Readers should have very low confidence in the Wall Street Journal‘s assumption (2/26/23) that classified intelligence reports are helpful gauges of scientific questions.
The Wall Street Journal (2/26/23) broke the news that classified documents show the US Energy Department believes Covid emerged from a lab leak in China, which sent shockwaves through the rest of the media. Such a statement by the Energy Department “would be significant despite the fact that, as the report said, the agency made its updated judgment with ‘low confidence,’” according to the Guardian (2/26/23).
“Low confidence” is a term intelligence agencies use to signify that “information’s credibility and/or plausibility is questionable, or that the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or that we have significant concerns or problems with the sources.”
Speaking of low confidence, Michael Gordon, one of the Journal reporters on the byline, used to write for the New York Times. There he co-authored spurious articles with the infamous Judith Miller about imaginary Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify the US invasion of Iraq (New York Times, 9/8/02, 9/13/02; New York Review of Books, 2/26/04; Guardian, 5/27/04; FAIR.org, 3/20/13).*
Nevertheless, this one article from a sketchy reporter, relaying a single government agency’s speculations that were self-labeled as dubious, managed to reignite the lab leak controversy, with virtually every major US news outlet returning to the story.
Readers should be asking why so many in media find government talking points on a scientific question so newsworthy. There is a vast amount of scientific research that points to Covid spreading to humans from other animal hosts—“zoonotic jump” is the technical term—and pours serious cold water on the lab leak hypothesis, as well as some of the political actors who promote it.
‘Public-health groupthink’
“Officials would not disclose what the intelligence was”—but that’s good enough for the front page of the New York Times (2/26/23).
After the Journal story broke, the New York Times (2/26/23) noted that the FBI “has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses.” Meanwhile, “four other intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded, with low confidence, that the virus most likely emerged through natural transmission.” Other outlets trumpeted the Journal’s report, giving the impression that new evidence about the pandemic’s origins had come to light (CNN, 2/27/23; NPR, 2/27/23; CBS, 2/28/23).
While this reporting indicates that there is little consensus among government agencies about the virus’ origins, those who want to believe in the lab leak myth—like Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, to which the Journal belongs—used the report as definitive proof of Chinese carelessness, or even treachery.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board (2/26/23) said the Energy Department declaration “doesn’t mean the case is definitive,” but that it adds “more evidence that the media and public-health groupthink about Covid was mistaken and destructive.” The Journal stressed that the “salient detail is that DoE’s judgment is based on ‘new’ but still secret intelligence”—which is known as the “trust us” school of journalism.
In another Journal op-ed (3/6/23), Tim Trevan, a founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting, attempted to say that money, political liberalism, careerism and social pressure clouded the scientific community’s ability to accept the lab leak hypothesis. “I am not suggesting that scientists consciously decided to thwart the truth,” he said:
You don’t have to posit conspiracy theories to explain the rush by the science establishment to exclude a lab-leak explanation to Covid. You merely have to admit that scientists are human.
Trevan offers no evidence that a lab leak caused the pandemic, to back up his insistence that scientists have been blind to the truth. He does, however, indulge in low-brow anti-Communism and orientalism, saying the “transparency” necessary for adequate laboratory safety “runs against the grain of both Communism and China’s hierarchical traditional culture.” Which is it: Is China too egalitarian in its Maoist ways, or too stuck in its backward, pre-revolutionary past?
Jonathan Turley opined at the New York Post (2/26/23) that the Journal’s scoop vindicated lab leak theorists who had been branded as racists or conspiracy nuts. Fox News (2/27/23) echoed Turley, and it gloated (2/27/23) that “reporters, pundits and media outlets” who had doubted the lab leak theory “were scolded and lampooned” as a result of the Journal report.
‘Intentionally manufactured’
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has promoted the racist “great replacement” myth on his show (FAIR.org, 10/20/21; NPR, 5/12/22), took the lab leak speculation and ran with it. He showcased Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan (2/28/23), who said that “the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released” the coronavirus behind the pandemic, while Carlson suggested “the Chinese government unleashed Covid to destroy Western economies and elevate their own position globally.”
Yan’s research, while backed by MAGA ideologist Steve Bannon (Vox, 9/18/20), has been questioned by National Geographic (9/18/20) and her own Hong Kong University (7/11/20).
Her narrative nevertheless fits into the anti-China hysteria of Fox News, and has been an important player for the right’s media war since the pandemic began. As the New York Times (11/20/20) put it:
For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China’s government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak.
Carlson, of course, is not bothered by the reality that the pandemic negatively impacted the Chinese economy (Wall Street Journal, 1/17/23) and led to internal political unrest (Al Jazeera, 12/22/22).
Anything you can point to is “proof” when you are not trying to examine reality but instead have a story you want to tell (New York Post, 10/10/21).
Rebroadcasting reports of official government assertions aligns nicely with the Republican agenda. The Hill (2/26/23) reported that the “lack of confidence or details on the assessment didn’t stop Republicans from claiming validation and calling for urgent action against China.” And Sen. Roger Marshall (R.–Kansas) told the Washington Post (2/28/23) that the report “gives us momentum to expose the true origins of Covid.” He added, with Michael Crichton–like flair: “I think that there’s just no way this virus could have come from nature. It’s just too perfect.”
The lab leak claim has been a major feature in Republican circles, the conservative media and anti-Beijing political tendencies for years now. The New York Post editorial board (10/10/21) claimed that the alleged lab leak, and the Chinese government’s supposed attempts to cover it up, were all but proven in the fall of 2021.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R.–Arkansas), who has insisted that China must be punished for the Covid pandemic (Fox News, 4/10/20), “said part of the widespread media dismissal of the coronavirus lab-leak theory last year stemmed from liberal networks’ financial connections to the Chinese government” (Fox News, 6/7/21).
The Journal report has raised tensions. US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns (BBC, 2/28/23) said China must “be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the Covid-19 crisis.” It should come as no surprise that reactionary corporate shock jocks like Joe Rogan, the all-star of pandemic disinformation pundits (Washington Post, 2/2/22), are fans of the theory (Fox News, 4/12/22).
Appeals to hunches
The “zebra” in this case is the lab leak theory—rather than zoonotic transfer, which is the normal way new diseases are introduced to the human population (Des Moines Register, 2/19/23).
If the absence of anything new in the Energy Department statement didn’t seem to give reporters and editors pause, that’s because in a lot of media, the lab leak hypothesis is advanced not so much based on evidence—because as far as tracing the virus back to the lab, there is none—but on an appeal to the hunches, and prejudices, of readers.
For example, an opinion piece in the Des Moines Register (2/19/23) offered a list of events that are supposed to lead one to the idea that it could be true: The “Wuhan lab was working on bat coronaviruses, that gain-of-function work was being done there, [and] that there were concerns about the lab’s safety practices.” The Register op-ed, by former Republican congressmember and retired surgeon Dr. Greg Ganske, mused “that the pandemic started in the city where the lab is located, and that there has been no natural occurrence explanation of the virus.” The takeaway: “Which theory is most likely?”
This answer posed as a question is presented as though no one has ever considered it, yet a brief look at the scientific record confirms that the scientific community has looked into it.
First, it’s not proven that gain-of-function (GoF) research was, in fact, being conducted in subpar safety conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Basic research being conducted there has been misrepresented as deliberately trying to make viruses more dangerous to humans, along with other widespread falsehoods spread by disgraced science writer Nicholas Wade. Sen. Rand Paul accused Dr. Anthony Fauci, without evidence, of “lying” to Congress about the NIH not funding GoF research at the WIV (MintPress News, 9/29/21; Newsweek, 7/22/21).
However, even if it were proven the WIV was doing GoF research on the SARS-CoV-1-like coronaviruses known to be present there, like RaTG13 (which shares 96% genetic similarity with the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19), that would still not bolster the lab leak theory. For GoF experiments to create SARS-CoV-2, one would need to start with a virus with at least 99% genetic similarity, and there is no evidence the Wuhan lab had anything like this (Health Feedback, 3/19/21; Cell, 9/16/21).
Cutting through the noise
One mainstream media report in the aftermath of the Journal “exclusive” cut through the noise, noting that while US government agencies bicker about which low-confidence report is correct, the scientific community is not particularly divided. “Virologists who study pandemic origins are much less divided than the US intelligence community,” NPR (2/28/23) reported, adding that “they say there is ‘very convincing’ data and ‘overwhelming evidence’ pointing to an animal origin.”
The Energy Department disclosure comes one year after two peer-reviewed studies concluded that wildlife susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 present at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was the most likely origin of the pandemic (Science, 7/26/22, 7/26/22), and that there were likely two, not one, animal spillovers at the market, since a preponderance of the earliest known Covid-19 cases have a direct or indirect link there, instead of to the WIV, which is nearly 10 miles away.
In the earliest days of the pandemic, two distinct genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 (known as lineages A and B) were circulating in Wuhan’s population. If the pandemic truly originated at the WIV, as many lab origin proponents suspect, one would have to posit convoluted scenarios, like one person from the WIV being infected with lineage B and immediately going to Huanan Market, not infecting anyone on the way; and another person at WIV being independently infected with lineage A, also immediately going to the market a week later. Both hypothetical spreaders would each have to leave no trace at the lab or any other location in Wuhan, to explain why the preponderance of the earliest known Covid-19 cases are clustered near the market instead of near the WIV.
This is why scientists like Angela Rasmussen and Michael Worobey (Globe and Mail, 7/28/22), for example, have concluded that “the evidence base for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is more robust and conclusive than nearly any other emergent virus in the past century.” They noted that “we have access to the home locations of the earliest known 174 COVID-19 cases in the world.” The authors noted that scientists have “never had a spatial record like this, of the ignition of any other pandemic, in human history”:
Using the data available and the scientific method in which we have been trained, we have shown that the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 originating anywhere other than the Huanan market is vanishingly slim.
The “much simpler explanation” of SARS-CoV-2 being introduced to the human population by “two separate zoonotic transmission events at the market,” the authors conclude, is much more likely in comparison.
Evidence of animal origins
Scientists offering new evidence about the origin of Covid-19 was a much less compelling story than spies offering new speculation (Atlantic, 3/16/23).
More recent evidence from scientists researching previously unavailable genetic material collected by Chinese investigators from swabs at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in January 2020—shortly after Chinese authorities shut that market down on suspicions it was linked to the virus’s outbreak—definitively shows that multiple animal species known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 (most notably raccoon dogs) were present at the market, since animal DNA there was found to be commingled with SARS-CoV-2 (Atlantic, 3/16/23; Zenodo, 3/20/23). This corroborates photographic and business records of illegal live animal sales being conducted there right before the pandemic’s outbreak, despite the Chinese government’s lies and stonewalling regarding the wildlife trade (Nature, 6/7/21; Science, 8/18/22).
While these findings aren’t smoking-gun evidence of an animal origin, because the data doesn’t distinguish whether the virus collected in the wildlife stall there was brought there by wildlife or by already-infected humans, they are still significant. The area in the market where most of the SARS-CoV-2 positive samples clustered was also where most of the samples containing wild animal DNA were found, whereas human genetic material was most abundant in other parts of the market (indicating the pandemic likely spread from animals to humans, rather than the other way around). This is entirely consistent with a market origin, and exactly what one would expect to find if the Huanan Market was indeed the origin of the pandemic (Nature, 3/21/23; Science, 3/21/23).
But despite the positive evidence in favor of a zoonotic origin, in comparison to no evidence whatsoever for a lab origin, the Journal ran with the Energy Department statement as though it were a scientific revelation, and the rest of the media went along for the ride. It’s easy to chalk that up as mere journalistic laziness, but one has to wonder if there is something more sinister afoot, given US corporate media’s enthusiastic participation in the US governments’ propaganda campaign to pump up China as an adversary (FAIR.org, 3/16/23).
In a media environment raising tensions over a Chinese balloon (FAIR.org, 2/10/23), and an Air Force memo about possible war with China (CounterPunch, 2/7/23), along with the Biden administration’s decision to send up to 200 more troops to Taiwan (Wall Street Journal, 2/23/23), reports on a government disclosure about a potential lab leak with no real new information create more friction between the two military giants, and bring us no closer to understanding the pandemic’s origins or how to prepare for the next viral catastrophe.
* To be fair, the other co-author, Warren Strobel, was one of the very few in corporate media to report skeptically on WMD claims, along with his partner at Knight Ridder, Jerry Landay (Extra!, 3–4/06). In recent years, however, Strobel has produced far more credulous work, including a piece whitewashing the torture record of CIA director Gina Haspel (Wall Street Journal, 5/25/19; see FAIR.org, 6/6/19).
One thing nobody, to my knowledge, has explained is: Why is the DOE interested in this?
DOE hosts the US national laboratories and employs some of the best nuclear and biosecurity experts in the world. They are well equipped to assess biological threats.
These articles lay bare the motivated reasoning of media outlets, and their willingness to double down on a “zoonotic only” answer to the origins. They frequently point to a “low confidence” assessment, while leaving out the fact that the vocal proponents of zoonosis have major conflicts of interest related to their salary depending on that answer.
The fact that a lab leak is a possible cause of the pandemic should motivate a much more serious effort by the media to ask questions about what would be the worst industrial accident in human history.
More important than the question of DOE involvement is why the DOD, USAID and NIMH are (or have been) funders of gain-of-function research at Wuhan.
Yes, exactly, Rick. Keeping in mind that “Gain of Function” is a euphemism for Bio-Weapon research..i.e, taking pathogens that do not infect humans and trying to make them infectious to humans, including human-2-human, and/or make pathogens more virulent.
This is bad and shockingly unworthy of FAIR. There is not a “vast amount” of scientific research that points to a zoonotic origin of Covid as opposed to an accidental lab leak of the virus. There is not even a “medium” amount of such research. The question remains open. And the fact that political actors of one stripe or another find it in their interests to promote one hypothesis over another is irrelevant to the question of the origin. Your writers are politicizing a scientific issue.
Indeed, I wish authors making these claims would approach experts who are agnostic such as David Relman, Jesse Bloom, Francois Balloux or even WHO which confirms “all hypotheses remain on the table”. To date there is no evidence of an infected animal in the market let alone whether the virus entered the market from a human. The nearest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 are found in Yunnan and Laos. Areas WIV sampled and unfortunately they refuse to share their records with WHO or the NIH. WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove just reiterated last week in Science Magazine that lab audit data should be disclosed.
A few points to correct the misinformation of this article. There has been no poll of virologists or any other scientists and it’s tough to get a feel where they stand because a field accidently killing millions of people tends to be a taboo hypothesis to discuss. Many professionals are actually instructed to not discuss the issue at work. Epidemiologist & biosecurity expert Raina MacIntyre has pointed out the field has had difficulty assessing accidents in the past and has often put up a strong biased campaign against bio-accidents. We can all remember the lab leak getting improperly falsified at the beginning of this pandemic.
Phylogenomics, epidemiology, and documentary evidence point toward SARS-CoV-2 entering humans between August-November 2019. This puts the HSM of December cases downstream of origins and thus can’t be evidence of natural origin. China has kept the fall time period of infections hidden but we know the US consulate noted a heavy flu outbreak by mid-Oct with school closing in Dec to slow the spread. A flu wave would be difficult to discern between covid but China’s govt was noted early on telling people to concentrate Dec 1st onward which makes zero sense from a science perspective when searching for origins of a pandemic.
Thus there is no new evidence of a lab leak or a natural spill because China keeps the relevant time period and all relevant data hidden.
Hey! with Florida’s new gun law [no permit, background check, or training] can I [here in California] go there and just buy a gun /ammo with out any problem, will they care where I come from, and is there a limit of how many/much I can buy? Just a thought, thank you
I’ve been extremely skeptical of “conspiracy theories” concerning COVID, but haven’t dug deeply into the controversy on the lab leak vs natural origin of the virus. I would very much appreciate FAIR would looking into the assertions of fact of Robert Kennedy Jr, a former host of Ring of Fire and someone whose intellect and integrity in my opinion are beyond reproach. Here is a recent video in which he makes a lawyerly argument in which he cites specific, authoritative sources to make the case that the origin was overwhelmingly likely to have been from a lab leak (the inflammatory headline does not reflect the measured tone of RFK, Jr’s comments).
Nothing to see here. Kennedy knows nothing about anything worth listening to.
Note that the Dept of Energy Z-Division uses scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The FBI director also said they had input from virologists and other scientists on this question.
WHO, the Lancet Covid19 Commission and scientists including David Relman, Jesse Bloom, David Fisman, Etienne Decroly, Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo, Peter Collignon, Colin Butler, Nikolai Petrovsky, Raina MacIntyre, Stuart Newman, Bernard Roizman, Ravi Gupta and Justin Kinney have said lab origin is plausible and requires investigation. WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove just confirmed that data concerning animals and the labs needs to be shared last week.
I greatly appreciate and respect most of FAIR’s articles and exposes, but they have been infected (apologies for the poor pun) by Mega-Corp M$M talking points re SARS-CoV-2.
If the Rump said rain was wet, too many would immediately buy into Any ridiculous argument to the contrary.. Not suggesting the Rump is generally accurate..oh no, he’s a clown..a dangerous clown and a (another) damn War Criminal.
But Right-wing, Reagan-installed Fauci is also a lying clown..he was repeatedly Opposite wrong on so many things–and has been proven (via FOIA documents, emails, etc) to be a serial liar.
None of us here *know* whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab or in some bat cave..but too many love to pretend they know. That said, it seems most evidence (if mostly circumstantial) appears to support Lab origin. Noting that Fauci & others were strong supporters of Gain-of-Function = Bio-Weaponizing research..and helped fund Bio-weapon research in Wuhan related to Bats and…Coronaviruses.
Good posting, especially the embedded link to the Atlantic article.
What is really, really essential is to refute even the idea that the COVID-19 had origins as a modified virus designed to cross species. I know, let’s all get together and just forget about the two harvard guys arrested for working on the Wuhan situation. Let’s just pretend that the capability of modifying viruses for malicious purposes doesn’t exist when actually it very much does. So what the ‘ell is CRISPR anyways? And finally, the truth is that there is a secret 25 nation network of biowarfare labs that are capable of creating superbugs like COVID-19 with a minimum of 11 in ukraine alone-it is believed that there were 42 at the height of their production phase. http://www.dilyana.bg
If you don’t think a lab leak caused the pandemic, you’re not paying attention (or you’re not being honest). Once you realize that ugly truth, you’re forced to come to terms with two other fairly ugly things:
1. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky hit the nail on the head with their book about the media and propaganda, called “Manufacturing Consent” and
2. The western national security folks were very interested in what was happening in virology labs in China and around the world. Dr. Peter Daszak and the EcoHeath Alliance were likely working for these spooks and gathering intelligence on the labs they collaborated with.
That’s why there’s been a conspiracy to cover this up. (You can leave the word “theory” out of it.)
This all leads me to another conclusion: by pretending that this is a left/right issue, FAIR reveals just how flaccid they are.
I dare you, FAIR, to re-write this article and point out that the western media has been very dishonest—since day one—about who our “experts” are and what conflicts of interest these folks have. How many 2020 articles, from “reputable” sources like NYT, WaPo and The Guardian, quoted Drs. Ralph Baric, Peter Daszak and Eddie Holmes without mentioning that they were actually working with the Wuhan lab suspected of starting the pandemic, just before the pandemic started. Go back and look—it was nearly all of them. And the deception didn’t stop in 2020. Now we’ve got raccoon dogs!
I double-dog dare you to write about how batch #61, from the seafood market—the one with the raccoon dog DNA—was PCR negative for SARS2, and it had an extremely small amount of “reads” that could maybe, possibly have been SARS2, but far too small to be significant. This story isn’t even worth the headlines.
FAIR isn’t being fair.
Covid-19 is a collaborative plandemic between U.S. and China to test the world’s readiness for a true pandemic, most likely agreed to at Harbin Conference in January 2019 where main planners from both sides were present. Only Donald Trump popularized the slogan, ‘Wuhan virus’. Remdesivir and molnupiravir (EIDD-2801) was supposed to be the already tested universal coronavirus cure, but they didn’t live up to their expectations. Thus they turned to mRNA vaccines and three $2,500 payments to appease American citizens. The virus was only supposed to cause ‘sniffles and colds’ according to Trump, but they miscalculated regarding the amino acids surrounding the Covid-19 spike gene furin cleavage site. Human furin cleaved the Covid-19 , spike viron at a faster rate than unexpected, letting the passive 30K RNA escape the viron quicker, and be activated and replicate quicker in human cells, creating higher than expected viral loads. Omicon more proximates what the coronavirus was supposed to be initially, very less virulent.
This fits nicely into category #2.
See my Gutierrez comment on the Harbin Conference in January 2019 where the plandemic was agreed to by the China-U.S. parties. I also quote the Jonathan Pekar article there.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-lab-leak-theory-cover-up-collapse-cola/
See my recent Gutierrez comment below where I hook Baric up to Zhengli.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/anthony-fauci-twitter-files-pharma-covid/
See my Gutierrez comment on the Marshall Senate report.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-wuhan-lab-leak-senate-report/
from the Baptist church
Trump and corporate propaganda are stoking racism and xenophobia and diverting public attention. However, this does not eliminate the possibility that the covid originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or other relevant laboratories.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/
The scientist who participated in the Wuhan virus research, and this scientist also participated in the investigation of the origin of the covid by the World Health Organization, and other scientists who were convened by the directly related scientists to sign the joint letter of natural origin cannot be “Arbiters of Science”.
This is simply ignoring the information about virus research between Chinese and US institutions and other scientists who agree with the possibility of laboratory origins.
This Article Helps U.S. and Chinese Agencies Confuse What May Actually Be.