The Hollow Tree
Science: Soon after the outbreak was identified as Ebola in March 2014, wildlife epidemiologist Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin went to southeastern Guinea to look for signs of an outbreak in wildlife. Leendertz, with three more German veterinarians spent 4 weeks in the region, capturing bats from four sites and surveying two protected forest areas.
On Mar 28, more than 3 months after the child's death.
The researchers found no evidence that wild animals were dying of Ebola, they report in a paper published online today in EMBO Molecular Medicine. The populations of chimpanzees, duikers, and other large mammals were at about the same levels they had been in the previous surveys in the region. They also found no direct evidence of Ebola virus infections in any of the 169 bats (from at least 13 species) that they captured and tested.
No evidence of any animal infection. No evidence of bats hosting the disease. Not that that's ever stopped a zoonotic scientist before. Or later should i say ...
But their visit to Meliandou (Jan 28) yielded intriguing clues.
(The) researchers learned of (a) tree and linked it to one of the outbreak's first victims. But, in a frustrating twist, the tree had burned to a stump just before they arrived, thwarting their search for evidence that might confirm the scenario.
So convenient. Note: when Science says the outbreak's first victims, they mean suspected. No-one from the village was definitively confirmed - they were all long dead and buried by the time Leendertz got there. Yes, they reportedly had symptoms of fever and diarrhea, but other illnesses in Africa have those symptoms, including cholera.
The hollow tree was only 50 meters from the house where the toddler lived; children used to play in it, residents told the researchers. But on 24 March, the tree had burned, Leendertz says—and all that was left were the stump, fallen branches, and ashes.
Leendertz: There are different stories about why it burned.
Science declines to report what those stories were.
When the tree started burning, there was a "rain of bats," villagers told Leendertz—a small, smelly species with a long tail locally called lolibelo and sometimes "mice that can fly." In the ash surrounding the tree, the researchers found DNA fragments that match the Angolan free-tailed bat Mops condylurus, an insect-eating species .. that fits the villagers' description.
A hollow-tree with a lot of bats roosting in it. Not unusual. The theory was that the toddler was playing in the hollow tree and got infected. But:
... they found no infected bats in their samples (from dead ones collected around the tree).
Leendertz: The virus must be extremely rare in bat populations,. Because bats are hunted so much, if the Ebola virus were widespread, we'd see infections all the time.
Good point. So there's no evidence of a bat virus. The theory is a lone bat from Zaire flew 1000's of kms to the hollow tree in the village - evolved the 3% needed to make it an identical match - then infected the toddler - and nobody else.
The permutations and combinations are starting to mount. As with RatG13 or the Laos bats - all close to 97% similarity - some astonishing evolutionary leaps must have taken place in a minuscule timeframe in order for this lone bat to infect a person 1000's of km from their origin - and no-one else in between.
Or: the Zaire strain was held at a lab in the vicinity, and the changes were done there.
To summarize, 12 unconfirmed cases along a not well established epidemiological trail, is a burned out tree that thwarted the search for evidence - with no other evidence of animal infection. In this tree, a single bat supposedly spawned a version of a 40 year-old virus from 1000's of km away then infected a toddler in a remote village - and no-one else.
Peter Walsh, Cambridge, Ebola specialist: It (the hollow tree) is suggestive, but it certainly doesn't rise to a 'smoking gun' level.
So why on earth are Andersen, Holmes, Rambaut saying the origin seems well resolved?
Thanks to this cohort of scientists, the narrative became well established - repeated by other researchers - who fed it to the media. Who printed it as science gospel. Notice any similarities? Whereas Covid became a pandemic killing millions thus inspiring a small army of internet sleuths to re-examine the official narrative, the Ebola outbreak, the biggest in history, remained largely confined to three African countries. Ebola's equally dubious origin story consequently went mostly unchallenged. Not to say there weren't researchers questioning it, Nana's research is based on several who did raise problems, but they were small enough to be brushed aside by the powerful science community elites.
And so it went that yet another dubious origin story gets passed into science zoonosis lore - without any substantial proof.