Isolation of SARS-CoV-2

As the idea of asymptomatic spread depends upon mass testing with PCR, so too does the legitimacy of PCR itself depend upon proper isolation of an allegedly novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2.

Virus Isolation?

From a layman's perspective, one might assume that isolation means a complete separation from other things. It might surprise you that not only is that not the case in this context, but virology actually provides no standardized definition of virus isolate.

The closest we get to a standardized definition of virus isolate usually refers to growing cells in animal culture. Simply put, putting your throat or nose sample into some other stuff and if it "grows virus", presto, we have "virus isolate"! Dr. Sam Bailey has the most approachable and succinct summary of this critical issue.

So What?

The WHO claimed China isolated a new virus on January 7, 2020. Everything that has since transpired was built upon this initial claim.

Let's see what the actual papers studying this subject say.

Official Claims

Most of the articles out there making the claim don't even describe the process whatsoever or reference any scientific paper, they simply make the claim and expect you to believe it. Here we'll go over some of the actual papers.

  1. New England Journal of Medicine - "A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019": the paper outright admits - "our study does not fulfill Koch’s postulates", they performed no actual isolation or purification - just growing samples in cell culture, and using an RNA fragment as a template to create genomic sequences - they even admitted (using PCR): "the cycle threshold value was higher than 34 for detected samples"
  2. bioRxiv - "SARS-CoV-2 Isolation and Propagation from Turkish COVID-19 patients": the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but growing cells in culture: "We isolated the virus from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal specimens. We characterized replication properties and cell culture tropism of SARS-CoV-2 in different cell lines including green monkey kidney cell line (Vero) and Madin-Darby bovine kidney cell line (MDBK)."
  3. Journal of Korean Medical Science - "Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea": the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but growing cells in culture: "oropharyngeal samples were obtained by using UTM™ kit containing 1 mL of viral transport media (Copan Diagnostics Inc., Murrieta, CA, USA) on day 7 of her illness. We inoculated monolayers of Vero cells (ATCC® CCL-81™) with the samples and cultured the cells at 37°C in a 5% carbon dioxide atmosphere"
  4. Nature - "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin": the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but growing cells in culture: "The following cell lines were used for virus isolation in this study: Vero E6 and Huh7 cells, which were cultured in DMEM containing 10% FBS" and the use of PCR: "Amplification was performed as follows: 50 °C for 3 min, 95 °C for 30 s followed by 40 cycles", and also admit to failing Koch's postulates: "The association between 2019-nCoV and the disease has not been verified by animal experiments to fulfil the Koch’s postulates to establish a causative relationship between a microorganism and a disease"
  5. National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo - "Enhanced isolation of SARS-CoV-2 by TMPRSS2-expressing cells": the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but growing cells in culture: "we attempted to isolate SARS-CoV-2 using VeroE6/TMPRSS2 cells, which express TMPRSS2constitutively. The messenger RNA expression level of TMPRSS2in VeroE6/TMPRSS2 cells is∼10-fold higher than in normalhuman lung tissue and other human cell lines"
  6. American Society for Microbiology - Journal of Virology - "Isolation and Full-Length Genome Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 from COVID-19 Cases in Northern Italy" - the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but growing cells in culture and using PCR: "Swab contents were seeded on Vero E6 cells and monitored for cytopathic effect and by an RT-PCR protocol"
  7. CDC - Emerging Infectious Diseases - "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 from Patient with Coronavirus Disease, United States" - the paper confirms no actual isolation or purification, but de novo assembly and growing cells in culture: "We used Vero CCL-81 cells for isolation and initial passage. We cultured Vero E6, Vero CCL-81, HUH 7.0, 293T, A549, and EFKB3 cells in Dulbecco minimal essential medium (DMEM) supplemented with heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum (5% or 10%) and antibiotics/antimycotics (GIBCO). We used both NP and OP swab specimens for virus isolation"

None of these papers actually describe an isolation or purification of a virus, and worse, they use PCR at high cycle thresholds.

Freedom of Information Act

Several people have been sending Freedom of Informaiton Act requests (each country has similar implementations of this) to various governmental bodies / offiical public health authorities, asking to see the documentary scientific evidence of isolation & purification of this alleged novel coronavirus.

Here we'll just cover a few of them to get you started.

Public Health England

Trevor Allport sent this FOIA request to Public Health England:

I request all records in the possession, custody or control of the Public Health England (PHE) describing the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus, directly from a sample taken from a diseased patient, where the patient sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material (i.e. monkey kidney cells aka vero cells; live cancer cells). Please note that I am using “isolation” in the every-day sense of the word:the act of separating a thing(s) from everything else. I am not requesting records where “isolation of SARS-COV-2” refers *instead* to:•The culturing of something, or•The performance of an amplification test (i.e. a PCR test), or the sequencing of something. Please also note that my request is not limited to records that were authored by the PHE or that pertain to work done by the PHE. My request includes any sort of record, for example (but not limited to) any published peer-reviewed study that the PHE has downloaded or printed.

On August 20, 2020, Public Health England responded with:

Thank you for your email dated 23July2020. In accordance with Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act), I can confirm that Public Health England (PHE) does not hold the information you have specified.

Health Canada

Christine Massey sent this FOIA request to Health Canada:

All records describing the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus, directly from a sample taken from a diseased patient, where the patient sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material (i.e. monkey kidney cells aka vero cells; liver cancer cells). Please note that I am using "isolation" in the every-day sense of the word: the act of separating a thing(s) from everything else. I am not requesting records where "isolation of SARS-COV-2" refers instead to:·the culturing of something, or·the performance of an amplification test (i.e. a PCR test), or ·the sequencing of something. To clarify, I am requesting all such records that are in the possession, custody or control of Health Canada (for example:downloaded to a computer, printed in hard copy, etc.).

Health Canada responded with:

Having completed a thorough search, we regret to inform you that we were unable to locate any records responsive to your request.

Public Health Agency of Canada

Christine Massey submitted this FOIA request to the Public Health Agency of Canada:

All records in the possession, custody or control of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) describing the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus, directly from a sample taken from a diseased patient, where the patient sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material (i.e. monkey kidney cells aka vero cells; liver cancer cells). Please note that I am using "isolation" in the every-day sense of the word: the act of separating a thing(s) from everything else. I am not requesting records where "isolation of SARS-COV-2" refers instead to:·the culturing of something, or ·the performance of an amplification test (i.e. a PCR test), or ·the sequencing of something. Please also note that my request is not limited to records that were authored by the PHAC or that pertain to work done by PHAC. My request includes any sort of record, for example (but not limited to) any published peer-reviewed study that PHAC has downloaded or printed.

On February 2, 2020, the Public Health Agency of Canada responded with:

Your request has resulted in a “No Records Exist”, because of the way that you have formulated your request. The isolation of the virus is not completed without the use of another medium, therefore we have no records that would show this process taking place.

The same request and similar response on December 10, 2020 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada:

Please be advised that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) does not have any records that respond to your request.

The same request and similar response on December 8, 2020 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research:

I regret to inform you that The Canadian Institutes of Health Research does not have any records under our control relating to your request.

Provincial Health Services Authority

Included in Christine Massey's document, a February 11, 2021 response from Provincial Health Services Authority to FOIA request PHSA F20-0855:

BC Centre of Disease Control confirms that there are no records that describe the isolation of the SARS-CoV-2 variant identified in the United Kingdom.

US CDC

The same FOIA request was sent to the CDC. Their November 2, 2020 request was:

A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request.

New Zealand Ministry of Health

The same FOIA request was sent to the New Zealand Ministry of Health. Their August 7, 2020 response:

The Ministry does not hold records that describe the isolation of a SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Here is a compilation of various FOIA requests and their responses.

Here is an email exchange between Frances Leader and the UK MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) that shows how the Pfizer MRNA injection was created based on a DNA template, not any live virus sample.

Here is a video playlist of doctors and scientists addressing the concern of virus isolation, including the Chinese CDC chief epidemiologist admitting that it has not been isolated.

Finally, here is a video of Dr. Stefan Lanka discussing his control experiment, where he demonstrates the same outcome in cell culture despite the absence of any allegedly infected material.

We hope this page has helped bring some clarity to the importance of this subject. Please share!

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