When Jim Haslam first contacted me about his new book COVID-19: Mystery Solved he pasted in some information about the book which contained the following sentence:
We will explore the origin of the virus and expose its creators. SARS-CoV-2 was designed to spread; contagion was a feature, not a bug until the animal vaccine jumped species at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Being a trained biologist, I immediately thought I had spotted an error in the phrase “until the animal vaccine jumped species” and emailed Jim accordingly. But it turned out not to be an error.
Jim Haslam presents a controversial hypothesis regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, challenging the widely accepted narratives of a natural spillover or a simple lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The author posits that the virus was an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, designed to spread among bats but accidentally infecting humans in Wuhan. The information came to him, initially, in a leaked memo after which he started digging.
This ‘self-spreading vaccine’ theory suggests that key figures in US biodefence research, including Dr Anthony Fauci, were involved in its development and subsequent cover-up. The document details the project and research grants that allegedly funded this research, asserting that the virus’s unique genetic features, particularly the furin cleavage site, point to its engineered nature and ability to transmit efficiently in specific American laboratory animals.
Attention turned to bats, given the historical outbreaks of bat coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-1 in 2023. The aim was to target the natural animal reservoirs in their native habitats with a vaccine designed to self-spread among them. Due to the difficulty of keeping Chinese bats in captivity, the work had to take place in China and at its leading centre for viral research in Wuhan.
The above explains, according to Haslam, what was going on in Wuhan and why. But how did the vaccine/virus jump humans? The story begins with Assistant Professor Danielle Anderson, an Australian working in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Haslam claims that some carelessness by her in the process of working with infected bats, possibly a needlestick injury, led to her becoming infected. She travelled between her dormitory and the laboratory in a dedicated bus along with other laboratory workers and that was how it spread.
Haslam presents a map of Wuhan showing that the initial cluster of cases was around the dormitory and it seems that Anderson was ill for a while and isolated herself there. Hypotheses such as the wet market being the origin of COVID-19, which we know to be wrong, are easily dismissed under Haslam’s scheme. These were simply part of a campaign of misdirection to take attention away from the Institute of Virology.
The book is not always an easy read for several reasons. Haslam – an engineer who has clearly mastered the intricacies of virology – has a very dense, detailed, stream-of-consciousness style of writing. The book is long, over 400 pages, with 30 chapters and copious appendices. Continuity between chapters is not always clear and the lack of sub-headings within chapters makes the logic of the argument hard to follow at times. To help the reader, the author presents a list of abbreviations – of which there are a great many – and a timeline. A dramatis personae would also have been helpful; people appear and disappear regularly as Haslam tries to explain the links between them.
Nevertheless, Haslam is an entertaining writer and there are some witty turns of phrase and clever chapter titles such as: ‘Why Did the Batman Fly into Wuhan?’; ‘When the Batshit Hit the Fan’; and ‘Of Bats and Men’. The chapters are illustrated with combined photo-sketch scenes portraying leading figures in the laboratory or at meetings.
One feature which I did not always find useful and, in some instances, impossible to fathom were the tables which often featured at the ends of chapters. These were not referred to, not labelled and had no legends to aid understanding. In the early chapters they were reasonably clear but became increasingly complex and obscure.
The book tries to convince by bombardment with detail. However, one detail that is missing is the provision of URLs to the information purportedly supporting the underlying hypothesis. Haslam says that all the information is on the World Wide Web and he has checked sources so that we don’t have to. As he says: “The information in this book was verified online, so you can confidently read it offline.” The “Abbreviated Bibliography” to which I turned expecting, easily, to be able to check some sources is presented as titles of articles only with no journal details. Naturally, they are not too hard to find by copying and pasting into Google. But hyperlinks or URLs would have been helpful.
The author lists the many scientists in the field whom he has approached for comment and verification – without luck. Until someone demonstrates otherwise, Haslam concludes: “I consider the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to be solved.” I remain uncertain but, nevertheless, intrigued.
Due to the complexity of the book, I used Google Notebook LM® to create a ‘Deep Dive’ commentary on the book. This is published on my Watcast channel and on Spotify. COVID-19: Mystery Solved: It leaked from a Wuhan lab but it’s not Chinese junk is available on Amazon.
Dr Roger Watson is Professor of Nursing at Saint Francis University, Hong Kong SAR, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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