People have died from the coronavirus, contrary to article claiming to report pathologist’s “revelations” on COVID-19

KEY TAKE AWAY:
People have died from COVID-19. This is evident from the excess mortality observed in 2020 compared to previous years before the pandemic occurred. Monoclonal antibodies that bind to SARS-CoV-2 have also been discovered and reported in published studies, and pathologists have been using such antibodies, as well as other techniques like in situ hybridization which do not require antibodies, to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection in human tissue.

FULL CLAIM: “no one has died from the coronavirus”; “no novel-coronavirus-specific antibodies have been found”; “the novel coronavirus has not fulfilled Koch’s postulates”; “the inability to identify monoclonal antibodies for the virus suggests there is no basis for the vaccines”; “the WHO is creating [worldwide] chaos is by prohibiting almost all autopsies of people deemed to have died from COVID-19”

Claim 5:

“the novel coronavirus has not fulfilled Koch’s postulates”

Koch’s postulates are a set of criteria used to determine whether a certain microorganism is the cause of a disease. They were originally developed by Robert Koch, a German physician who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905 for his work on tuberculosis. The original postulates are as follows:

The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
The organism must be isolated from a host containing the disease and grown in pure culture.
Samples of the organism taken from pure culture must cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible animal in the laboratory.
The organism must be isolated from the inoculated animal and must be identified as the same original organism first isolated from the originally diseased host.

While these postulates remain an important foundation for establishing the cause of an infectious disease even today, scientists have also recognized that there are limitations to these criteria. Vincent Racaniello, a virologist and professor at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, wrote in his blog post that “Despite the importance of Koch’s postulates in the development of microbiology, they have severe limitations, which even Koch realized.” For example, Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of cholera, could be isolated from both sick and healthy people, invalidating postulate #1.

Other notable exceptions to the original postulates that Racaniello pointed out are viruses, such as poliovirus, which causes illness of varying severity and does not manifest in the same way for all infected individuals. For example, fewer than 1% of individuals infected by polio are affected by paralysis. Additionally, “Postulates #2 and #3 cannot be fulfilled for viruses that do not replicate in cell culture, or for which a suitable animal model has not been identified.” Consequently, over the past decades, scientists have found it necessary to modify Koch’s postulates to adapt the criteria for the study of viral diseases[11-13].

Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and director at the Center for Infection and Immunity of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told Health Feedback that many published studies have already demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 fulfills Koch’s postulates[14-16]. Specifically, researchers isolated SARS-CoV-2 from COVID-19 patient samples, propagated the virus in cell cultures in the laboratory, and infected non-human primates with the cultured virus. The infected primates displayed the same signs of COVID-19 as humans, including lung damage and pneumonia. Finally, the researchers were able to detect the virus in the infected animals. With these findings, all four of Koch’s postulates are met, demonstrating that SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of COVID-19.

Claim 6:

“no one has died from the coronavirus”

In its statement, the ESP refuted this claim, stating that:

“As discussed in the two ESP webinars on the subject (May 8th and June 25th, 2020), the striking autopsy findings seen in the lungs and other organs of COVID-19 patients are unexplainable as the effect of any concurrent disease and support the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as the cause of death in these cases.

In agreement with this, autopsy studies of COVID-19 patients have demonstrated the presence of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in a variety of tissues, mainly the lungs and the inner lining of blood vessels (endothelium).” (Read the ESP’s full statement.)

If the article’s claim were true, then the number of deaths that have occurred since the beginning of the outbreak would be similar to that of previous years before the emergence of COVID-19. However, this is not the case. For instance, an earlier Health Feedback review reported that we are seeing a higher number of deaths in 2020 compared to previous years in the U.S. (see figure below).

Claim 8:

“Among the myriad ways the WHO is creating [worldwide] chaos is by prohibiting almost all autopsies of people deemed to have died from COVID-19”

The World Health Organization has not prohibited such autopsies and the article produces no evidence to support this claim. In fact, the aforementioned ESP webinar openly discusses findings from the autopsies of COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, several studies on COVID-19 autopsy findings from countries such as the U.S., Germany, and China have been published[17-20].

Conspiracy theorists are not persuaded by data. There are many studies on SARS-CoV-2 that fulfill Koch’s postulates[14-16].

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FAIL again

Wow, that response convinced me to turn in my tracks fresh. Thanks for waking me up with the facts...