COVID-19, polio, HIV caused by viruses that have been identified and studied | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·5 min read

The claim: Viruses are not real

A Feb. 11 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) includes a video of a man talking about several illnesses and their purported causes.

In the video, the man offers alternative “causes” of seven ailments – herpes, the flu, HIV, COVID-19, long COVID, rabies and polio. He concludes by saying that the viruses modern medicine says cause those illnesses have never been "proven to exist."

The post was liked more than 7,000 times in three days. An identical video was posted on a related Instagram account.

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Our rating: False

All of the conditions named in the video are caused by viruses that have been identified and studied.

Viruses recognized as causes of ailments since late 1700s

The overarching claim that viruses are not real flies in the face of research going back more than two centuries, when inoculation with cowpox lesions in 1796 provided protection from far more dangerous smallpox. As noted in the Journal of Virology, effective vaccines are developed based on the ability to identify viruses that cause diseases and learn from “basic studies of viral replication, transmission and pathogenesis.”

Guidelines for determining if a disease is caused by a pathogen, known as Koch's postulates, have existed since 1890. They include confirming that the organism suspected of causing an ailment is found in people with the disease, that it is absent from people without the disease and that transmitting the organism to an otherwise healthy person causes the disease.

The first virus was identified with that method in the 1890s, while electron microscopy enabled viruses to be seen starting in the 1930s.

The video's claims include an assertion that rabies has never "been proven to exist," there is thousands of years of evidence to the contrary.

Records of canine rabies symptoms date back to at least 500 B.C.E., and the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that animals bitten by dogs who were sick with “madness” would eventually display the same symptoms. A timeline of the history of rabies published by Stanford University states that a researcher demonstrated it was transmitted through saliva in 1804, while the first vaccine using a weakened form of the virus was developed in 1885.

An image of the rabies virus obtained using electron microscopy can be found on the Department of Agriculture's website.

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USA TODAY has previously covered claims about the origins of the six other ailments discussed in the video.

  • Herpes is "absolutely caused by infection with one of the two herpes simplex viruses," Dr. Patrick Jackson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Virginia, previously told USA TODAY. Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) typically causes oral herpes and is primarily spread via oral-to-oral contact. Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) usually causes genital herpes and is almost exclusively transmitted through genital-to-genital contact.

  • Influenza is caused by a virus, something medical professionals have known “for a little less than a century,” Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, previously told USA TODAY. Most people catch the flu from inhaled airborne droplets from the coughs and sneezes of someone infected with the virus. Individuals can also catch the flu by touching a surface with the virus on it and then touching their eyes, mouth or nose.

  • HIV was identified in the 1980s as researchers tried to find the cause of AIDS. “There is no infectious disease in the history of medicine with anywhere near this amount of evidence. It is conclusive," Dr. Robert Gallo, the virologist who co-discovered HIV, told USA TODAY.

  • Polio was identified in 1908 as a viral infection by Dr. Karl Landsteiner and Dr. Erwin Popper. The success of the vaccine in preventing polio provides strong evidence that a virus causes the disease, and “person-to-person transmission of polio may be eliminated in the next few years, hopefully," Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a Stanford University professor who studies global health, previously told USA TODAY.

  • SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (and by extension long COVID), has been isolated by researchers in several countries. Its complete genome has been sequenced, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has released detailed images of the virus.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim but did not immediately receive a response.

Lead Stories also debunked part of the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Viruses are real, cause illnesses like herpes, flu, polio | Fact check