This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure out how to stop it from happening again. This has nothing to do with the PRC or anyone or anywhere else, it could have happened at any biological facility in the world and will eventually happen again somewhere unless scientific honesty and cooler heads prevail.
> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus.
I think that it is at least somewhat likely that it was the result of the lab's activities, but your assertion here has a huge dose of selection bias.
If the virology labs studying coronaviruses were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future.
It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse.
Another selection bias is that we can't say if the virus originated there, but only that it was first detected there. Even if it originated in the countryside hundreds of miles away it makes sense it was detected only after it spread to a city with the labs to discover the virus.
What I mean is that a small countryside hospital won't be able to notice there is a new type of pneumonia, while bigger cities have teams to detect that. It's the same reason why we probably had the virus circulating in europe in january but we only noticed after we started looking for it.
I have seen estimates of thousands of wet markets in China and perhaps 10000 in all of Asia. Why the one wet market closest to a lab doing GOF research, and previously questioned on its containment rigor.
Because it is the largest city near the bat habitat - with the largest wet market.
Wuhan is like Chicago in China. It's not some random small town. If an outbreak occurred in some rural area (which it might have previously), it's possible that it just fizzled out.
Take a look at this on a map. Mojiang (where RaTG13, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, was reportedly sampled) is closer to Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or HK than to Wuhan. Pu'er is roughly Chicago-sized, and it's 150 km away. Kunming is more people than two Chicagos, and it's 200 km away. It makes sense that this first emerged in a city, but Wuhan is far from the obvious geographic choice.
Maybe folks in Mojiand have some immunity because other variants spread there before? Maybe that's why Vietnam (cause Hanoi is close too) have been largely spared. Maybe Wuhan has a bigger market for "wild meat" than rural places - that wouldn't surprise me. Maybe RaTG13 is present in a lot of places. Maybe there are some even closer relatives to sars-cov-2 closer to Wuhan.
Again, none of this is conclusive. It's all speculation. maybe maybe maybe. There are lots of potential ways for this to have happened natually.
FWIW, I do suspect cross-immunity will eventually explain a lot of mysteries of this virus, including why the Asia-Pacific region has been so lightly-hit compared to Europe and the Americas. So I do agree it's possible that weaker population immunity in more distant regions more than offsets less frequent spillover, and paradoxically makes them the more likely regions for an outbreak (although that's not what experts including Zhengli Shi had originally guessed).
But there's lots of other distant cities in China too, and none of them have virology institutes with the world's biggest collection of novel SARS-like viruses. So whatever your prior was for lab accident vs. natural, I do believe the location in Wuhan should significantly increase that. Certainly far from conclusive, but a possibility that requires serious investigation.
People keep saying this, but it's not true; SARS-like viruses haven't been found in nature near Wuhan. In the words of Dr. Shi herself:
> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.
You've said elsewhere that you think it's reasonable to to suppose they have unpublished samples that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, indeed that's your central claim. So why do you trust this statement about their sampling results but not the one about not having anything closer than RaTG13 [18.5, p6]?
Honestly, I don't fully. From a standpoint of a lab accident, evidence of natural zoonosis near Wuhan would be exculpatory and they'd have no reason to conceal it. But the CCP also seems to be pushing to exclude any origin whatsoever within China, like with their frozen food theory (which is thoroughly rejected by almost all scientists physically outside China, but which the WHO team nonetheless seems to be considering).
So I think it's entirely possible e.g. that China has confidently determined the non-lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, but that it's from an agricultural practice so reckless that they've decided it's better for their reputation to leave everything shrouded in doubt. It's much more obvious to me that China is concealing something than what they're concealing. (Of course, that's usually how concealing stuff works.)
That said, I still think zoonosis near Wuhan is unlikely. In a pre-pandemic publication with no incentive to lie, the WIV studied antibodies to SARS-like viruses in the blood of people living near bats in Yunnan province. They used blood from people living in Wuhan as a negative control:
> As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting.
> They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future.
Are they? I'm not aware of this trend, or of any other major species barrier crossings in Hubei. (If you're thinking of the original SARS, that started in Guangdong, two provinces to the south.)
Sensibly, yes, but not their location isn't based on geographic proximity but rather what is a sensible location for the group building and staffing the lab.
Wuhan is around thousand kilometers away from where this virus supposedly originated from.
But the Wuhan lab did receive samples in 2019 from miners who died in 2012 from an infection of a novel coronavirus that resulted in symptoms very similar to COVID-19.
> It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse.
But if a lighthouse manufactured coral reefs, and the coral reefs on which ships were running aground displayed features of those that a given lighthouse manufactured, it might be more accurate.
Sometimes diplomacy means you smile when you don't want to smile. WHO has to play politics until we get this virus under control (ie, vaccines distributed worldwide). If WHO blames China now, in the thick of things, it would damage the world's ability to further study the origins of the virus and the results of Chinese research. Chinese vaccines are being used and studied in many countries worldwide and that is a good thing. Apart from the obvious benefits of those vaccines, better access to data gives us an inactivated vaccine counterfactual with which to evaluate the mRNA and protein subunit vaccines.
CDC and other US government officials, on the other hand, must ratchet up their criticism of China as well as WHO. I agree with you there. It's alarming that there are so few PR ramifications for China. From the looks of it, either their unsanitary bushmeat consumption got the world sick, or their irresponsible laboratory containment procedures did. Both are a reflection of China's culture, and were only exacerbated by authoritarian crackdown upon the early warnings issued by Chinese medical professionals. The US government shouldn't defend bad practices and systemic problems in the name of multilateral cooperation. That variety of ethical blindness forgives bad faith from our counterparts and damages our hegemony.
I don't understand why WHO is selling it's creditiblity in trade for politics. What is there to gain? Perhaps I am too short sighted but I cannot believe that this is ever the right compromise to take.
I also don't understand why they even had the slighest faith in a reliable investigation. After all these months of pushing back on researching accessing the site, they still bowed to their whims. How does this help the argument that it's better to just suck it up?
One thing I am really interested in to read more on is a historians analysis of the parallels one can draw from the period rising up to World War 2, and more importantly, how the rest of the world acted back then. When Germany was dissolving all their democratic processes, and started labellling jews, what did the rest of the world do? What did their neighbours do? Did they just happily keep on conducting business?
I have read slightly into it, but placing the responses of the countries at that time in the right context really requires some solid knowledge of history. If anyone knows interesting articles to read about the responses of the world during that time: I'm very interested.
> I don't understand why WHO is selling it's creditiblity in trade for politics. What is there to gain?
You reason about WHO as an institution, while disregarding the principal-agent problem. The leaders of WHO are very strongly influenced by China, and as a result the institution is working to please China, rather than working to fulfill its nominal mission. Its leaders will see ample rewards for corrupting the institution.
I was not aware of the name for the principal-agent problem, thank you for that. I do wonder though if it's just ample rewards. I believe the most efficient mode to let others do your biddings is by threatening harsh backlash on refusals to cooperate, and providing ample rewards on cooperation, this to make the incentive even bigger. So perhaps you can also add to it that WHO leaders will face strong backlash by _not_ corrupting the institution.
I recently read a very good book that was not so much a broad overview, but rather a closer look at the American ambassador and his family in Germany in the 1930s. I can wholeheartedly strongly recommend it.
>I don't understand why WHO is selling it's creditiblity in trade for politics. What is there to gain?
Might have something to do with the fact that the leader of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom, was hand picked by the Chinese communist party and won the position over the US and EU's favored choice.
"During its 140th meeting in January 2017, the Executive Board of the WHO shortlisted Tedros as the front runner out of six candidates through two rounds of secret voting. He collected the most votes during both rounds.[citation needed] Tedros "was supported by a bloc of African and Asian countries, including China, which has considerable influence with those members" while "the US, UK and Canada... lent their support to... the British doctor David Nabarro." One observer called it "a really nasty" election."
Basically: "Oh, someone else can play the same game we've played for a century with UN, WHO, IMF, etc. - how dare they?"
You mean the proxy states, lackeys, and funded warlords and dictators setup by EU in Africa, to safeguard the ex-colonial pocessions and make sure they continue to get their resources and control on the cheap?
Or the several Middle Easter/Asian/African countries bombed, invaded, toppled, etc by the US (3-4 of them in the last 20 years alone).
The somewhat accountable and transparent free republics spent like 200 years completely dicking over Africa & China to the tune of millions dead. Not really a position of moral superiority.
How bad of a deal it is to sell your credibility should have been obvious since April 2020.
The lies about masks may have helped with shortages in the short term. The result is now that people rightfully distrust everything their governments say.
Seriously wtf. We're trying to combat disinformation and distrust in info from authorities on the subjects, and the CDC and Fauci comes out with that blatant "noble lie." I can't take these institutions seriously the same way again.
> When Germany was dissolving all their democratic processes, and started labellling jews, what did the rest of the world do? What did their neighbours do? Did they just happily keep on conducting business?
The 1936 Olympic Summer Games are a good starting point in my opinion.
> CDC and other US government officials, on the other hand, must ratchet up their criticism of China as well as WHO. I agree with you there. It's alarming that there are so few PR ramifications for China.
The US relies on Chinese manufacturing. If trade ends, the West will suffer. Consumer and industrial goods can't be built, which could incredibly damage the economy.
Manufacturing is shifting to other countries - Vietnam, India, etc. It's been driven by rising costs in China, but we're seeing an acceleration to de-risk the supply chain. TSM is being asked to build fabs in the US. Slowly, the most strategic pieces are being maneuvered.
China is building up its navy to protect itself. If they lose the South China Sea, they could be blockaded and starved of energy, resources, and food. They're building to reach parity with the US Navy or even outgun it, and they're trying to stall long enough that they can win should there be an encounter.
The US and its allies are ramping up criticism of China, and you can see it in diplomatic activity, news, and social media. The rhetoric will grow until they're ready to shift from soft negotiations to taking a hard line.
> China is building up its navy to protect itself. If they lose the South China Sea, they could be blockaded and starved of energy, resources, and food. They're building to reach parity with the US Navy or even outgun it, and they're trying to stall long enough that they can win should there be an encounter.
China has absolutely no chance to meet head-to-head against a US Carrier Strike Group on neutral territory. Absolutely none, and the US has TEN Carrier Strike Groups.
Ex: If China + US decides that we need to fight over in Antartica, the US will win in nearly every feasible encounter.
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China's plan isn't to win or even challenge the Navy on the high seas. Instead, China's plan is to assert military strength with the seas it is close to: asserting military might against Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Korea, and other local minor powers.
Furthermore: Chinese air-forces can launch from Mainland China to support any hypothetical naval operations.
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EX: Its not trying to beat US in a fair fight. China is likely aiming to beat the US in an "unfair fight": any fight close to China's territories + air force + cruise missile range might stand a chance against a US Carrier Strike Group.
A few powerful Chinese ships under the protective cover of cruise-missiles + Chinese airforce is probably the plan. It only will be effective when close to the Chinese coast, but that's all China really cares about.
> China has absolutely no chance to meet head-to-head against a US Carrier Strike Group on neutral territory. Absolutely none, and the US has TEN Carrier Strike Groups.
Right now. But take a look at the shipbuilding output they've achieved. In ten to twenty years, China could easily rival the US Navy.
China has many smaller Missile Destroyers or Frigates, and has far more production than the USA right now. True.
However, smaller ships aren't going to do jack-diddly squat against a Carrier Strike Group in a neutral situation (ie: both sides meet in Antarctica). F-18s have an effective strike range of over 1000-miles.
Submarines might have some theoretical advantages, but the 110,000 ton Ford-class Carriers moves faster than pretty much every submarine on the planet, so Submarines literally cannot speed up fast enough to engage.
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Those smaller Chinese Ships are going to rely upon a lot of Air support + Cruise Missile support from the mainland if they ever wish to actually engage with a US Carrier Strike Group.
Staying within the protective cover of SAM (against air threats), Cruise Missiles (against the CSG themselves)... and providing a launch platform for various missiles, Chinese Destroyers probably can do a job in a hypothetical fight vs US Navy within the confines of the South China Sea.
But once they leave the protective cover of China's mainland... its all over. Swarms of F18s will just launch missiles at all the Destroyers, while the Carrier Strike Group sits back a thousand miles away.
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That's why the question isn't about those small Chinese ships (even though China is making a lot of them). The big question is about the performance of those Chinese Carriers. At 70,000 tons or so, they're much lighter than the 110,000 ton Ford-class carriers.
> In ten to twenty years, China could easily rival the US Navy.
People said this 20 years ago. We've already started to see the CCP losing ground (see HK), and I'm quite bearish on the Party going forward. Jinping is 67, and I expect to see a major power struggle which will leave the Chinese Communist Party crippled when he dies.
>We've already started to see the CCP losing ground (see HK)
How is violating the Sino-British Joint Declaration and getting away with it "losing ground"? The Hong Kong protests failed and Hongkongers now have less freedom than before.
Foreign investment in HK was down 34.4% in 2019 versus the prior year [0]. Apart from the immediate ramifications of a year of protests, Beijing's effort to clamp down on HK was an economic self-own that opens the floodgates for Western hawkishness on Taiwan, Xinjiang, and every other area where China's expansionism overlaps with its economic ambitions. Beijing could have allowed HK to remain as it was, using it to entice the West. Instead, their authoritarian tack has reminded the frog to check the temperature of its bath.
I don't think they got away with much. Even if foreign investment rebounds in HK, Western complacency toward China will not find its voice again for many decades, and in that time, every Chinese treaty negotiation will be viewed as a bad-faith caricature of real diplomacy.
Why do you think so? The CCP and Xi has shown they are more than saavy enough to avoid a power struggle. He has at least 10-15 more years left as well, and the battle for Taiwan will probably take shape within that time frame.
HK they won easily. Western countries like UK and especially Europe are completely useless. Only the US can coordinate and shore up a coordinated response against China.
I mean, yeah, five out of 6 cited experts have ties to EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn has funding ties to one of the two virology labs in Wuhan, but that's, like, just a coincidence. If it wasn't, I'm sure NPR would mention it.
And then Peter Daszak himself went to Wuhan with WHO team to investigate and didn't find anything conclusive. Peter fucking Daszak. You're not going to tell me that someone who was interviewed and cited on this subject by NPR, CNN, CBS, Slate, Democracy Now, Washing Post and The Guardian could be full of shit, right?
You're also forgetting that these people are scientists. Scientists only look at the facts and are completely unbiased - they aren't like normal humans, who might be worried about their entire livelihoods being cancelled (or worse) if the world realises their research is too dangerous to exist. And scientists who work for political organisations are the most unbiased of all. /s
I have no strong opinions on this matter, but I'm having difficulty understanding the sarcasm here. Can someone translate for me? Is the un-sarcastic version of parent's argument that most of the claims against this being a leak were put forth by a single organization, EcoHealth Alliance, which has an agenda for convincing people that this is not a leak?
> EcoHealth Alliance, which has an agenda for convincing people that this is not a leak?
Exactly that. The first paper which discredited the lab leak theory published in The Lancet early last year by a number of scientists was later found out to have been organized behind the scenes by EcoHealth, which also asked for it's name not to appear on the paper.
I'm with you, the parent's sarcasm is really malformed. They're claiming that EcoHealth has conflicts of interests that led them to disavow the WIV lab theory.
It doesn't seem to me like parent is disputing the factual accuracy of the argument, but rather saying that the sarcasm was not well constructed (possibly because of the multiple negatives, which require a certain amount of gymnastics to understand), and is thus not as effective as it could be.
A proper investigation would not include Peter Daszak at all, due to his immense conflicts of interest on this topic, and his behaviour since the outbreak occurred.
The whole thing is a bureaucratic cya masterpiece. We deny the wuhan lab leak but, just in case, we also deny we had any means to actually investigate it
"Look, dude," RNA mutates due to many environmental factors.
It's why living organisms typically now use DNA and only short-term usage of RNA for copying purposes, certainly not as the primary data store.
RNA mutations mimicking proteins are precisely how a non-living entity can, like a bike-thief trying combinations randomly, unlock the lipid or protein sheaths on animal cells and gain direct access to the inputs of a genetic reproduction machine inside the cell.
So, aside from the fact that these folks only have some circumstantial evidence and woo to suggest a lab hypothesis, (not EVEN a theory, not EVEN a hypothesis, nay, mere speculation with a vested political axe to grind, hello) and that fact that all factual evidence of how all previous cross-species virus hops occurred point to this being a relatively common occurence (1918 avian-porcine-human connection occurred in Kansas by the way, not "Spanish")
I subscribe to this theory. I didn't subscribe to it originally because it seemed to dystopian. However on reading the recent politico article (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...) really changed my opinion about it. To be clear I think it would have been an accident at a Chinese government lab that was underfunded and overworked. Seems to me like the likeliest candidate. I don't think the current US administration wants to point the finger at the Chinese government since it will cause a lot public anger. That and the Chinese government most certainly covered all their tracks by now.
I'd also assign a small but non-zero probability to the US not wanting to point the finger because they prefer the scenario where the general population comes to believe that the lab accident was responsible, but no hard evidence is ever produced.
Why? Because it seems like US institutions and people (right up to Fauci) were involved in this research and may not want the domestic blowback.
Conveniently the CCP don't want a paper trail either.
I'd be pretty sure the various scenarios have already been gamed out in both countries.
Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted, but just in case it’s a reflex because I mentioned Fauci: yes, he was head of NIAID, and yes, the NIH did fund this type of research at the WIV. The grants are public information.
Both led by Peter Daszak who is now also the lead WHO investigator. The same person who decided the WHO didn’t need to see the deleted virus databases, and the same person who co-ordinated the Lancet statement which minimised the lab leak theory early on (and let to it being considered a conspiracy theory).
Here he is on This Week In Virology, describing this sort of work. It’s worth watching the whole thing, but gets most interesting from minute 27 onward:
For example he confirms it’s easy to modify these viruses in the lab, and mentions collaborating with Ralph Baric at UNC. Baric invented Remdesivir (with Gilead) - the “cure” that turned out not to work very well. His lab was doing gain of function experiments before the ban. Shi Zhengli (“bat woman” from Wuhan) worked very closely with Baric and Daszak.
Seems like there continues to be more to this story. Still doesn't change my opinion that that is likely the source of the outbreak. I will adjust my priors as more information becomes available. It does complicate things quite a bit - would be great to know how much funding the US portion is vs the Chinese.
I agree the Wuhan lab leak remains the most likely explanation. I think these additional details support that theory, as they verify that this activity was indeed taking place in Wuhan, while also helping explain the unusual behaviour of all the people who should be investigating but seem instead to be constantly deflecting.
Agree seems like we have the incentives lined up and the least plausible scenario without new information. Likely will never get to the bottom of this.
The Politico article is extremely dishonest. Josh Rogin has been claiming for a year now that US diplomats raised red flags about the WIV's safety. He wrote an article to this effect a year ago, based on diplomatic cables he had seen. Then the Washington Post obtained the full cables, and it turned out that Rogin had seriously mischaracterized them. They do not claim that the WIV has unsafe practices - only that its newest lab is still (2 years before officially opening) training personnel and can't yet run at full capacity. It asks the US government to continue its training program for WIV scientists. Yet Rogin continues to misrepresent the cables.
Also - i did do a check on Josh Rogin and it does seem he has done some underhanded reporting practices in the past. Not saying that discredits him completely but does muddy his work. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
That said - it doesn't yet change my priors about the likely source of outbreak which seems most plausibly at WIV.
What about that article convinced you? All I saw was some concern about safety protocols 2 years before the outbreak, some content free insinuations, and a whole lot of "we don't have any evidence."
It's not a crazy theory by any means, but, if it happened, then there's evidence. So, where is the evidence? Literally, where is there any actual evidence it happened?
So the Chinese government 100% scrubbed down any data and silenced anyone working there. They stonewalled the WHO and world at large during the beginning of the out break, likely to cover their tracks.
What changed for me is how much circumstantial evidences exists and probably a stronger signal: there hasn’t been another plausible starting point. When something smells this fishy there’s likely a reason. It’s starting to feel like, Occam’s razor - ie that a lab leak is the simplest explanation.
Really? Why would there be evidence TODAY? Those bats have likely been destroyed, and all records of sequences taken from them have likely long since been shredded and burned.
Then, why wasn't evidence uncovered earlier? Surely the theory had just as much plausibility a year ago as today.
Are you asking me to believe a theory for which all the evidence was either not uncovered or destroyed? Why is that more plausible than origin from outside the lab?
I mean, isn't that obvious? The Chinese did not allow anyone to investigate WIV because they don't want to be blamed.
I agree that conclusions should not be drawn without evidence - but by the same token, you cannot rule this out as a possibility because no effort was put into investigating it.
If you put two columns: zoonotic transfer, lab leak. And you list circumstantial evidence for both. Your zoonotic transfer column will be terribly empty in comparison. There is no patient 0, and the wet market was not the source, and we still do not have a zoonotic chain established. All those facts could be added to the lab leak hypothesis instead. For the most prominent clue of a biological attack is Single cause of a certain disease caused by an uncommon agent, with lack of an epidemiological explanation.. If you look at the history: SARS-1 naturally arose once in China. SARS-1 escaped a lab twice in the few years after. Chinese spies infiltrated Western gain-of-function virus-and-cancer-research labs, then smuggled back vials to China in a sock in their check-in luggage.
The evidence is with the intelligence agencies of Western nations. Trump and Pompeo (Pompeo was sanctioned by China hours after new President took office) did not make up their "China Virus" as some racist dog whistle. They were informed.
The WHO, when pressured by the UK for China not sharing information, nor allowing access to a team for investigation, said: Now is not the time to point fingers. We need China cooperation for now. The UK replied that it then has to assume the worst possible and prepare for a pandemic. It did.
Actual tangible evidence is rare, but it is pretty damning that: China blocks Australian-led world-wide investigation into the origins of COVID -- re-sentencing Australian prisoners to death penalty and messing with trade relations to hurt Australia's economy. They'd do that for a natural zoonotic-base virus that was out of their control? Phone location records show containment procedures around Wuhan lab around October 2019. Former military analysts in Israel pose the lab leak hypothesis as plausible, betting their reputation on it.
It is not too fair to ask actual tangible evidence, if evidence could mean a hot war or severely strained relations during a pandemic where people need to work together. And what is your tangible evidence for the popular zoonotic hypothesis? Just some experts saying that zoonotic base is most likely when interviewed for a popular news outlet? The most likely hypothesis should be the easiest to find actual support for. Why not?
I think a lot of criticism on the drastic measures to contain a relatively low CFR virus would be dispelled if the general public knew what the decision-makers then knew: a strange novel virus which seems extremely adapted to infect humans, and shows more similarities to the lab viruses worked with in biowarfare, than with captured and documented cave bats. Similar to the "airborne COVID" -- first publicized by the head of the WHO -- we seem to be managing the factual information flow to avoid panic, geopolitics, and xenophobia. It is right now not important that the general public knows it is dealing with an engineered virus or lab leak. Or at least... other things are more important right now.
So, you're saying I should just believe it escaped from a lab because reasons? And you're asking me to believe the administration of a president who lied publicly 30,000 times over 4 years and who may soon be facing criminal charges? Sorry, but that's just not good enough. Actual evidence in the zoonotic origin column greatly surpasses that in the lab leak column. I'll go with what I can see, thanks.
Believe whatever you want. If you believe the zoonotic origin, ok sure, but your circumstantial evidence for that is weaker than the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak.
Yes. You are supposed to believe the administration of a president when they claim: The virus came from China. Whether deliberate or accidental, it likely originated in a laboratory. If you don't, I reckon you have bigger problems than a pandemic. If you can't trust your government on such critical matters, if you really believe the US government would stand for the secretary of State spreading lies, then you should probably flee to China and ask asylum there.
> Sorry, but that's just not good enough.
But experts saying: "Virus is likely zoonotic, but we have no idea" is good enough? Again, demanding others to proof that a teacup is orbiting Venus is reasonable. But not when you can't even show the existence of teacups or Venus yourself.
> Actual evidence in the zoonotic origin column greatly surpasses that in the lab leak column.
There is no actual evidence. Actual evidence of zoonotic origin would establish the transmission chain and identify patient 0. There is none. You have "Bats can be the original carrier". So your hypothesis could be true. It is circumstantial. Any actual evidence would instantly kill one of the hypothesis. So you share some responsibility there.
For an example of how to turn the BBC article into circumstantial evidence for a lab leak, is to study the franticness that went on with sequencing and publishing. Wuhan lab published the sequencing of bats captured in 2017 in 2020. It was complete PR management campaign, with scientists blaming "Mother Nature" not their research, information black-outs, and sharing of "secret" sequences years after the fact in support of zoonotic chain, while blocking any outside investigation into the origin which would support/not support the zoonotic origin.
For myself, the biggest circumstantial evidence I've seen is the manipulation of discourse on social media by state-sponsored trolls and bots. Whenever the downvote bots, US #metoo, charges of racism, and astroturfing begins, there is usually a big thing they are trying to hide. Even when discarding lots of evidence tainted by politics, this one remains. What would be the motive?
Another thing of note. A large percentage of the opposition to the lab leak hypothesis seems to stem from anti-Trump sentiment. In January 2020 the media first mentioned and entertained the lab leak hypothesis (interviewing military intelligence analysts) and seemed to treat it in a factual manner. Intelligence community knew that COVID was a thing before December (and China knew), even when China was saying the first case came in January. Then China deployed 1000s of online trolls and their diplomats would start spouting "no-you!" conspiracy theories, such as "US military brought COVID to Wuhan during Military World Games". In response, Trump started referring to COVID as the "China virus", and told reporters he thought the lab leak was likely, just not sure about accident or deliberate. Then with the anti-Trump sentiment this messaging was attacked for its crude irresponsible generalization (there are many Chinese origin people in US, just wanting a good life, without being spat on for importing the "China Virus") and interpreted purely as a political play by Trump to get the racist vote and being strong against China. So any mention of the "China Virus", and soon after, the lab leak hypothesis, became an indirect vote for far-right Conservatives or the basis of a racist conspiracy theory. Full circle when popular news started listing "COVID is leaked bioweapon research" as a conspiracy on par with Bill Gates being the Anti-Christ.
Very similar things happened with hydrochloroquine. HCQ was known effective for SARS-1, and prelim research showed it also was effective for SARS-2 (less grave symptoms developed) in the middle of February. Just did not help when the patient was already severely sick, so was not a cure, as touted by trigger-happy Trump months later. But then all of HCQ was discredited as being useless snake oil, and responsible for killing Americans when they drank aquarium cleaner. It was a political hit job on science, to punish Trump playing lose and politics. None the wiser or the healthier.
Finally. When the virus was not yet a pandemic (but clearly on the way there), the right prepper movement started talking about masks, self-treatment in case of hospital crisis, and food and vitamins (vitamin D and selenium were chosen for their effects against other viruses) to keep immune system healthy. Meanwhile in the US, progressive politicians held mask-less photo opportunities at China Town restaurants to signal their support and that fear is unreasonable. Democrat politicians, former presidents, and public health officials were stating to not buy N95 masks for these were not effective and wearing them would signal you were ill. Then Trump went muh-freedom-america on masks, and the progressive-left opposition to not mask wearing grew overnight.
On all these flip-flops, the US held conflicting positions, and any science was an afterthought. I classify your objection to the official US position on lab leak as lies as part of this politics game. It makes you think of your entire government as a single "bad" figure, blatantly lying or skipping over their intelligence agencies and geopolitics experts, because their irrational hatred for China feels deserving of a big lie. Trump and Pompeo fabricating the lab leak hypothesis seems like a bigger story than the Trump-Ukraine scandal. If you have any actual evidence for that (or strong circumstantial evidence beyond Trump playing loose with facts) then it is your duty to inform the American public of that radical conspiracy.
This is as well my strongly held belief, and the most likely cause.
And people making the really odd responses below. They're, not saying it, but insinuating that the lab would be where there is lots of bat coronavirus? The lab is in the city of Wuhan. A city with a population of 11 million people. This isn't some rural town.
There was a lab that studied this type of coronavirus, had published papers on it. And in a country the size of the USA had an outbreak within just a few miles from that lab. Then the govt came and refused to let anyone outside investigate.
To me that leads pretty strongly that it was an accidental lab leak. And they weren't able to control the spread.
My hopeful opinion is that this leads to more stringent worldwide rules for reporting leaks, and checking of safety practices to avoid this happening again
> My hopeful opinion is that this leads to more stringent worldwide rules for reporting leaks, and checking of safety practices to avoid this happening again
A leak that results in 2.7 million worldwide deaths will not result in "more stringent worldwide rules for reporting leaks". It would result in economic reparations and possibly war.
Leak or not, it's in China's interest to prevent the blame from falling on them. The narrative here is an incredibly powerful geopolitical tool.
I don't really have a stake in this, and no real idea how plausible the lab accident theory is.
That said, don't you think that the location of a lab like that would be highly correlated with the location of dangerous natural viral reservoir? Or put another way, if you wanted to study zoonotic viruses, wouldn't you put your lab in a place like that?
If we have no say in whether or not scientists should be creating super viruses (a.k.a. weapons of mass destruction), I'd prefer they do so somewhere like Antarctica or on a space station, not in the middle of a city.
It's also been reported that it wasn't the season for the bat species.
Those in favour of the lab leak hypothesis point out that the virus showed up on the scene with all the evolutionary capability to spread amongst humans i.e with batteries included.
With previous Sars viruses my understanding is that each zoonotic jump was traceable with examples of previous forms in prior animal hosts to corroborate the lineage.
What makes Covid-19 interesting is that these zoonotic jumps or the gain of functions can be accelerated in the lab with the purpose of preparing us ahead of time for a dangerous forms of Sars style viruses. It looks like covid-19 may be that type of strain, not man made, but given the lab conditions for it to gain the capability. It may have escaped.
It's worth exploring the lab leak hypothesis but I would say that it's not politically expedient for any of the scientists or parties involved. We will never really know the truth and that is something we need to grow comfortable with.
You are mixing two theories here:
A) A lab leak
B) Gain of function research.
My understanding is that A) is very much possible because it has happened before (SARS), but we have no evidence yet (and might never acquire).
For B) however, from my limited understanding, there is no strong evidence. We only know about a fraction of existing coronaviruses out there and given we observe one, that has caused a pandemic, the (conditional!) probability that it is well adapted is extremely high (survivorship bias).
If you have a credible source that claims B) please share it.
> What's more, Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists have for the past five years been engaged in so-called "gain of function" (GOF) research, which is designed to enhance certain properties of viruses for the purpose of anticipating future pandemics. Gain-of-function techniques have been used to turn viruses into human pathogens capable of causing a global pandemic.
> This is no nefarious secret program in an underground military bunker. The Wuhan lab received funding, mostly for virus discovery, in part from a ten-year, $200 million international program called PREDICT, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other countries.
I'm not doubting that at all, see also this statement by a US embassy [1].
What I'm saying is that we don't have strong (any?) evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of gain of function research. It is entirely possible but the majority of the scientists who do gain of function research say it's unlikely (given what we know today, which might change).
Again, a credible source saying the opposite is appreciated.
>What I'm saying is that we don't have strong (any?) evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of gain of function research
There is analysis that suggests that SARS-CoV-2 wasn't engineered. However, if you were intentionally giving it to a bunch of animals in batches with some interspecies mixing, you wouldn't really expect it to look any different than a natural jump.
Isn’t he referring to a lab leak of a virus which was engineered with ‘gains of function’. I’m particularly convinced of this theory because it explains the glaring weakness of the Covid-19 virus to UV radiation (ie sunlight).
If Chinese researches were modifying viral samples to gain functions (evolutionary or otherwise), weakness against sunlight is a believable oversight, considering it wouldn’t have been subjected to it indoors.
If I wanted to study zoonotic viruses, I would put labs in places filled with universities or government agencies focused on disease, like Boston, Atlanta, Maryland.
I've done security audits and related consulting work upon research labs in my past and the biggest issue they had was - extremist animal activists.
Now I was aware of some reports (nothing official or confirmed) that the Wuham lab was broken into in the summer of 2019.
Interestingly enough their was a lot of political tension at that time involving Hong Kong.
I'm also mindful how China has been rather good at sweeping things under carpets.
So I could speculate how things played out in a way that fits events, but without any smoking gun - it would be just speculation and joining dots that may or may not of been there.
Though even if it was something along the lines of what I'm thinking happened (animal activists with HK connections being politically motivated/manipulated and possibly no idea what type of lab it was beyond they may be hurting animals), the lab was researching virus's from the wild - seeing how they mutate and progress in an effort to see what lays ahead.
So lab event or no lab event - this virus was already in existence in some form and was not a case of if, but when.
One thing I do know, it sure did shine a spotlight upon how connected the World is and also how fragile many supply lines are.
Molecular dating studies place a hard limit on index cases at October 2019. Anything earlier and the virus should have mutated more than it has.
Someone who broke into a Wuhan coronavirus research lab in summer 2019 and broke containment of our hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 precursor virus samples would have been infected too early for our timeline.
> there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus
Why not? Wuhan is the 43rd largest city in the world. Meanwhile, the earliest cases of CoVid were all connected to the same wet market. Doesn't that have a higher probability being the origin?
Your source cites the WSJ, which itself cites the Wuhan Virology Institute, which is trying to imply that China may not be the origin of CoVid at all, so I don't believe it.
I'm not sure that this virus even behaves in this way where a BSL-4 worker could become infected. What we know now is that you need a concentration of virus particles over time in order to come down with the disease (in other words, you are most likely to catch it drinking in your friends living room for 4 hours with an infected person, than in a grocery store where an infected person might cough on you in line but there is no long term exposure). I can't imagine where there is a situation in a lab environment where you would have the equivalent of an infected person drinking beer with you for hours in terms of exposure. Even a rip in your PPE wouldn't expose you to very much particulate compared with an infected person spitting in your face conversationally for hours.
The other thing to note is this virus hops to new species super fast. its already in pretty much every mammal we interact with now. You going to tell me this super fast spreading - super species hoping virus was waiting in a cave somewhere and never spread?
My favorite conspiracy theory bend on this is that it’s the best place to intentionally release it too, especially if WIV is absolutely not studying anything like COVID-19 because it looks so appealing to dig into the bio safety level four lab, but there’s probably nothing there so it will be eventually dismissed.
All that said I think it is really unlikely and a pointless effort as government bureaucracies wouldn’t be able to even formulate a reaction to an intentional or even accidental release so I think we will not try too hard to imply that for political reasons.
> but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus.
What better place to put a lab studying bat viruses than near a place where they originate?
The WHO will never look where they don't want the answer to be found and will actively work against it.
The chair of the WHO (Tedros Adhanom) [1] was a communist rebel (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) fighter in north africa and his career has been sponsored and guided by China for this reason.
They won't suppress findings made internally because it would be too hard to cover up - but they will 'do the least' with respect to finding answers.
Only the US has enough power and wherewithal to even try to do something, but they'll be kept out direct, so it boils down to how sophisticated the US clandestine efforts are in China.
My completely speculative guess is that US operating ability in China is 'really bad' and that they've already barked up that tree and found nothing conclusive.
Covid is the COrona VIrus Disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is somewhat, but not extremely closely related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus, which caused the original SARS disease.
I'm also waiting for people to admit that the dubious ban of Zero Hedge from Twitter (later reinstated) for bringing up this theory and "doxxing" the lab head was all made in bad faith (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter...). It's crazy how words like "doxxing" can lose all coherent meaning and be used to describe this blog post, where they simply posted the publicly listed information of the public face of the lab, fully visible from the Wuhan lab's own website. This authoritarian act of censorship and the biased news media coverage that followed led to further censorship, where discussions exploring the possibility of accidental lab leaks were banned on places like Medium or other social media. This is why free speech matters as a fundamental principle and this is why we must hold all tech platforms accountable to protect free speech.
there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus
If it came from somewhere else, why wasn’t the outbreak noticed there first, is the million dollar question. It requires some serious mental gymnastics at this point to believe it didn’t originate in that lab. The only real question is if it was released deliberately.
Because winter is flu season, and most of the time the symptoms are impossible to distinguish, even when you're looking?
Sure, China has way more public health capacity than it used to, but we know that COVID can spread silently in a community for a month without anyone noticing, even when we are looking. It happened in California and Seattle in January 2020. Why wouldn't that have happened in, say, rural China in October?
There were apparently already people with COVID symptoms in Italy back in December 2019. That said, China was already aware of the virus in late 2019. It's all well known.
Well, that's what I mean. Nobody knew COVID was circulating in Italy at the time either. It's easy to miss a new respiratory virus. For it to originate one place and by chance end up exploding in a different metropolitan area doesn't seem unlikely at all.
In fact, simply from a modelling perspective, this is very likely scenario.
If you take an unknown diseases with an R of 2-3, what you will see is a number of smaller clusters, some dying off, before you get the one cluster that becomes the pandemic.
