Non-sense is permeating the pseudoscience blogosphere that SARS-Cov-2 are just exosomes and that there is no virus. Let's investigate.
There is an hour-long video on youtube by a Dr. Andrew Kaufman claiming to be a medical doctor and psychiatrist who is reporting that exosomes are what scientists are actually seeing. Exosomes are a kind of mini-cell for cell-to-cell communication. They can fuse with the membrane of other cells releasing its contents into them. They sometimes carry RNA and DNA.
To argue that SARS-COV-2 is an exosome, however, is patently absurd. Dr. Kaufman would have everyone believe that tens of thousands of microscopists are incompetent. Though this isn't impossible, even an untrained eye can see the difference between a coronavirus and an exosome. In the images above and below. The differences vary greatly. Coronaviruses have long spike proteins whereas vesicles such as exosomes have short protein spikes and get rather tangled and look more matted (above).
Coronavirus
TEM technique
A different technique using Cryo-EM below.
Other claims
The video states that something in the environment is causing cells to be more toxic. For him and some others, they believe that 5G explains this. Neither 5G nor exosomes explain away the fact that specific antibodies have been created against this virus. Neither theory explains satisfactorily the classic epidemiological incidence and spread of the virus. And what about contact tracing? How are investigators able to determine who passed on the virus to whom? Also, why are so many people recovering? It's not like the 5G and toxins went away.
The video also claims that exosomes use the ACE2 enzyme to enter cells. In my research, I could not find this to be true. I am currently waiting on an exosome expert to chime in. Kaufman also claimed that Vitamin C will help... somehow... and that the "virus" has "not reached pandemic levels". It has. He also stated that the President of Meharry Medical College stated that, ".. the virus is fully an exosome in every sense of the word". I have reached out to Dr. Hildreth on this claim. The quote from the video is probably addressing this paper in which Dr. Hildreth discusses how HIV may hijack exosomes which can aid them in entering cells. He never said that the virus itself doesn't exist or that HIV is just an exosome. Very dishonest by "Dr." Andrew Kaufman.
Despite the lack of evidence and horrible claims made, his acolytes praise him on discovering the real truth about COVID-19 regardless of readily available scientific evidence to the contrary. :-(