The New York Times‘ op-ed (6/3/24) broke little new ground but arrived at a timely moment for the public debate.
The lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origins has been something of a zombie idea in public discourse, popping up again and again in corporate media despite numerous proclamations that it’s finally been debunked (Conversation, 8/14/22; Atlantic, 3/1/23; LA Times, 6/26/23).
The most recent resuscitation of the theory came in the form of a New York Times guest essay (6/3/24), provocatively headlined “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in Five Key Points”—and notably published the day of a congressional subcommittee grilling of Dr. Anthony Fauci over, among other things, his supposed role in a lab leak cover-up. The paper further bolstered the theory in the Times’ flagship Morning newsletter (6/14/24), which spotlighted Chan’s op-ed.
The author of the guest essay, Dr. Alina Chan, is a well-known proponent of a lab leak origin for SARS-CoV-2 (MIT Technology Review, 6/25/21). Her biggest claim to fame is probably the 2021 book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, which she co-authored with London Times science writer Matt Ridley. The book’s case for Covid’s origin in a lab leak was criticized for the evidence—or lack thereof—it presented (New Republic, 12/10/21).
Her guest essay reiterates the book’s arguments. But it also recapitulates the misrepresentation, selective quotation and faulty logic that has characterized so much of the pro—lab leak side of the Covid origin discourse.
Misleading air of authority
Chan’s co-author of Viral, Matt Ridley, is a coal-mine owner who argues that “global warming is good for us.”
Under her byline, the Times identified Chan as a “molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.”
While true, it’s important to note that Chan’s expertise is neither in epidemiology nor virology, but in gene therapy and synthetic biology, meaning she isn’t exactly a subject expert when it comes to the fields most relevant to SARS-CoV-2 research. But that’s far from clear to the average Times reader, for whom such a bio suggests that Chan is an authoritative figure on the subject.
What’s more, the paper produced flashy data visualizations to accompany the piece and help Chan make her case, lending the paper’s institutional credibility to her argument. That same institutional credibility was further invoked by Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, who shared the article on X the day it was published, proudly stating: “Yes, it’s factchecked. And we now know many outspoken experts opposed to this made similar points in PRIVATE.”
But that credibility is not earned by the quality of the underlying evidence Chan offers.
Lacking critical context
Many of Chan’s arguments aren’t new and have already been discussed in depth in a previous FAIR article (6/28/21), so I’ll be mostly focusing on points not already discussed there.
Near the beginning of the essay, Chan makes multiple dubiously selective references to Shi Zhengli, a WIV scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) who has received copious attention in discussions of a hypothetical escape of Covid from that lab (MIT Technology Review, 2/9/22).
Chan’s theory benefits from selective retelling of a story told more fully by Scientific American (6/1/20).
Chan notes that at the start of the outbreak, Shi “initially wondered if the novel coronavirus had come from her laboratory, saying she had never expected such an outbreak to occur in Wuhan.”
Mentioning this worry to journalists would be a relatively strange thing to do for someone trying to cover up a leak from their lab, which Chan has implied on multiple occasions that the WIV researchers are doing (MIT Technology Review, 6/25/21, 2/9/22; Boston, 9/9/20). Chan also leaves out the vital context that Shi says that in response to her worry, she went through the lab’s records to check if it could have been the source, and found that it couldn’t have been (Scientific American, 6/1/20):
Meanwhile, she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: None of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”
At another point, Chan asserts that Shi’s group had published a database containing descriptions of over 22,000 wildlife samples, but that database was taken offline in fall of 2019, around the same time as the pandemic began. The implication is clear: that this action was taken in order to hide the presence of SARS-CoV-2, or a virus close enough to be its predecessor, in WIV custody.
Again, Chan doesn’t mention the reason given, that repeated hacking attempts at the onset of the pandemic led the institute to take their databases offline out of fear that they might be compromised. Nor does she address Shi’s claim that the databases only contained already published material (MIT Technology Review, 2/9/22).
It’s possible Chan believes that these are all lies told in defense of a Chinese coverup, but to not even mention these not-implausible explanations belies a biased and selective presentation.
Schrodinger’s proposal
Chan goes on to argue, “The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan institute, working with US partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS‑CoV‑2’s defining feature.”
This talking point should be familiar to anyone who has been keeping up with the cyclical resurgences of the lab leak theory over the last few years; a key piece of evidence they point to is a leaked 2018 research proposal by the name of Defuse, which was published three years ago by the Intercept (9/23/21).
The proposal is presented as a damning piece of evidence, with Chan stating that the proposed viruses would have been “shockingly similar to SARS-CoV-2.” She admits that this proposal was rejected by DARPA—in part specifically because it involved modifying viruses in ways that were viewed as overly risky—and never actually received funding. But she still posits that the WIV could have pursued research like it, despite presenting no actual evidence that this ever occurred.
Chan engages in a large amount of conjecture stacking in this section, placing unsubstantiated claim atop unsubstantiated claim to produce an argument that looks compelling at a glance but sits upon a pile of what-ifs.
The entire narrative relies on the assumption that a virus similar enough in structure to have become SARS-CoV-2 was present in the WIV at some point before the pandemic, but Chan never presents anything to substantiate this. None of the known viruses within the WIV’s catalog could have been the progenitor, with even the closest virus there—RaTG13—merely seeming to share a common ancestor.
A less-than-alarming detail
A Wall Street Journal article (6/20/23), cited by Chan, about sick researchers at the Wuhan lab left out the key detail that, according to US intelligence, the researchers had “symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with Covid-19.”
Her point relating to sick scientists is possibly the most dishonest aspect of the entire piece. Chan states that “one alarming detail—leaked to the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by current and former US government officials—is that scientists on Dr. Shi’s team fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019.”
If you only read the Journal article (6/20/23) Chan links to, you may be convinced that these cases represent serious evidence. However, the US intelligence report these claims of sick researchers originate from, which has since been made public, clearly shows the weakness of the claim:
While several WIV researchers fell mildly ill in fall 2019, they experienced a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with Covid-19, and some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to Covid-19. While some of these researchers had historically conducted research into animal respiratory viruses, we are unable to confirm if any of them handled live viruses in the work they performed prior to falling ill.
So the intelligence community was unable to establish that any of the researchers actually had Covid-19 and in fact collected information that showed they presented with symptoms consistent with colds or allergies and inconsistent with Covid, with some even confirmed to have been sick with unrelated illnesses.
This is something the Times should have caught and addressed during a rudimentary factcheck.
Meanwhile, the WIV denies the allegations, and challenged its accusers to produce the names of its researchers who were Covid-19 vectors. Chan’s “alarming detail” is therefore both unsubstantiated and dependent upon the existence of a coverup at the WIV.
Weighing the evidence
New evidence that the virus originated at the Wuhan wet market (New York Times, 2/27/22) didn’t make Chan any less confident in her theory.
The final stage of Chan’s argument is identifying deficiencies in the zoonotic spillover theory. She maintains that Chinese investigators, believing early on that the outbreak had begun at a central market, had collected data in a biased manner that likely missed cases unlinked to the market.
She links to a letter to the editor in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (3/20/24) that criticized one of the major market-origin papers (Woroby et al, 2021) on the grounds that it suffered from a large degree of location bias. Consistent with Chan’s habit of ignoring arguments contrary to her thesis, she fails to mention the rebuttal produced by one of the paper’s authors, alongside another researcher.
It’s true that the evidence on the spillover side is currently incomplete; however, this isn’t necessarily damning. It took over a year to identify the intermediary hosts of MERS; we still haven’t found the one suspected to exist for HCOV-HKU1, first described in 2004; and finding the natural reservoir from which SARS stemmed was a decade-long endeavor (Scientific American, 6/1/20).
Still, the circumstantial evidence present for zoonotic spillover is strong. Early Covid-19 cases, as well as excess deaths from pneumonia—a metric far less likely to suffer from the potential bias Chan mentions—cluster around the Huanan wet market, not the WIV. Multiple distinct lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were also associated with the wet market, as would be expected if it were in fact the origination point.
In fact, five positive samples were discovered in a single stall that had been known to sell raccoon dogs, one of the animals suspected as a possible intermediate host for SARS-CoV-2 (New York Times, 2/27/22).
As a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence surrounding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, published in the Annual Review of Virology (4/17/24), states in no uncertain terms:
The available data clearly point to a natural zoonotic emergence within, or closely linked to, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. There is no direct evidence linking the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 to laboratory work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
False equivalence
The New York Times‘ David Leonhardt (Morning, 6/14/24) presents evidence and speculation as equally compelling.
Days after the guest essay’s release, the Times featured it in their popular Morning newsletter (6/14/24), under the headline, “Two Covid Theories: Was the Pandemic Started by a Lab Leak or by Natural Transmission? We Look at the Evidence.”
Newsletter writer David Leonhardt situated the debate by explaining that “US officials remain divided” on which theory is more plausible, then presented the issue with scrupulous balance, offering three brief arguments for each theory “to help you decide which you consider more likely.”
But this is complicated, specialized science, not Murder, She Wrote. Agencies like the Energy Department, cited by Leonhardt as endorsing the lab leak theory, do have teams of people with relevant lab and scientific expertise. (Leonhardt does not note, however, that the department has “low confidence” in its conclusion—see FAIR.org, 4/7/23.) But surely, if we’re to talk about where current thought lies on the likely origins of SARS-CoV-2, the most pertinent information to give a lay reader is what people who are experts in viruses and disease outbreaks believe. And the majority of experts in those fields lean strongly in the direction of a zoonotic spillover origin.
In a 2024 survey of 168 global experts in epidemiology, virology and associated specialties, the average estimate that the virus emerged from natural zoonosis was 77%; half the participants estimated that the likelihood of a natural origin was 90% or higher. Just 14% of the experts thought a lab accident was more likely than not the origin. (The survey excluded experts from China as being from a country rated “not free” by the US-funded think tank Freedom House.) Yet Leonhardt left out this crucial information.
The evidence Leonhardt presented for zoonotic spillover involves actual epidemiological data, as well as biological samples showing SARS-CoV-2 was present in the Huanan wet market where live animals susceptible to the virus were being sold.
The evidence presented for the lab leak, on the other hand, is the bare minimum to establish it as even being a possibility, with the strongest point not even being in direct favor of the lab leak, and instead just reestablishing that there are still missing pieces to fully prove a zoonotic spillover origin. These are not equivalent bodies of evidence in any sense of the word.
After presenting these carefully crafted options, Leonhardt suggested the logical conclusion:
Do you find both explanations plausible? I do. As I’ve followed this debate over the past few years, I have gone back and forth about which is more likely. Today, I’m close to 50/50. I have heard similar sentiments from some experts.
This is where the crux of the issue lies: These two scenarios may both be plausible, but the relative evidence of their likelihood is not a coin toss. For some reason, however, the Times seems to want to pretend that this is the case.
Why now?
Former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennett (1843 12/24/23) argued that the Times had “lost its way” in part because it was “slow” to report that “Trump might be right that Covid came from a Chinese lab.”
Why has the Times now chosen to revive the lab leak theory? Perhaps it stems in part from recent accusations that, early in the pandemic, corporate media outlets like the Times were overly dismissive of the lab leak possibility. This sentiment was reflected in a post on X (6/4/24) by Times columnist Nicholos Kristof after Chan’s article was published: “In retrospect, many of us in the journalistic and public health worlds were too dismissive of that possibility when she and others were making the argument in 2020.”
This claim of early “lab leak skepticism” has been brought up as evidence of the Times’ supposed left-wing bias, a false claim publisher A.G. Sulzberger is nevertheless at pains to dispel (FAIR.org, 4/24/24).
It’s hard to deny that the Times‘ Covid coverage has shown a strong animus against China, which has played out in absurd op-eds and news stories like “Has China Done Too Well Against Covid-19?” (1/24/20) and “China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Bind: No Easy Way Out Despite the Cost” (9/7/22). (See FAIR.org, 1/29/21, 9/17/21, 9/9/22.)
Whatever its motive, the paper’s decision to publish an argument for the lab leak theory on the day of Dr. Fauci’s congressional subcommittee testimony—without any contrary op-ed to balance it—was clearly intended to influence the public debate.
The responsibility of the press corps on the issue of Covid origins is to help readers understand in which direction the current scientific evidence points. Instead, it misinformed on the science, validating Republican attempts to turn the serious question of the source of a devastating pandemic into a political football.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Huanan wet market (7/8/24).
Hi, I was the LA director of FAIR during the first gulf war. My day job is spatial epidmiology and I’ve examined much of the research, and I’m sorry, there is no strong evidence for proximal/zoonotic transmission, a bit more for lab. I’m agnostic on this, but I started getting signals June 2020. And have been following this somewhat closely. Some of the “dispositive” research is simply not very good, for example, the geo-spatial analysis of the market, for example, was deeply flawed, obviously, not cherry picking flawed. I also do a lot of work in philosophy of science and this facet is also very interesting, particularly from a causal POV. My sense is that there is a possible conflation between US interests/conspiracies, etc and actual science on this. Yes, the NY Times sucks and is the US Pravda, but track how it’s changed from zoonotic, pooh poohing Trump conspiracies and now is trouting out lab leak, that agenda could be as you say, no doubt, but the science needs to be separate.
again, to be very clear, the “epidmiological facts” usually cites are really bad. I can easily claim some expertise here. So, the idea of claiming that one thing/person is authoritative and another not, gets very murky. From a power/dyanamics POV, I would suggest to follow the money. I’m also extremely interested in science corrupted by industry, with some of my research very much involving this.
In reality, the Wuhan Lab claims are a fraud on the American public and are part of the US ruling class’s attempts to convince that public of the Chinese state’s malevolence. There is simply no good evidence to support it. See, for example, this well-researched piece published on the Big Think site on 6th June, 2024:
“The genome of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrates it has a natural origin, whether we ever find the original virus in a wild population of animals or not. The misinformation being spread, and the scientists being vilified, over gain-of-function research has no basis in reality. A lot of scientists are, and have been for a few years now, in a very dangerous spot due to proponents of the lab leak hypothesis, as they are being accused of creating an accident that started the COVID-19 pandemic when in fact they were the proverbial firefighters working to extinguish it. It’s time to replace our conspiratorial fears with scientific truths, and to invest resources where they belong: in scientists who work to understand the Universe as it is, and to help humanity cope with the cold, hard reality that we all face.”
(Ethan Siegel, “No, gain of function research did not cause COVID-19,” June 6, 2024)
So here we have a country that produces anthrax in such large amounts and under so little control that they have no clue that any of it is missing before it shows up in envelopes to their federal authorities.
And they are the people pushing a lab leak theory in another country?
Yes, let’s blame poor Chinese people for eating nasty food from a super-nasty “WET Market” rather than blame US+Chinese top-level power-players for repeatedly engaging in insanely dangerous *Bio-Weapon* research (soft-peddled as–or euphemistically called ‘Gain-of-Function’).
Who profiteered mightily from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?
Not poor or average Chinese or American citizens, but the tip-top wealthiest: Elon Musk, Gates, etc. Basically, the vile Uber-Trumps of this world.
Meanwhile, there have been numerous bio-weapon ‘leaks’ all over the world–including several here in America, but they have been kept very quiet. I didn’t know about any of them until reading an investigative piece from The New Yorker (and The Intercept, etc).
Let us continue to protect the Trumps & Musks & Bezos’s & Gates & Kochs & Waltons of this world by blaming the poorest for their ‘nasty wet-market’ food choices.
Never forget: Trump never fired Fauci. Even tho Fauci was being paid more than the Rump as President!
Read the various FOIA’s forcibly pried out of NIH & CDC’s desperately clutching fingers. FOIA’s are one of our (common people) only resources to get at any bits of truth when it comes to massive profiteering and collusion between Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Weapons/MIC, etc and Their Captured Govt Agencies.
Foxes…guarding the hen houses.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
― Malcolm X
If the mRNA vaccines didn’t work (they do), and it turns out Ivermectin worked instead (it doesn’t, but anyway…) would you then claim that the makers of Ivermectin are guilty of malfeasance because they made the billions instead of Pfizer? “Following the money” does not always lead to “the truth” if our logic is not coherent.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman
If only we lived in your world. A world where Big Pharma could both be ‘good’ And rapacious on an eye-watering scale.
Seems most folks have forgotten the *early* claims re mRNA vaccines.. we were relentlessly told–with absolute Authority: “If you get these (novel) mRNA vaccines, you will NOT get sick and you will NOT vector Covid to anyone else!!!”
And then they were forced to walk all those claims back..again & again..
Both my parents were Fully vax’d. Guess what? Dad got very sick..then passed it to me and my mother (who was also vax’d). I was only slightly sick (I refused Trump’s bs vax) while my mother also got very sick.
Dozens of others I know who were fully vax’d also got very sick–even got sick 2 or 3 different times! While most of those who did not accept Trump’s bs vax did not get sick or only mildly sick..and just once.
And we wonder why Pfizer, for ex, felt the need to spend many $Millions hiring more than 20 P.R. firms.. They spend FAR more on Marketing than on R&D. Not to mention the massive bribing (nicely called ‘lobbying’) of hundreds of politicians every year.
They spend those many $millions in order to Con enough people to then make $Tens of Billions = whopping R.O.I. (Return on investment).
Ivermectin? Believe whatever you like..it’s a long-established + WHO *Essential* (for Humans) Generic = Inexpensive, thus very little profit for Big Pharma.
Follow. The. Money.
Very rarely will lead you astray–only lead you away from the marketing con-jobs.
https://public.substack.com/p/covid-origins-scientist-denounces?utm_medium=email
I’m going with the scientists themselves on this one: The scientists were far more suspicious of a lab origin than was previously known. The clearest example of this was when Andersen said on February 1, 2020, “I think the main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.” In fact, the original name of the channel was “project-wuhan_engineering” until February 6, when Andersen changed it to “project-wuhan_pangolin.”
And even more from the scientists themselves:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1znhGgzdbZZ7ZK3J5JMyUBHYi8ZGNGvM9cLdUvQq4YzA/edit?gid=0#gid=0
My personal favorites from Dr Anderson:
SARS-CoV-2 genome “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,”
“I think the main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”
“(t)he main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory.”
Edward Holmes:
The virus’ characteristics were “exactly what was expected by engineering” and ““Bob [Garry] said the insertion was the 1st thing he would add.”
This is a good article exposing Chan, who is really a cover for Ralph Baric. Covid-19 plandemic was first ideated by Fauci, Baric and Gates during the Obama administration. Collaboratively agreed to at the Harbin Conference in China, January 2019 by James LeDuc, Baric, Franz, Dianne Griffin, Ben Rusek with George Gao, Zhengli and at least six scientists from Nanjing military. Plandemic okay-ed by Trump and Jinping, to test the world’s readiness for a true pandemic. Double cross occurred at the Huanan Seafood Market to discredit the new WIV BSL-4, by introducing too much lineage B Covid into the Market, turning a collaborative plandemic into a pandemic. The proline (P) amino acid before the RRAR cleavage site in the wild type Covid-19 spike gene, was modelled by Lawrence Tabak of the NIH in 2011, being placed directly after serine (S) and threonine (T) o-glycans, to improve glycosylation (shield from immune system). In the case of Covid-19, QTQTNSPRRAR, the proline (P) is Tabak’s, which ‘mutated out’ with Omicon variant. The more than 20 o-glycans in the spike gene, most likely Tabak’s. The receptor binding motif (RBM) in the spike gene belongs to Zhengli, from a 2019 Malaysian pangolan. But Baric fused the spike gene together (and genome itself), using restriction enzymes. Check his DEFUSE methodology, and his 2016 patent 9884895 on creating coronavirus chimeric spike genes, and his January 24, 2024 interview with the House subcommittee. Everything is unique in the Covid-19 genome, the ORF8 and ORF3 genes, its sialic binding domain/NTD in the Spike gene which binds human body sugars. See P. Gutierrez COMMENT at https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/government-pandemic-preparedness-operation-covid-19/ for fuller account of the plandemic setup, but FIREFOX security must be set to STANDARD to view
Obviously an intern. Obviously a biased background.
Should read the January 1-17, 2021 issue of New York Magazine article by Nicholson Baker.
Excellent work debunking this nonsense. Thank you for continuing to cover this misinformation.
A simple question …
If COVID-19 was zoonotic and not a lab leak, why was the Chinese government so hell-bent on covering up and denying the existence of it’s health threat in early 2020? Perhaps that made no difference in the ultimate spread of the virus, but it absolutely didn’t help contain it.
Bob, the infection was reported by a doctor in Wuhan when it was diagnosed in a family that went to a lung clinic there. She promptly reported it upstairs through the chain of command, and a message was sent out electronically to all health workers in Wuhan.
Not exactly trying to hide things, is it?
From Wikipedia (for one example):
The Chinese government has been criticized for censorship, which observers have attributed to a culture of institutional censorship affecting the country’s press and Internet. The government censored whistleblowers, journalists, and social media posts about the outbreak. During the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government made efforts to clamp down on discussion and hide reporting about it, as such information was seen as unfavorable for local officials. Efforts to fund and control research into the virus’s origins have continued up to the present.[24].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_government_response_to_COVID-19
Because they didn’t want to get blamed for yet another pandemic, and they were hoping it would just go away. Didn’t work.
The article confirmed my thinking! I never believed the “Covid Epidemic was real” I figured it to be no more than the seasonal flu and would have treated it accordingly by drinking fluids as one would, when exposed to a virus which emerges with changing weather conditions and seasonal changes from summer into the fall weather.
From, reiltim@aol.com
Good spin job!
By cherry-picking truths the author makes it seem like Dr. Chan doesn’t know what she’s talking about. The author even cited some of the folks involved in the cover-up (who literally got caught lying to us) as evidence against Chan.
Bravo!
No, it showed that the person cherry-picking truths is Alina Chan. Why did she leave out all this information that so clearly should be considered??
I personally see the lab-leak theory as nothing but racist anti-China propaganda and I haven’t seen anything to contradict this view. The fact is that the vast majority of pandemics are zoonotic and we will probably never know its precise origin.
Lab-leak theory nothing but racist anti-China propaganda?
Really?
Consider this:
Ok, here’s extreme anti-China racism:
Blame poor Chinese people for eating nasty food from a super-nasty “WET Market” rather than blame US+Chinese top-level power-players for repeatedly engaging in insanely dangerous *Bio-Weapon* research (soft-peddled as–or euphemistically called ‘Gain-of-Function’).
Who profiteered mightily from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?
Not poor or average Chinese or American citizens, but the tip-top wealthiest: Elon Musk, Gates, Bezos, etc. Basically, the vile Uber-Trumps of this world.
Meanwhile, there have been numerous bio-weapon ‘leaks’ all over the world–including several here in America, but they have all been kept very quiet. I didn’t know about any of them until reading an investigative piece from The New Yorker (and The Intercept, etc).
Let us continue to protect the Trumps & Musks & Bezos’s & Gates & Kochs & Waltons of this world by blaming the poorest for their ‘nasty wet-market’ food choices. Extreme racism plus Class Warfare being waged by the Wealthy against the rest of us peons..Chinese & American.
Read the various FOIA’s forcibly pried out of NIH & CDC’s desperately clutching fingers. FOIA’s are one of our (common people) only resources to get at any bits of truth when it comes to massive profiteering and collusion between Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Weapons/MIC, etc and Their Captured Govt Agencies.
Foxes…guarding the hen houses.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
― Malcolm X
Chan is an expert in gene therapy…is the author aware of viral gene therapy? Using viruses to delivery genetic copies as therapeutics? Did the author care to look at how Chan’s background would be relevant to modified gene research involving viruses? It seems like not to me, especially given how he writes-off Chan’s background in fleeting glib terms. Synthetic biology and viral manipulation relating to gene therapy, which is what the virus seems to have been (re: cleavage site as having likely been manipulated in a lab setting).
The COVID19 virus has many more differences to known viruses than what you have mentioned. Most of those changes could not have been produced with GOF processes. It would have taken 10 labs 100 years to make it using that method. There is only one explanation for its existence, zoonotic. Why does Alina Chan not discuss this??
Justabloke clearly does not understand BioWeapon (aka, Gain-of-Function) research. In a lab, they can make FAR more changes FAR more rapidly than what can occur in nature.
That’s the whole idea of and impetus behind BioWeaponization=GoF of pathogens: to super-accelerate ‘evolution’ of pathogens.
That’s why Fauci and others (pushing hard for GoF=Bioweaponizing) are soooo dangerous to our world.
Pres. Obama wisely put a 5-yr moratorium on GoF research.
Pres. Rump insanely allowed Obama’s moratorium to lapse..then, approx 2 yrs later..what happens??
A *Novel* Coronavirus pops up (SARS-CoV-2) ..leading to biggest, worldwide Pandemic in 100 yrs. And it starts extremely close to a high-security Bio-Lab where…GoF research was going on related to Coronaviruses. And funded–if indirectly–by…USA NIH.
You have to do extraordinary flips, dances, somersaults, machinations, wild speculations to avoid the evidence-based obvious facts.
Only thing we can’t be reasonably sure of if whether this Pandemic was intentional or accidental.. but Awesome that a handful of the wealthiest people on our planet more than doubled their wealth–while most of the rest of us peons suffered and slid into poverty.
So…what a super-lucky ‘accident’ for those ultra-rich folks.
Again. And again.
Random chance apparently strongly favors the sweet jackals.
While I appreciate the author’s perspective on the recent New York Times coverage of the lab leak theory, I believe his critique overlooks some key points.
Firstly, dismissing Dr. Alina Chan’s credentials because her expertise lies in gene therapy and synthetic biology seems disingenuous. A PhD in molecular biology positions her to understand the complexities of viruses, even if her specific research area differs. Furthermore, her collaborator’s profession is irrelevant to the merits of her arguments.
Secondly, your portrayal of Dr. Chan’s discussion on Dr. Shi Zhengli suggests a misrepresentation of the facts. Highlighting Dr. Shi’s initial concern without acknowledging her efforts to rule out a lab leak paints an incomplete picture. However, completely omitting the context of the database shutdown at the WIV raises suspicion. A security breach is a possibility, but can’t we acknowledge the need for transparency in such matters?
Thirdly, dismissing the Defuse Project as irrelevant because it wasn’t funded misses the point. Doesn’t its existence demonstrate the potential for such research at the WIV? The possibility that similar research could have been conducted outside that specific project’s framework remains a valid concern.
Fourthly, focusing on the unconfirmed illnesses of WIV researchers and calling them “colds or allergies” seems dismissive. While the evidence may be inconclusive, shouldn’t a full investigation be conducted before definitively labeling them unrelated?
Finally, portraying the Huanan Seafood Market as the definitive origin point and downplaying the uncertainty surrounding the intermediate host is misleading. The possibility of the market being a contamination site, not the source, deserves exploration.
The scientific community overwhelmingly leans towards a zoonotic spillover, and that remains the most likely scenario. However, the lack of a conclusive answer necessitates a thorough investigation of all possibilities, including the lab leak theory. The New York Times, by publishing Dr. Chan’s op-ed, has opened a space for important discussion. Let’s not turn this into a political game. Let science, not bias, guide us towards the truth.
If they really wanted to have a discussion they would have worded it more openly.
They didn’t. Have they published a null-hypothesis explanation, a rebuttal, a counter-argument, an opinion from the other side? No. Their effort to ‘discuss’ this is, for now, disingenuous and severely lacking. Why do sites like this one have to debunk her writing, why doesn’t the NYT do it? Because they don’t want to…someone has an axe to grind.