The Godfather of Bat Viruses

 

 

Artwork credit: Science, Katty Huertas

Linfa Wang:  It is human activity that enabled the virus to jump to people, and if nothing changes, many other pandemics of this nature will follow.

Funnily enough, we agree straight off the bat!

In the Covid Conspiracy card pack, Chinese-Australian Linfa Wang* is up there - Jack of Diamonds territory.  Don’t know why he hasn’t had more attention.  Is it a kind of perverse form of racism?  He gets overlooked coz he's not a white-guy?  Or is it the buttoned-down (boring) persona he projects of the nice scientist toiling quietly away for the common good? 

It's a great painting by Huertas- very skillful.  It captures his veneer.   Which is, paradoxically, who he is: a Master Veneerist.  

This was meant to be a deep-dive into a high-hanging fruit - if that makes sense - which it doesn't.  Turned out everything we need to know about Linfa is in the shallows of his veneer.  Weird, right?

Whatever  -  let’s give Linfa some love …

Science, Sep 30, 2020: The work (on Covid) is a natural next chapter for Wang, who has been tracking viruses from bats to humans for more than 2 decades.

Firstly - Covid does have a natural origin - human nature natural - second:

more than two decades - so before even SARS.

That’s uncanny.

As soon as Linfa starts studying bat coronaviruses, humanity, at the exact same point in space/time, is plagued with a series of bat virus events.  We’re fortunate Linfa came along when he did!  Right in time to save us all.  Don’t know if Linfa is religious but i’d love to ask: Did you have some kind of premonition - a revelation from God?

Science:  Marion Koopmans (WHO investigator/Feb 1 Teleconferencer), a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center, credits him for essentially launching the field of bat immunology and developing the tools to pursue it. 

Koopmans: He has made a heroic effort to establish a very challenging research line, which needed to start from scratch.

Holy Bat Cave!  Mr. Under-the-radar-Wang-Lin-fa invented bat viruses - from scratch.

Can’t get more proximal origin than that.  Not only Covid, but the whole shebang chain of events.  I’m upgrading his card to Joker in the pack.

CSIRO, 2007: Geelong scientist, Dr Linfa Wang .. also led Australian research efforts to characterise a new virus named Beilong. This discovery was the result of another global research partnership. The paramyxovirus is named after the two cities that collaborated – Beijing and Geelong.

Beilong. So poetic. Linfa, the ultimate interface guy, led the invention of not only bat viruses but a Sino/Aus-friendship commemorative virus.  No better person to do it than the pioneer embedder from the United Front Work Dept. 

Science, Sep 30: By pure chance, Linfa Wang, one of the world's foremost experts on emerging viruses, was in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January. 

If you don't believe Science, ask Duke, his employer:

Duke Singapore: It was by pure chance that bat expert Wang Linfa found himself in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January 2020.

Science:  The biologist was visiting collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) just as SARS-CoV-2 was starting to spread from the city to the rest of the world. 

Duke Singapore:  Wang was attending the annual scientific retreat at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Ohr.   By pure chance, Linfa Wang was in Wuhan in early Jan, attending a scientific retreat - at the Bat Lab - with Shi Zhengli.  The Bat Lab, by pure chance, is right in the vicinity of where SARS-2 originated. 

Then, by even more pure serendipity, straight after Linfa Wang returned to Singapore he got involved in drafting the Lancet Statement with Daszak.  We’ll explore those juicy details later -  but first some backstory …

 

(* His surname is Wang -  in China he’s Wang Professor or Wang Lin-fa - (Wung Lin-far - not Linffer) in the west he’s Linfa Wang - Wang is a super-common Chinese surname - most of them are -  Linfa is more distinctive - it’s pretty cool that he kept it - most (George Gao) adopt an English name.)