Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Rejected by The Conversation (again)

In recent years (about 7) The Conversation has rejected every single "pitch" I have made. This is typical:

"Thanks for the pitch. It’s an interesting idea but unfortunately I have to decline. With current resources we’re only able to publish  a small minority of the pitches we receive and while this idea has merit I’ve reluctantly decided there are others with stronger content."

Here are some of the topics they have not thought of sufficient interest. They have a common theme; limits to growth, existential risk to civilization, regional overload, the "fortress world" and philanthrocapitalism and planetary health. 

The most recent rejection concerned existential risk. My paper (Climate change, health and existential risks to civilization: A comprehensive review (1989–2013)) showed that while the risk to civilization, and thus to global public health, from climate change has grown, the willingness to discuss this in the health literature has fallen considerably.

I know that the budget for the Conversation has fallen a lot in recent years.
 
But I also think that their gatekeepers are very conservative.  

PS They didn't just reject my approach suggesting that the origins of COVID-19 could be from a lab even though, again, I had a published paper (the 4th such paper in the world, that I know of, published in 2020); instead they ignored my pitch.

On the other hand, TC has solicited one paper from me (since 2012); the experience (for me) was unsatisfactory; I felt rushed and pressured.




Monday, April 5, 2021

A discrepancy between the WHO-convened report into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the Addendum to Nature

On March 30, 2021, the WHO-convened study into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 was released. Annex D3 states that “with regard to the matter of morbidity and mortality in miners in a mine in Mojiang, Yunnan Province, where bats were present, Professor Shi said that the events had been clarified in an addendum to her Nature article.” 

 

These illnesses had occurred in miners exposed to bat guano in 2012. 

 

The Annex states “the reported illnesses associated with the miners, according to the WIV experts, were more likely explained by fungal infections”. However, the Nature Addendum referred to (Addendum: A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin) states that “we suspected that the patients had been infected by an unknown virus”. In addition, the Master’s thesis by Li Xu, which meticulously documents the clinical course of the six miners, hypothesised a viral illness, stressing this in its title (Analysis of Six Patients With Unknown Viruses). This thesis records that Dr. Nanshan Zhong (consulted remotely) reached a similar diagnosis, even noting that he stated there is a “great possibility for virus (sic) infection”. The Master’s thesis makes it clear that the Kunming-based clinical team (and Dr Nanshan Zhong) considered that a secondary (co-existing) fungal infection (secondary aspergillosis) was considered plausible. For this reason the patients were treated with anti-fungal medication, including Caspofungin. However, three of the six patients still died and it is clear that the primary scientific interest in the cases was the possibility of a novel virus. It is inferable that the possibility of novel viruses being found in the Mojiang cave was rapidly communicated to Professor Shi’s team, most probably by Dr Nanshan Zhong or the Kunming medical team (or both), leading to the first of about seven visits made to the Mojiang cave between 2012-2015, by Professor Shi’s team, as described in Annex D7.   However, Annex D7 does not explain why the theory of a bat (or bat-guano) associated virus infecting the miners, originally considered such a strong possibility as to provoke about seven visits to this remote cave, was discarded, apparently between November 2020 (when the Nature Addendum was published) and February 2021 (when Professor Shi and her colleagues provided this different opinion included in Annex D7). 

 

Annex D7 also provides a rudimentary occupational history of the miners’ exposure, stating that the “miners had been to the cave 2-3 times”. This contradicts the details provided by Li Xu (published in 2013, apparently based on clinical records made at the time of the miners’ illnesses, three of which were fatal) which states, for example, that one patient (aged 63) “had been working in the mining well for half of a month. He worked 7 hours a day”. The occupational history for case three (aged 45) is described as: “The patient went into a 150 meter deep cave 24 days ago. He continuously inhaled some unknown gas for 10 days”. The relevant occupational history of case five (age 30) is translated as “he has been to a big cave (about 150 meters deep) to work and was exposed to feces of bat for 4 days.”

Annex D7 does not give any detail of the source or “provenance” of information about the miners’ illnesses, other than it was provided by Professor Shi between January 14 and February 10, 2021. Unless one or more of Professor Shi’s team was working in the Kunming hospital in 2012 and was caring for one or more of the Mojiang-exposed miners the Wuhan team’s information about the miners must be secondary. Was it from Dr Nanshan Zhong? Was it obtained directly from one or more doctors at the Kunming hospital? Was additional information obtained from the Master’s thesis, written by Li Xu? In any case, claiming (as Annex D7 does) that “the illnesses of the miners exposed to bat guano in 2012 in Mojiang” were  “clarified” in the Nature addendum is a gross exaggeration.

There is a long history of obfuscation about the exposure and illnesses of these miners (three of whom died), as documented, for example by Rahalkar and Rahalkar (2020) "Lethal pneumonia cases in Mojiang miners (2012) and the mineshaft could provide important clues to the origin of SARS-CoV-2" and Butler (2020) "Plagues, pandemics, health security, and the war on nature". Neither of these studies is cited in the WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2 (including the Annexes), further demonstrating the biased and incomplete knowledge and selection of the literature used by the report’s authors.