Through the COVID pandemic, the idea has been tossed around that this was caused by a lab leak, possibly with malicious intent. It’s also been referred to as “a cold.” So according to some corners of the internet, this microbe is simultaneously a powerful bioweapon unleashed with vile purpose unto the world while also being a sad puny little hacky sack of RNA that we’re overreacting to. Clever girl.
So let’s talk about the pandemic that was almost certainly caused by a lab leak with far less spectacular results than you may be expecting.
Today’s Moment of Science… the Russian Flu of 1977.
Flu viruses are designated into types A, B, C, or D. Though influenza D has never been observed to cause illness in humans and typically B and C are less severe, I don’t recommend licking a petri dish of any of them. Influenza A is your go-to ‘fuck up life on Earth for a jiff’ virus. Two proteins on the surface of the influenza are hemagglutinin and neuraminidase (the ‘H’ and ‘N’ in H1N1). When you see ‘H2N3’ or “H7N9,’ describing a flu virus, it’s shorthand for the type of protein outfit that little bastard is wearing to get past the bouncers and into your cells. Over a long enough period of hopping from species to infected species, viruses will try to slip into something more comfortable. Like maybe swapping out their N1 for an N3 for evolutionary survival and shenanigans.
(This is a drastic oversimplification, please don’t let the guys from TWIV come for me).
As the virus travels around the world from flu season (i.e. winter) in the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere, it mutates quickly enough that there’s typically an updated flu vaccine for each hemisphere. Over the course of a few decades, a lot of genetic changes are nothing less than expected. Whether from injection or infection, immunity wanes as the virus mutates and your immune system goes all “we don’t know her” when the virus shows up with a revenge body.
Immunity can continue to hold up pretty well against that original strain. It’s just bonkers level unlikely for an old familiar strain of the flu to go all “surprise motherfuckers” on us.
So in 1977, it was curious when a strain of the flu traveled around the world sparing most folks over the age of ‘seltzer tastes good.’
It’s unclear if the first cases occurred in the USSR or China. It likely first occurred in China but was first reported to the WHO by the USSR. Perhaps more telling of the Cold War politics of the time than conclusive proof of the virus’ origins, it was referred to as the Russian flu, or more informally, the red flu.
It wasn’t like the hand of death came and fucked up everyone in their teens and twenties. It would spread quickly through a young population and burn out fast, and a lot of cases were asymptomatic. The Washington Post reported that symptoms typically only lasted 3-5 days, which is delightfully short for a flu. Of course there were hospitalizations and fatalities, but nothing that screamed “this was a planned attack.” There were approximately 700,000 fatalities worldwide attributed to the pandemic between 1977 and 1979, which averaged out to a bit lower than typical flu seasons.
So if it wasn’t a bad flu, what was the big deal?
The big deal is that it may as well have taken a time machine to get there. Genetic sequencing pinned the virus as most closely related to a few strains isolated between 1948 and 1950. It strains credulity at best to think it just showed up on its own from nature after nearly three decades unchanged without intervention. Speculation has led most to the conclusion that it could have been caused by nothing other than a lab leak.
But what kind of lab leak? More malicious or more ‘whoopsiedaisy?
One possibility is that research into a live-attenuated vaccine, uh, didn’t go according to plan. A more likely possibility is a vaccine challenge. In this case, some scientists have even gone on record saying that thousands of people in the Chinese military were given an experimental vaccine and exposed to H1N1 to test it, but it’s hard to verify that information.
The suggestion that it was a deliberately deployed bioweapon is fairly easily dismissed. As much as the USSR had a bioweapons program at the time, anthrax and genetically modified smallpox were more their deal. It can’t be 100% ruled out, but I put “Ivan knocked over a petri dish” far higher up the list of possibilities than “Ivan had an evil plan to make everyone miss a week of disco.”
This has been your Moment of Science, still not sure where COVID came from originally, but I know it keeps coming from anti-vaxxers.
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