Is Coronavirus Pandemic an Act of God ?

What we are experiencing today is not unknown to anyone.The world is going through an unprecedented year, a year which no one dreamed or thought of.The disease outbreak i.e COVID 19 is travelling so fast and everyone is fighting the battle including superpowers who could not prevent people against it. This novel Coronavirus is spreading faster than fire all over the globe. The Wuhan city of China first experienced this virus in December 2019 and then it had reached and affected the rest of the world.

The World Health Organisation has termed it as a dangerous virus as well as pandemic. This outbreak was declared as “ Pandemic” on march 11 by the World Health Organisation. Nobody knows about this virus, what is its origin, Who created it God or man?

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People are sceptic over its emanation and they are not ready to accept that it is an Act of God. While some say that this is an Act of God because there is a trend of disease outbreaks after every century like Plague outbreak in 1720, Cholera outbreak in 1820, Spanish flu in 1920 and COVID 19 outbreak in 2020. But considering this outbreak of 2020 as an Act of God would be inappropriate according to our views and we will try to prove that Coronavirus Pandemic is not an Act of God by giving some facts and reports.

Before coming to our major concern i.e “Is Coronavirus an Act of God”, we must understand What constitutes an Act of God?

An Act of God basically means an act or escape caused directly by natural cause without human intervention and is so unexpected that no human foresight or skill could reasonably be executed to anticipate it. Thus, following are the essentials of an Act of God :

• The Act must have been caused by natural force.
• The Act was without human intervention .
• The Act could not be foreseen and is unavoidable.

The above essentials of Act of God are actually not evident in China originated virus because :

The Act was not caused by natural force

The very first essential of the Act of God that the act must have been caused by natural force is disproved here as the Coronavirus got leaked from Wuhan Laboratory. Following are some of the points to support the leakage theory of the virus :

• i) In China, research on bat viruses began in earnest shortly after the SARS epidemic subsided in 2003 over the past 10 years and Shi and other Wuhan virologists have made numerous expeditions to collect viruses from different bat species, building up Asia’s largest virus bank.
• ii) In 2004, two previous incidents of SARS virus ‘escaping’ from Chinese labs were reported.These two incidents took place at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing, part of China’s centre for Disease Control.3 Also, International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) announced “ severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2( SARS-CoV-2) as the name of the new virus on 11 February 2020. This name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the Coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003.4
• iii) In mid february, scientists from two of China's most prestigious polytechnics, including one in Wuhan, circulated a preprint paper, one that has not undergone peer review, detailing accidents involving bats at the lab of Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.5
• iv) Moreover, China has rejected calls for an independent international investigation into the origin of Coronavirus.The EU report accuses China of spreading disinformation about the crisis that it emerged from the Wildlife seafood market. Scientists have poured cold water on speculation that the virus could have been engineered in Wuhan Laboratory. On thursday, Australian Prime Minister said that he would push for an investigation at the annual meeting next month of the World Health Assembly .But Ms Chen told BBC that her country could not agree to any international investigation.6

So, it is clear that SARS virus escaped from the China’s laboratory twice in 2004 and since 2004, China’s Virologist were again working on this SARS virus and genomes of SARS Virus are found in Coronavirus .Thus, there is a high probability of virus getting leaked from Wuhan’s laboratory and this probability got higher when China refused to agree for any international investigation related to the origin of this virus.

Act was caused by human intervention

The second essential for an act to be called as an Act of God is that it must be without human intervention and this essential is not fulfilled in this case. Here, we will refer to the statement of Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier. Luc Montagnier is the nobel prize winner in 2008 and co- discovered HIV ( Human Immunodeficiency Virus). He claimed that the leak of the virus is the result of an attempt to make a vaccine against AIDS virus.1

Luc Montagnier also claimed that within the narrow section of the genome of the new Coronavirus, six fragments of genetic information from HIV were found. The presence of HIV related elements in such a fraction of SARS- CoV-2 ( a virus that caused COVID-19) suggest that these could not have been inserted naturally.

Thus, it is clear from the statements of Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier that elements of HIV were present in SARS-CoV-2, a virus that caused COVID-19 which suggests that somehow it was human intervention which is destroying the entire world today.

Act could have been foreseen and was avoidable

Another essential of an Act of God is also not present which states that an act could not be foreseen and is unavoidable because this situation, outbreak could have been avoided and one doctor of China tried to alert people about the approach of this deadly virus. His name was Dr. Li Wenliang who sent a message to fellow medics warning of a virus after noticing seven cases of virus that he thought looked like SARS - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003.1 On 30 December, he sent a message to fellow doctors advising them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection and four days later, he was summoned to Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter in which he was accused of making false comments that had severely disturbed ‘social order’. In his weibo post, he described how on 10th January, he started coughing and next day he had a fever and on 30th January he was tested positive for Coronavirus.2

Apart from the warning of Dr. Li Wenliang, other people who were posting and exposing the truth about the outbreak and refused to keep quiet were tortured and detained. Mr. Fung Bin and lawyer Chen Quishi were such persons who were tortured for exposing the truth of Coronavirus and death caused by Coronavirus by posting videos.Police Officials went to their homes and took them away for questioning. 3

So, instead of controlling this outbreak and making the world aware of this virus, China suppressed data, blocked several outside teams of public health experts and silenced doctors who tried to warn the people about this epidemic. This pandemic could have been avoided if China had taken the initiative to make the world aware and there was nothing in it which could not have been avoided.

Now, let’s for a while forget and deny about the assumptions of various scientists claiming that Coronavirus leaked that Coronavirus leaked from Wuhan laboratory.And let’s accept the China’s claim that Coronavirus originated from bats but it would still not be conclusive1 to hold that Coronavirus is an Act of God because it emanated in the bats by nature.There are various facts hidden behind the origin of this outbreak

Though Coronavirus originated from bats but it has been identified as third zoonotic coronaviruses after SARS-CoV and MERS-Cov. According to the World Health Organisation, zoonosis is any disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans. Thus, animals play an essential role in maintaining zoonotic infections in nature. 3 Scientists think it originated in bats and could have been passed on via another mammal like a pangolin which is an endangered species.4. According to the researchers including the University of HongKong ,bats may be the reservoir for the pandemic causing virus and said that Pangolins are the second mammalian host of coronaviruses.

No, Blaming God for the act of humans would not be justified because of the view of some environmentalists that humans are to be blamed for negligence.

According to a report of United Nations Environment Programme, the emergence of zoonotic diseases is often associated with environmental changes or ecological disturbances such as human settlement or encroachments into forests and other habitats.Gwenael Vourc’h of INRAE, a french public research institute also blame human activity for crossover between species.6

The risk of spillover from animal to human populations becomes highest when a species is threatened by over consumption and habitat loss.And, as we will encroach further on their territory, wild animals will be forced into increasing contact with humans, heightening the risk of another COVID-19.

Thus, it is clear that bats were not the only source but pangolins were the intermediaries between bats and humans and Pangolins are endangered mammals that were trafficked illegally in China.8 So, Smuggling illegal and endangered species was itself fault on the part of China which led to this deadly virus devastating the entire world. There are traces of spread of virus from pangolins which indicates it is the negligence of humans and not an act of god.