Version 1
: Received: 25 October 2023 / Approved: 26 October 2023 / Online: 26 October 2023 (14:39:52 CEST)
How to cite:
Nandy, D.; Chatterjee, B.; Basu, S. On the Origin Debate and Plausible Future Endeavours of COVID-19 (Commentary). Preprints2023, 2023101717. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1717.v1
Nandy, D.; Chatterjee, B.; Basu, S. On the Origin Debate and Plausible Future Endeavours of COVID-19 (Commentary). Preprints 2023, 2023101717. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1717.v1
Nandy, D.; Chatterjee, B.; Basu, S. On the Origin Debate and Plausible Future Endeavours of COVID-19 (Commentary). Preprints2023, 2023101717. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1717.v1
APA Style
Nandy, D., Chatterjee, B., & Basu, S. (2023). On the Origin Debate and Plausible Future Endeavours of COVID-19 (Commentary). Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1717.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Nandy, D., Bijit Chatterjee and Sankar Basu. 2023 "On the Origin Debate and Plausible Future Endeavours of COVID-19 (Commentary)" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.1717.v1
Abstract
Globally, we are undergoing compelling changes in virtually every branch of the society and every aspect of our daily lives over the last couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the words of Melinda Gates, the famous American Philanthropist, the pandemic has literally “magnified every existing inequality”. There has been much talk and an ongoing debate on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 (or, the novel coronavirus) as to whether have evolved purely naturally or has the contaminating element of human intervention somewhere in its trajectory. Proponents of the pure ‘natural evolution theory’, some of whom are bigshots in the field of virology have seem to take up great effort to stamp their authority right from the very early days of the pandemic on the slow natural evolution of the virus from its ancestrors by several publications in high-profile journals. These well-cited papers however provide rationals that are somewhat contradictory and are backed up with data which maybe argued as far from being complete and/or all-inclusive. As time progressed, alternative theories to that of the pure natural evolution of the virus emerged with strong counter-logics and gradually compiling genomic and epidemiological data along with detailed structural studies of relevant molecular interactions. All said and done, till date, compelling evidences lack on either end of the spectrum making the COVID origin debate still very mucg wide open. Regardless of whether purely natural or human-intervented the damage caused by the virus is unmistakable and has been an alarming concern to medical science lately. To that end, a section of the scientific community is devoting committed efforts using immuno-informatics to design and develop possible multi-epitope combination vaccines to cover a plethora of viral antigens and their plausible future mutations, alongside with the vaccines that are currently available.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
