Has the SARS-CoV-2 virus been shown to exist? The latest…

Some people maintain the virus itself has never been isolated anywhere in the world to prove it actually exists, disputing the methods used by many published researchers (such as those in Korea, Italy and Canada).

Many others think that standpoint is ridiculous Here’s the most recent, well-set out evidence and explanation that the virus has unquestionably been shown to exist –an article written by Dr Joseph Mercola, based on an interview with independent journalist Jeremy Hammond, which you can access via his Substack page if you’re a paid subscriber / available here as a PDF copy.

The story at a glance:

• SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, photographed, genetically sequenced, and exists as a pathogenic entity

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grows the virus in cell culture to ensure widespread availability for researchers who want to study it

• At least part of the confusion appears to be rooted in how the term “isolated” is defined. Some insist a virus is not isolated unless it’s also purified, while others say a virus doesn’t have to be purified in order to be “isolated”

• Another sticking point for some is whether or not SARS-CoV-2 has ever been isolated from a human subject without passing it through animal cells, as such media could be contaminated and therefore the source of the virus

• Researchers have verified that the genetic sequence of the virus obtained from the American Type Culture Collection, a global resource center for reference microorganisms, is an exact match to the virus found in people with symptomatic COVID-19

But, still adamant on the other side of the fence is, among others, Dr Andrew Kaufman. Here’s his rebuttal of Hammond’s interview and assertions about the isolation and sequencing of the virus:

Bitchute link

Partial transcript / notes from the video:

We do have the ability to isolate and purify viral particles

Jeremy Hammond essentially says that it would be wonderful if scientists could just extract the pure virus and isolate it from everything else, but they don’t have the technology.

Kaufman states that we’ve been able to purify particles equivalent to viruses for many decades - through mass spectrometry, as outlined here (he says if you can purify exosomes, you can purify viruses through the same technique) and chromatography, as outlined here, in relation to bacteriophages, which he says are known as ‘the viruses of bacteria’. And here is another paper that outlines a method for isolation and purification of phages. And you can find photos from slides of isolated bacteriophages and exosomes, showing that only those particles exist in the samples.

Cell culture does not equal isolation

Hammond says cell culture is known as the ‘gold standard’ for isolating viruses, because they need hosts.

Kaufman argues that if cell culture is used in a lab to show replication of the virus (to prove it exists), then why does that need to be done in a lab, when they could just get cell culture right from a sick person? They could simply extract some of their lung tissue, which would contain a sample of the replicating virus that you could then isolate and purify using the techniques outlined above. Why are they taking culture from a sick person and adding it to another culture?

You can’t identify a virus simply from putting a cell culture under a microscope

Hammond says they observe the cell culture to see if there’s something that’s replicating and causing cytopathic effects. You can then put that under a microscope, see the virus particles and do whole genome sequencing.

Kauffman says that under a microscope you can show cells from the cell culture and see a variety of different particles, but how do you know what any of those particles are? How do you know which one is the virus?

Whole genome sequencing

Hammond says whole genome sequencing works for things you already have the whole genome for – you use a genome that’s already been sequenced as a reference to see if what you have is the same thing. However, when it’s a new virus, it’s ‘de novo’ sequencing, where there’s no reference sequence available for alignment. He says: “They can just find the genetic materials – they’d have to piece it together, it involves complex computer computations…”

Kaufman explains:

If you have an unknown organism and you take out all the genetic material, you know all that material has only come from that one organism and you can sequence the genome it in its entirety. With viruses, it’s what Kaufman calls ‘piecemeal sequencing’, which is what Hammond described pretty accurately, where you have various pieces of genetic material and then a computer does sophisticated calculations and simulations to put them together.

The problem is that the starting material for these calculations and simulations is not a pure organism. Often it’s lung fluid from an individual who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 through a PCR test (which is problematic in itself!) and that lung fluid contains genetic material from a variety of organisms – bacteria species, fungal species, the host, the air that the person had breathed in… - and the computer doesn’t know which of these organisms the fragments of genetic material are from, so it could be putting together a sequence from different sources.

In the first sequence that was done for SARS-CoV-2, they had over 56 million small pieces of sequences and had two software programs running trying to put them together to create a strand that was the size of a whole genome. They simply threw out the data from one program, because it didn’t fit what they thought it should look like! Over a million different genomes were generated in all and the virologists arbitrarily picked one. (See Dr Tom Cowan’s article, ‘Only Poisoned Monkey Kidney Cells ‘Grew’ The ‘Virus’’)

A decent control experiment was not included in the culturing of ‘the virus’

Hammond says that they have two cell cultures – one where they insert the patient sample and another with no sample, then when they see that only the patient sample has the cytopathic effect, they know it’s the virus that caused it. They can then put the sample under a microscope and see the coronavirus.

Kaufman argues that a proper ‘control’, where you only vary one variable, should include lung fluid from a patient who’s sick with something else – such as flu or pneumonia – or a sample from the lung of a healthy person. Then have the exact same conditions for both experiments – the same nutrients, the same antibiotics, same temperature, etc. As far as Kaufman knows, that’s never been done.

Cytopathic effects may be caused by other viral agents in the other cells in the culture, or by unknown factors – it could be the conditions of the procedure itself, such as the antibiotics. (See John Enders’ paper on measles from the 1940s and Stefan Lanka’s experiment in 2021.)

The characteristic ‘spikes’ are not unique to coronavirus

Hammond says you can see the characteristic ‘spikes’ of the coronavirus under a microscope, suggesting you can identify SARS-CoV-2 is present in a sample just by looking at it.

However, in this paper, published in August 2020, scientists report that they were studying kidney biopsies from diseased patients, many of which were from before the COVID-19 era, and found that when they looked at them under a microscope, they saw particles with the characteristic corona spikes that were indistinguishable from coronavirus particles.

The paper states: “…we have observed morphologically indistinguishable inclusions within podocytes and tubular epithelial cells both in patients negative for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as well as in renal biopsies from the pre–COVID-19 era. / We would, therefore, like to issue a note of caution for inferring viral tissue infection by morphology alone using electron microscopy images from tissues obtained from biopsies or autopsy material in patients with COVID-19.” (See highlighted PDF)

Kaufman says we cannot possibly identify something as SARS-CoV-2 simply because we can see spikes under a microscope.

He also references this paper that discusses the isolation of the virus in Australia, which states they couldn’t see the spikes in the sample under the slide until they added trypsin to the cell culture. (See highlighted PDF). Trypsin is a digestive enzyme that cleaves proteins – in Kaufman’s words, “they put a spike suit on the particles so they could look like they’re supposed to look”.

The sequencing template is flawed and scientists don’t question what they believe is correct methodology

Hammond: “Last time I looked there were over 30,000 published whole genome sequences – this is how they’re able to track the evolution of the virus.” He says that suggesting this virus has never been isolated to suggest that tens of thousands of scientists all over the world are in on some grand conspiracy to perpetrate a hoax against us.

Kaufman says the sequencing procedure he’s described (culturing samples, taking pieces of the genetic material and feeding it into computer software simulations) has been done more than 2 million times. “And, of course, each time they get different results because they can’t repeat an invalid experiment.”

But all these sequences have been templated against that original reference genome. So, Kaufman hypothesises that, because the original sequence is probably made up of fragments of all sorts of genetic material - much of which can be found in any human body - the computers are able to take whatever they’re fed and make something that looks pretty much like it. And if it’s not an exact match, they call it a variant.

And there’s no conspiracy required, because most of the scientists are simply carrying out what they believe to be a valid procedure – they don’t realise it’s not good science.

The PCR test has never been clinically validated so cannot be used to diagnose illness

The CDC stated that at the time they formulated the PCR test, they didn’t have an isolate of the virus themselves, so they based it on the whole genome sequence that had been published by the virologists in Wuhan. A short time later, they isolated the virus from a patient in Washington and published the sequence for everyone to access.

[My note: In the publication, it states that ‘The genomes from the NP specimen (Genbank accession MT020880) and OP specimen (Genbank accession MT020881) matched each other 100%. The isolates also matched the corresponding clinical specimen 100% (Genbank accession MN985325).’ If these were three different samples and Kaufman is correct that each simulation that’s run to compute a whole genome sequence will, by nature of the fact they’re not pure samples, will include different genetic matter, how did they get 3 genomes that matched 100%?]

Kaufman says it’s not actually relevant whether they had virus isolates or not. They’re talking about using PCR as a diagnostic test, not an amplification research tool. In order to create a ‘gold standard’ PCR diagnostic test, you’d need to do research with a variety of subjects – infected and not infected – to establish a level or range that you can call ‘positive’.

You would get a group of patients – at least 100 - and do a cell culture on all of them. You’d then perform the PCR test on both that group and a control group, perhaps of people with a lung infection that had nothing to do with SARS-CoV-2, and compare the results with your already-established ‘gold standard’ cell culture results to see how many times the PCR agreed with the cell culture results. You could then calculate the error rate, sensitivity and specificity, then apply to get that approved as a diagnostic test.

But the CDC didn’t do any clinical validation. They used a chemical synthesising machine to make the target sequences (synthetic RNA) that they then used to calibrate the PCR test. But we don’t have any synthetic RNA in our bodies.

[My note]: Not until it was put in by the vaccines…