruses-infecting animals have evolved and caused outbreaks in humans: they are SARS-CoV (2002, Betacoronavirus, subgenus Sarbecovirus), and MERS-CoV (2012, Betacoronavirus, subgenus Merbecovirus).
In 2002–2003, SARS-CoV affected 8,096 people, causing severe pulmonary infections and 774 deaths, with case fatality ratio of 10%. Bats were said to be the likely origin of the virus, which spread further to Himalayan palm civets, Chinese ferret badgers and raccoon dogs sold for food at the wet markets of Guangdong, China.
MERS-CoV was identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and since then the majority of human cases have been reported from the Arabian Peninsula. Human-to-human- transmission, particularly in healthcare settings, has been the main route of transmission. However, dromedary camels are important animal reservoirs of the virus. The case fatality ratio of MERS-CoV infections is estimated at 35%.
In December 2019, a novel coronavirus, christened “2019-nCoV”, was first isolated from three patients with pneumonia, and was connected to the cluster of acute respiratory illness cases from Wuhan, China. Genetic analysis revealed that it is closely related to SARS-CoV and genetically clusters within the genus Betacoronavirus, forming a distinct clade in lineage B of the subgenus Sarbecovirus together with two bat-derived SARS-like strains.
Contrary to what is widely said about how the present Coronavirus originated, and given the fact that no clear origin has been given, a somewhat plausible explanation was given by a senior Chinese military intelligence officer who went on Absence Without Leave (AWOL) after his wife and child were allowed to contract the virus, thus compelling him to break his silence on the truth about the virus.
Expectedly, for security reasons, he excluded his identity. But his explanation turns out to be too good to ignore as it lays bare facts that only an insider can have.
According to him, the “Coronavirus” outbreak is far worse than the media are telling the world, and that its origin is not directly from any animal, but from some biological tests carried out by a laboratory close to the densely populated Wuhan animal market in China, but was intended for a different purpose.
“You will have heard that it originated in Wuhan, an industrial city in China, and that it came from an animal, most likely a bat or a pangolin, that was sold in a wild animal market.  You will have been told that it is an influenza-like illness that can in severe cases cause pneumonia, respiratory failure and death.
“Finally, you may have heard that although the disease is highly infectious, it is dangerous only to the elderly or to those who have a compromised immune system.  The official lethality rate is approximately 2% or so.
“All of that is a bunch of lies concocted by the Chinese state with the tacit support of the U.S. deep state and its friends in the European Union, Russia and Australia, and spread by the docile media in all of those countries”, he said.
The Chinese intelligence officer stated categorically that what is now christened “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” was, in fact, a biological experimentation meant for use to make anti-government protesters in Hong Kong become docile.
Unfortunately, after testing the substance on identified human subjects, who were mostly seen as people that were one way or the other opposed to the government, they found out that beyond making the subjects docile, it later killed them slowly, but painfully.
“They developed massive internal bleeding; the walls of their arteries dissolved; they bled out of their eyes and orifices, and their tissue disintegrated. To put it in a more direct Western manner, they started to ‘melt’. Death usually occurred through multiple organ failure.  This was preceded by at least five days of severe agony which could not be alleviated by painkillers.
“We decided that our Agent was unusable.  It was far too destructive for our purposes.  We wanted the population of Hong Kong to submit to us; we did not want to exterminate it”, he said.
By this time, however, the Americans had developed interest in it. According to him, “They hinted that they wished to use it to resolve certain difficulties in Venezuela.  Normally we would have agreed, as we maintain friendly relations with the CIA, but given the extremely toxic nature of the Agent, we declined”.
This did not deter the CIA, which at this point was convinced that the Chinese had developed something very powerful and wanted to keep it to themselves.  They offered a great deal of money to one of the Chinese researchers, who agreed to sell them a specimen.
“We found out just in time for the handover and tried to stop it from happening.  In the ensuing shoot-out (which was never reported anywhere), several dozen people were killed”, he said.
At the end of the day, the traitor agent escaped. But in the shoot-out that took place at the Wuhan wild animal market, which was just the location where the CIA was supposed to receive the sealed vial containing the Agent,  the vial shattered when it was dropped by the traitor who had agreed to sell it to the Americans.
“Of course, we could not keep such a huge undertaking secret, so we decided to order our state media to report that a ‘Coronavirus’ had broken out in Wuhan. In reality, of course, there is no coronavirus. It was all made up”, he said.
For various reasons, this explains a lot about how the Coronavirus came to be. The right or wrong of it can be scrutinized later, but right now, the fact that before now the Chinese have been eating whatever they may be eating without a sudden outbreak of coronavirus gives credence to the present situation.
As at last Friday, more than 100,000 people have been diagnosed with the infection in more than 80 countries. The virus has already shown that it has the potential to kill, particularly vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, and people with underlying health conditions.
It is also highly contagious, and a lot is not known about it since it was only discovered some weeks ago, and for which the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global public health emergency in January.
As the virus makes its way across the globe, different countries are taking different precautionary steps to prevent it, and also to check its spread should the need arise. In Nigeria, the Federal Government has taken various preliminary preventive measures. The same thing with some states, especially after the rumoured diagnosis of an Italian found to be infected, though with no other detail.
In Rivers State, the government, through the state Ministry of Health, has commenced various preventive measures. These include identification of persons with possible fever associated with the coronavirus, provision of facilities to quarantine infected persons, training of ad-hoc medical staff to attend to infected persons, etc., while also outlining preventive measures to be taken by residents, in accordance with WHO recommendations.
The recommendations include: regular washing of hands with soap, especially when soiled; washing hands with sanitizers made with alcohol, and observing sneezing or coughing etiquettes.
Meanwhile, various efforts are being made to come up with a cure, or vaccine for the Coronavirus. A notable effort is the one by Inovio Pharmaceuticals in Sorreno, San Diego, California, United States which, last week, after a three-hour marathon research, came up with a vaccine for the virus.
“It only took three hours for these smart minds to come up with what may stop the global spread of a deadly virus that has all but turned major neighbourhoods in China into ghost towns with tens of thousands in quarantine, and suffering from this virus”, a monitored statement said.
Reports in Nigeria say a group of four scientists is working to develop a vaccine for Coronavirus, for which Federal Government has earmarked the sum of N36 million.
As the world remains tensed over expectations of what Coronavirus holds, anxiety over its prevention and cure continues.