Claim: The novel coronavirus was “man-made.”
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: 2012 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak
text: coronavirus researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The second laboratory-proven case was in London, confirmed by the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA). The HPA named the virus the London1_novel CoV 2012. On 8 November 2012, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Zaki and co-authors from the Erasmus Medical Center published more details, including a scientific name, Human Coronavirus-Erasmus Medical Center (HCoV-EMC), which was then used in scientific literature. In the article, they noted four respiratory human coronaviruses (HCoV) known to be endemic: 229E, OC43, NL63, and HKU1. In May

title: London1 novel CoV/2012
text: London1 novel CoV/2012 London1_novel CoV/2012 is the name of the novel coronavirus isolated from a Qatari man in London in 2012 who was one of the first patients to come down with what has since been named Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. The Qatari patient had traveled to Saudi Arabia from Qatar. He returned to Qatar, but when he fell ill, he traveled to London for treatment. The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency (HPA) named the virus. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that London1 is a betacoronavirus with a close relationship to Bat coronaviruses HKU4 and HKU5. It was found that the

title: London1 novel CoV/2012
text: virus nucleic acid fragment identified in the isolate from the Qatai-London patient is derived from a novel coronavirus that is distinct from all coronaviruses previously identified. London1 novel CoV/2012 London1_novel CoV/2012 is the name of the novel coronavirus isolated from a Qatari man in London in 2012 who was one of the first patients to come down with what has since been named Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. The Qatari patient had traveled to Saudi Arabia from Qatar. He returned to Qatar, but when he fell ill, he traveled to London for treatment. The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency (HPA)

title: Coronavirus
text: one discovered the virus first and has the right to name it. Early in 2005, a research team at the University of Hong Kong reported finding a fifth human coronavirus in two patients with pneumonia. They named it Human coronavirus HKU1. In September 2012, a sixth new type of coronavirus was identified, initially called Novel Coronavirus 2012, and now officially Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The World Health Organisation accordingly issued a global alert. The WHO update on 28 September 2012 said that the virus did not seem to pass easily from person to person. However, on May 12,

title: 2012 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak
text: published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" indicated that camel to human transmission of the virus was possible. In November 2013, a man became ill with MERS after tending to a sick camel. DNA samples taken from the man, who eventually died of the virus, and the sick animal were virtually identical providing very strong evidence the man had got the virus from the camel. On 20 May 2013, the novel coronavirus reached Tunisia killing one man and infecting two of his relatives. Tunisia was the eighth country to be affected by MERS-CoV after Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the

title: Human coronavirus HKU1
text: these cases, French investigators utilized improved techniques for recovering the virus from nasopharyngeal aspirates and from stool samples. Human coronavirus HKU1 Human coronavirus HKU1 (HCoV-HKU1) is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with the HE gene, which distinguishes it as a group 2, or betacoronavirus. It was discovered in January 2005 in two patients in Hong Kong. HCoV-HKU1 was first identified in January, 2005, in a 71-year-old man who was hospitalized with an acute respiratory distress and radiolographically confirmed bilateral pneumonia. The man had recently returned to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, China. Woo, et al., were unsuccessful in their attempts to

title: Coronavirus
text: of a vaccine against the disease "since [the spike protein] appears to be recognized by the immune system of the host." Following the high-profile publicity of SARS outbreaks, there has been a renewed interest in coronaviruses among virologists. For many years, scientists knew about only two human coronaviruses (HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43). The discovery of SARS-CoV added a third human coronavirus. By the end of 2004, three independent research labs reported the discovery of a fourth human coronavirus. It has been named NL63, NL, and the New Haven coronavirus by different research groups. The three labs are still arguing over which

title: Coronavirus
text: 2013, a case of contamination from human to human in France was confirmed by the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. In addition, cases of person-to-person transmission have been reported by the Ministry of Health in Tunisia. Two confirmed cases seem to have caught the disease from their late father, who became ill after a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. By Oct. 30 2013, there were 124 cases and 52 deaths in Saudi Arabia. After the Dutch Erasmus Medical Centre sequenced the virus, the virus was given a new name, Human Corona Virus-Erasmus Medical Centre (HCoV-EMC). The final

title: SARS conspiracy theory
text: has been made globally available. Naysayers insist there has been no evidence found of genetic engineering in the genome. The SARS coronavirus is novel, they say, but this only implies it has mutated or was previously undiscovered, not that it is genetically engineered. Epidemiologists in support of the theory say it implies artificial introduction of the disease into the population. Many disregard the Chinese and Russian scientists' research as merely propaganda and an impossibility. Coronaviruses similar to SARS have been found in bats in China, suggesting they may be their natural reservoir. However scientists report that the genome of the

title: Coronavirus
text: in a small number of nucleotides. In 2003, following the outbreak of Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which had begun the prior year in Asia, and secondary cases elsewhere in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a press release stating that a novel coronavirus identified by a number of laboratories was the causative agent for SARS. The virus was officially named the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). The epidemic resulted in over 8,000 infections, about 10% of which resulted in death. X-ray crystallography studies performed at the Advanced Light Source of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have begun to give hope

title: Coronavirus
text: coronovirus and the SARS coronavirus diverged in 1986. A path of evolution of the SARS virus and keen relationship with bats have been proposed. The authors suggest that the coronaviruses have been coevolved with bats for a long time and the ancestors of SARS virus first infected the species of the genus "Hipposideridae", subsequently spread to species of the "Rhinolophidae" and then to civets and finally to humans. Alpaca coronavirus and human coronavirus 229E diverged before 1960. The human coronavirus NL63 and a bat coronovirus shared an MRCA 563 to 822 years ago. Coronavirus Coronaviruses are species of virus belonging

title: Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
text: apocalyptic event caused by a man-made pandemic. Written in 1984, the novel "Emergence" by David R. Palmer is set in a world where a man-made plague destroys the vast majority of the world's population. The novel was nominated for several awards and won the 1985 Compton Crook Award. José Saramago's 1995 novel "Blindness" tells the story of a city or country in which a mass epidemic of blindness destroys the social fabric. It was adapted into the film "Blindness" in 2008. Published in 2003 by Margaret Atwood, "Oryx and Crake" is set after a genetically modified virus wipes out the

title: Coronavirus
text: has emerged around the world. Its economic importance is as yet unclear, but shows high mortality in piglets. The most recent common ancestor of the coronavirus has been placed at 8,000 years BC. They may be considerably older than this. Another estimate places the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all coronaviruses ~8100 BC. The MRCA of Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus, and Deltacoronavirus have been placed at ~2400 BC, ~3300 BC, ~2800 BC and ~3000 BC, respectively. It appears that bats and birds, the warm blooded flying vertebrates, are ideal hosts for the coronavirus gene source with bats for Alphacoronavirus and

title: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
text: camel strains are intermixed suggesting multiple transmission events. The first confirmed case was reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki isolated and identified a previously unknown coronavirus from the man's lungs. Dr. Zaki then posted his findings on 24 September 2012 on ProMED-mail. The isolated cells showed cytopathic effects (CPE), in the form of rounding and syncytia formation. A second case was found in September 2012, a 49-year-old male living in Qatar presented with similar flu symptoms, and a sequence of the virus was nearly identical to that of the first case. In November 2012,

title: Human coronavirus HKU1
text: Human coronavirus HKU1 Human coronavirus HKU1 (HCoV-HKU1) is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with the HE gene, which distinguishes it as a group 2, or betacoronavirus. It was discovered in January 2005 in two patients in Hong Kong. HCoV-HKU1 was first identified in January, 2005, in a 71-year-old man who was hospitalized with an acute respiratory distress and radiolographically confirmed bilateral pneumonia. The man had recently returned to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, China. Woo, et al., were unsuccessful in their attempts to grow a cell line from HCoV-HKU1 but were able to obtain the complete genomic sequence. Phylogenetic analysis showed

title: Coronavirinae
text: Coronavirinae Coronavirinae is one of two subfamilies in the family Coronaviridae. It is subdivided into the genera alphacoronavirus, betacoronavirus, gammacoronavirus, and deltacoronavirus. These include phylogenetically compact genogroups of enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA and with a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. The genomic size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 26 to 32 kilobases, extraordinarily large for an RNA virus. Their numbers are growing rapidly with several novel coronaviruses being recently discovered including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus MERS-CoV discovered in 2012. The genus alphacoronavirus (formerly known as Coronavirus group 1 (CoV-1)) includes subgroups 1a and 1b, which are prototyped by human coronavirus

title: Middle East respiratory syndrome
text: based on the virus's RNA obtained from the Qatari case. On 25 September 2012, the WHO announced that it was "engaged in further characterizing the novel coronavirus" and that it had "immediately alerted all its Member States about the virus and has been leading the coordination and providing guidance to health authorities and technical health agencies." The Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam "tested, sequenced and identified" a sample provided to EMC virologist Ron Fouchier by Ali Mohamed Zaki in November 2012. On 8 November 2012 in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Zaki and

title: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
text: similar cases appeared in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Additional cases were noted, with deaths associated, and rapid research and monitoring of this novel coronavirus began. It is not certain whether the infections are the result of a single zoonotic event with subsequent human-to-human transmission, or if the multiple geographic sites of infection represent multiple zoonotic events from a common unknown source. A study by Ziad Memish of Riyadh University and colleagues suggests that the virus arose sometime between July 2007 and June 2012, with perhaps as many as 7 separate zoonotic transmissions. Among animal reservoirs, CoV has a large genetic

title: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
text: endemic human betacoronaviruses HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1. Until 23 May 2013, MERS-CoV had frequently been referred to as a SARS-like virus, or simply the novel coronavirus, and earlier it was referred to colloquially on messageboards as the "Saudi SARS". Over 2,000 cases of MERS have been reported by 2017 and the case fatality rate is >30%. 182 genomes have been sequenced by 2015 (94 from humans and 88 from dromedary camels). All sequences are >99% similar. The genomes can be divided into two clades - A and B - with the majority of cases being caused by clade B. Human and

title: SARS coronavirus
text: coronaviruses in Chinese bats. Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets. The bats did not show any visible signs of disease, but are the likely natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. In late 2006, scientists from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of Hong Kong University and the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention established a genetic link between the SARS coronavirus appearing in civets and humans, confirming claims that the disease had jumped across species. The