Madison Area Lyme Support Group

Virus denialists have a large following. Tom Cowan, in particular, believes that we need to be able to use our own senses to know something exists. This is a simplifying but empirically impoverished viewpoint on what we can know via Science.

Tom took to Bitchute in a video to respond to eight points that I posted on the matter.

He did not address eight points. Here, without adding to disunity, I rebut (again, and likely for the last time), the claims by providing scientific evidence.

An Aside

As an aside, understand that I am reluctantly taking my time to write this article, because I know that those promulgating virus denialism will not pay heed to any scientific evidence I provide that demonstrates the falseness of their claims.

When I have debated virus deniers in the past and provided references to studies that directly rebut their false claims, they have ignored the scientific evidence I provided and continued to make the same statements – the very next day. I know this because after I debated a virus denier in a recorded debate, I happened to also be in a zoom meeting the next day with one of the participants in the event. They acted as if the studies I sent to them did not exist and simply repeated the same faulty claims that were made by my opponent the day before.

In his Bitchute, it is interesting that Tom skipped over my Point #1: that Koch himself failed, using his own criteria, to identify now-known pathogens. This is a rather important point, and Tom’s failure to address it speaks volumes.

In my response, I will simply provide studies that show that the specific claims about SARS-CoV-2 virus by virus deniers like Cowan are factually incorrect. The studies I show are representative of a much, much larger body of published science that shows the basic claims being made are false.

I will not speculate on the motivation of those who would care to continue to ignore studies. They themselves can address that obvious question.

Koch’s Postulates

Koch developed rules to follow by which one can determine if a pathogen is responsible for a disease. The reader should be aware these were published in 1884; Koch updated them to relax the first postulate when he discovered asymptomatic transmission. Also, Koch’s postulates fail to apply to typhoid fever, diphtheria, leprosy, relapsing fever, and Asiatic cholera specifically because it is difficult to create ‘the disease anew’ in animals upon infection (Ref).

Koch’s postulates were addressed head-on for the SARS virus in 2003. See

Koch’s postulates fulfilled for SARS virus.

As originally written, Koch’s four criteria were:

(1) The microorganism must be found in diseased but not healthy individuals;

We know that asymptomatic COVID-19 infection can occur. Koch himself had to modify his postulates after he discovered asymptomatic infections could occur.

(2) The microorganism must be cultured from the diseased individual;

SARS-CoV-2 has, in fact, been cultured. It’s a matter of routine:

Wurtz N, Penant G, Jardot P, Duclos N, La Scola B. Culture of SARS-CoV-2 in a panel of laboratory cell lines, permissivity, and differences in growth profile. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis. 2021 Mar;40(3):477-484. doi: 10.1007/s10096-020-04106-0.

“In the present work, we tested 4 strains of SARS-CoV-2 locally isolated on a panel of 34 cell lines present in our laboratory and commonly used for the isolation of human pathogenic microorganism. After inoculation, cells were observed for cytopathic effects and quantitative real-time polymerase reaction was used to measure the virus replication on the cells. We were able to obtain growth on 7 cell lines, 6 simian, and the human Caco-2. The cytopathogenic effects are variable, ranging from lysis of the cell monolayer in 48–72 h to no cytopathic effect in spite of intense multiplication, as in Caco-2 cells. Interestingly, effect and multiplication varied widely according to the strain tested.”

Sung A, Bailey AL, Stewart HB, McDonald D, Wallace MA, Peacock K, Miller C, Reske KA, O’Neil CA, Fraser VJ, Diamond MS, Burnham CD, Babcock HM, Kwon JH. Isolation of SARS-CoV-2 in Viral Cell Culture in Immunocompromised Patients With Persistently Positive RT-PCR Results. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Feb 2;12:804175. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.804175.

“Viral RNA and cultivable virus were recovered from the cultured cells after qRT-PCR and plaque assays. Of 20 patients, 10 (50%) had a solid organ transplant and 5 (25%) had a hematologic malignancy. For most patients, RT-PCR Ct values increased over time. There were 2 patients with positive viral cell cultures; one patient had chronic lymphocytic leukemia treated with venetoclax and obinutuzumab who had a low viral titer of 27 PFU/mL.”

Even the important study showing that use of too high RT-PCR cycle thresholds led to false positives used the ability to create a culture and infectiousness from clinical samples

Singanayagam A, Patel M, Charlett A, Lopez Bernal J, Saliba V, Ellis J, Ladhani S, Zambon M, Gopal R. Duration of infectiousness and correlation with RT-PCR cycle threshold values in cases of COVID-19, England, January to May 2020. Euro Surveill. 2020 Aug;25(32):2001483. doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.32.2001483.

(See link for article)

I highly recommend reading the entire article which is extensively footnoted.

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