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Matt Ridley

Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 Hardcover – Nov. 16 2021

by Matt Ridley (Author), Alina Chan (Author)

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"Chan and Ridley write with an urgency...that inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats. . . . They powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature." (New York Times Book Review)

Understanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of humankind. Viral is the most incisive and authoritative book about the search for the source of the virus.

A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened.

In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometres away in the city of Wuhan. They grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or wildlife, no chains of early cases in travellers to the city, no smouldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus to its new host—human beings.

To try to solve this pressing mystery, Viral delves deep into the events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that can be coaxed from the very text of the virus’s own genetic code.

The result is a gripping detective story that takes the reader deeper and deeper into a metaphorical cave of mystery. One by one the authors explore promising tunnels only to show that they are blind alleys, until, miles beneath the surface, they find themselves tantalisingly close to a shaft that leads to the light.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper
Publication date

Nov. 16 2021
Dimensions

15.24 x 3.28 x 22.86 cm
ISBN-10

006313912X
ISBN-13

978-0063139121
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"Chan and Ridley write with urgency in defending why people ought to take the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak hypothesis seriously...That urgency inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats...They powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature."

— New York Times Book Review

"Viral collates a series of circumstantial but damning points in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis." — Sunday Times (London)

"Chan and Ridley's new book is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives." — The Guardian

“Alina Chan and Matt Ridley assemble perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available.” — Wall Street Journal

“Both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we’d overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on COVID-19.” — Boston Globe Magazine

About the Author

Matt Ridley is the author of books that have sold well over a million copies in 32 languages: THE RED QUEEN, THE ORIGINS OF VIRTUE, GENOME, NATURE VIA NURTURE, FRANCIS CRICK, THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST, THE EVOLUTION OF EVERYTHING, and HOW INNOVATION WORKS. In his bestseller GENOME and in his biography of Francis Crick, he showed an ability to translate the details of genomic discoveries into understandable and exciting stories. During the current pandemic, he has written essays for the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator about the origin and genomics of the virus. His most recent WSJ piece appeared on January 16, 2021. He is a member of the House of Lords in the UK.

Dr. Alina Chan is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering. At the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Dr. Chan is currently creating next generation vectors for human gene therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chan began to investigate problems relevant to finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and in parallel spearheaded the development of the COVID-19 CoV Genetics (covidcg.org) browser for scientists worldwide to rapidly track virus lineages and mutations by locations and date ranges of interest. Follow Dr. Alina Chan on Twitter at @Ayjchan

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (Nov. 16 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006313912X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063139121
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 567 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.28 x 22.86 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #116,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Bacteriology
- #14 in Biochemistry Books
- #14 in Medical Biochemistry

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4.7 out of 5

834 global ratings

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4 star		15%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
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Noah

Exellent objective assembly of very current information- Everyone should read this!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 3, 2021

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It seems like every subsequent book on this subject is getting better researched and more enlightening. The authors certainly lead, but the reader is left to accept or reject the overall hypotheses that have been put forward. I'm pretty sure that anyone who is interested enough to work their way through this book will come away convinced that there is little doubt where this virus came from, smoking guns are all over the place some scientific, some human nature, some defined by the coverup. Hopefully this book will help move the subject firmly from a conspiracy to main stream scientifically verified facts. The real conspiracy- likely a future book, is how the CCP, aided and abetted, wittingly or unwittingly, by international bodies, foreign governments, the media and scientific entities, managed to suppress various truths for over 2 years now If not for books like this, we would be none the wiser.

5 people found this helpful

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Emmanuel Maicas

Contains facts, not opinions. Highly recommended

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 22, 2022

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This book details a lot of information about the origin of Covid - like viruses in Southern China, very far from Wuhan, and the blatant suppression of this information after this virus became pandemic.

The book presents facts, not pre-packaged opinions. For this reason, it is technical and moderately difficult to read, but worth the effort. I highly recommended it.

One person found this helpful

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Christopher Moss

An Extremely Worrying and Complete Account of a Pandemic

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 29, 2021

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An easy read, I would say even for a non-scientist. It goes into great detail about the, ah, shall we say lack of transparency? The economy with the truth of certain parties. Chan and Ridley are scrupulously fair,but at the end, one is left in no doubt that gain of function studies and sloppy lab practices led us to the state we're in today.

2 people found this helpful

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Norman Siebrasse

Readable science whodunnit

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 1, 2022

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Viral is a essential reading on the origin of Covid, but it is also one of the best science books I've read on any topic. Extremely well written, detailed and rigorous on the science, and a page-turning mystery as they piece together the evidence.

One person found this helpful

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JLG

Ok book, but there's a much better one out there on this topic...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 31, 2021

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It's clearly evident that this book was written BY scientists FOR scientists...

The first few chapters are readable, but the middle chapters are replete with technical and scientific jargon that a lay person will find very difficult to understand and follow. Once you get past those chapters, the last few are easier to read.

Instead of buying this book, I would highly recommend you buy "What Really Happened in Wuhan" by Sharri Markson. She's an award-winning investigate journalist as opposed to a scientist.

Much easier to read and extremely well written (much better than this book).

6 people found this helpful

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Cherkewich

Should be required reading.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 18, 2021

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Impossible to put down. Mandate reading of this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Lesley Mary Robinson

A Compelling Book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 24, 2022

Takes the form of a mystery to be solved. This facinating book is the one to read if you want the best evidence about where the virus came from. Very credible and well written.

I notice that many books have been written about covid -19 and are listed here on Amazon. I have only glanced briefly at the other covid books, but I notice some look a bit odd. If you want to sort the wheat from the chaff, choose this book.

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KatieB

Extraordinary book Viral

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 22, 2021

I am not a biologist or scientist but I found this book fascinating. It explains how the genetic codes of viruses are changed to make them more infectious. This “gain of function” must be in the public interest and we all need to get up to speed on how governments are funding this next frontiere of research. Viral is a phenomenal book that lays out an examination of the covid virus in its search for how this pandemic started. While the evidence is deeply disturbing, the journalists are fed a story, and global organizations are pressured, you are part of the solution: learning more hones your critical thinking skills. Highly recommend Viral, a must read.

3 people found this helpful

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John Town

A Powerful and Compelling Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 18, 2021

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This a long book and covers a great deal of ground, some of it technical enough to challenge the general reader. For those of us who are perturbed by the lack of persuasive evidence concerning the origins of the current pandemic, given the the much fuller picture available of the source of other recent outbreaks, it is nevertheless essential reading.

There is reluctance amongst scientists and book reviewers, understandable perhaps, given the political sensibilities and sheer volume of dubious analysis which now surrounds every contentious issue, to commit to any conclusion unless its veracity can be proved beyond reasonable doubt. In the real world, where the health and safety of millions continues to be at risk, this has rarely proved a rational approach. By the time the jury returns, the chance of effective action is usually long gone.

Anybody who has closely followed the search for the origin of the initial outbreak in Wuhan has seen the accumulation, month by month, of more and more information regarding the discovery and manipulation of viruses mostly closely resembling Covid-19. The book deals with this in considerably greater breadth and detail than other publications, which can make it demanding reading. Much of the information has accumulated so recently that the some of the burden of digesting and weighing its significance is inevitably left to the reader.

Given the reliance of many scientists current views on the history of past ‘spillover’ outbreaks arising from direct human contact with animal reservoirs of pathogens, the authors analyse and document the puzzling lack of evidence to support it in this case. This evidence may, of course, appear in the future but it may equally be that the nature of this first human contact did not follow the historical script. They document how, in recent years, for the first time, labs all over the world have been collecting thousands of viruses, many of them highly pathogenic, and growing, selecting and modifying them to assess their risk to humankind.

I have a background in molecular biology and, for me, the book makes a convincing case that pandemic probably arose as a result of an infection contracted from material held in one or other of the research laboratories in Wuhan. I, and the authors, may of course be wrong. The clear warning of this book, nevertheless, is that if we do not act to deal with the complacent and dangerous approach currently taken worldwide in investigating and manipulating viral pathogens, we will see the same thing happen agin.

63 people found this helpful

Buckerfan

This book will open your eyes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

I want to focus on a second really important aspect of this book. Yes, it does an excellent job of reviewing the evidence for, and against, a possible lab leak of Covid 19. And this is fascinating.

But even more critical in my view is the light it shines on the unbelievably risky types of research being done in virology labs around the world. Unbeknownst to most of us, it turns out that virology researchers are creating ‘supercharged’ viruses, through techniques such as intentional acceleration of mutation, merging two different viruses to create “viral chimera” and direct genetic engineering of viral genomes. This last includes the insertion of the much talked about and feared ‘furin cleavage sites’ which enable otherwise harmless pathogens to bind to and merge with human cells. There is every possibility that Covid 19 might itself be the result of exactly such tinkering.

The green lobby likes to stir fear of genetically engineered “frankenfoods”. I am personally much more fearful of the next “frankenvirus”.

19 people found this helpful

ky

Xi’s Xenophobia Puts Humanity in Harms Way

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 3, 2022

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A very disappointing tale which Alina Chan & Matt Ridley tell masterfully. Their forensic attention to the detail makes this book a delight to read. I presume it will not be available in Chinese translation and on sale in all good bookshops from Canton to Beijing? And in that fact lies the soul of this story. Many Chinese citizens have shown how brave, honest, clever, and well meaning they are, doing the right thing, because it is the right thing to do. But an autocratic dictatorship does not change its spots whatever the century.
Dr Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance comes across as self serving and duplicitous. He has not acquitted himself well in this pandemic. I am surprised he has not been arrested and questioned for obstructing the investigation into the cause of so many deaths. Daszak’s lack of integrity and downright dishonesty would appear to have helped the CCP hide the truth. But he is not alone. Many Western scientist and journalists have shown a decided lack of judgment. Whatever happened to follow the data, follow the science?
Dr Fauci and the NIH, in funding gain-of-function projects at WIV, has shown a level of naivety completely inexplicable at his level of responsibility.
Daszak and Fauci’s actions have done little to prevent future pandemics and both have shown little evidence they understand that is their primary responsibility. It is why they were given public funds in the first place.
Many scientist in Holland, Spain, Canada, and France have done much to seek out the truth and Alina and Matt have done a brilliant job of putting the jigsaw together.
It’s a tragic tale of human deceit. That so many scientist and politicians do not feel driven to find out how and why so many died is a sad reflection on today’s world.
If you are interested in understanding what little the world does know about the pandemic, ‘Viral’ is the book to read.

11 people found this helpful

Mike

Exposes the lies

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 12, 2022

Verified Purchase

Many have commented and given 5 star reviews to this book and I agree with them,.
Thousands of animals were tested in China to look for the link between the disease we know as Covid and the original virus which infected workers cleaning up Bat waste in another part of the country. No link has been found i.e. a missing link to show how the original virus became Covid. The wet market theory is much discredited by its absence. A conclusion that a lab leak from WIV is most likely source. The Communist government did everything it could to supress information to the outside. An open approach would have bought the world time by stopping flights into and out of China.
At the time of writing this (Feb 2022), there has still been no real examination of the Eco-Health alliance's activities in relation to some very suspect research in collaboration with WIV.
In 2018 PRC Chinese scientists were expelled from Canada after attempting to smuggle out pathogen samples, such as Ebola. You don't do this unless you have a Bioweapons program.

6 people found this helpful

Cjbevan

secrets and lies

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 18, 2022

Verified Purchase

One of the authors, Matt Ridley, I first heard on youtube; and after the second time around I then looked up this book, which he co-authored. The idea of the lab-leak origin has been around for a while, mooted by people such as Bret Weinstein , and notoriously publicised by Donald Trump, immediately thus discrediting the idea in the eyes of many.
The book goes carefully though the data, the theory, and the history of the trawl for data, in order to try to find out the story behind it. A strange, perhaps bizarre and even possibly sinister conclusion is that there is no conclusive evidence produced as to its origin; it remains unknown.
This is strange, even bizarre, because an enormous amount of energy has been expended at this question, and a lot of very well equipped minds and laboratories have endeavoured to find it, and so far, found nothing at all. It is sinister, because at every stage of meaningful links or evidences being found, the Chinese government systematically has destroyed evidences and data, obfuscated explanations, or forbade examination.
For these reasons; the destruction of data, and the forbidding of examination, and the disingenuous, obfuscation of facts and events, the research had to focus on the history of the data; the history of publication of papers, patents and discussions, which in their turn have alluded to those pertinent facts, now unavailable for examination.
What is telling is that up until 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology published research papers and patents in the normal way, alongside such collaboration and sharing of information and research ideas as would normal in the academic world. Then in 2019, not only does the lab go silent, but also the online database is suddenly and inexplicably taken offline in September. Only in November was COVID-19 formally diagnosed.
Another strange and possibly sinister aspect to this whole crisis has been the widespread censorship of debate, and the stultifying response from various individuals and agencies who should know better, most notably, the World Health Organization. It would appear that many around the world have been eager to collaborate with the Chinese government’s attempts to obscure the origin of Covid-19.
Time will tell whether anyone on Earth does in fact know the truth of this matter. Meanwhile, there is the greatest suspicion that the Chinese authorities perceived a problem before September of 2019, and have lied about it ever since.

4 people found this helpful

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