While many Western media outlets (e.g., NBC, 5/4/20; BBC, 4/26/20) reported on the evidence-free speculations surrounding a potential lab leak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China’s Hubei province last year (FAIR.org, 4/17/20), it has never enjoyed as much mainstream credibility as it has in recent months.
Although several reports in 2020 uncritically parroted US officials like Sen. Tom Cotton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and discredited defectors like Yan Li-Meng, there were also many reports at the time disputing and dismissing their claims of a lab leak as a “conspiracy theory” (e.g., Vox, 3/12/20; AP, 12/17/20; Business Insider, 6/2/21).
Nowadays, an abundance of Western media reports purport to explain how the once-dismissed theory that SARS-CoV-2 came out of a Chinese lab in Wuhan has gained more credibility among journalists and the US public:
- Washington Post (5/25/21): “Timeline: How the Wuhan Lab-Leak Theory Suddenly Became Credible”
- New Yorker (5/27/21): “The Sudden Rise of the Coronavirus Lab-Leak Theory”
- ABC (6/14/21): “Nature-Based or Lab Leak? Unraveling the Debate Over the Origins of Covid-19”
- New York (6/3/21): “The Groupthink That Produced the Lab-Leak Failure Should Scare Liberals”
Despite the sudden media enthusiasm for the lab leak theory, there remains as little compelling evidence that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab as there always has been (FAIR.org, 10/6/20).
Taking cues from US
The BBC‘s piece (5/27/21) explaining “why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously” begins by citing “reports swirling around the US media.”
But why the sudden shift? BBC’s “Covid Origin: Why the Wuhan Lab-Leak Theory Is Being Taken Seriously” (5/27/21) reported that interest in the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak resurfaced because
reports swirling around the US media have raised fresh concerns over the lab-leak theory. And some scientists who were once skeptical of the idea have expressed fresh openness to it.
NPR’s “Why Much of the Media Dismissed Theories That Covid Leaked From Lab” (6/3/21) explained that the lab leak theory was “dismissed and ridiculed by the media” because its main sources were “former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” who “were pushing this idea, citing intelligence they simply wouldn’t release.” NPR added that the shift in coverage was due to a group of scientists publishing a statement arguing that the lab leak theory needs to be investigated, even if it “may not be likely,” and, more tellingly, simply because “President Biden said, look, let’s investigate this, matter of national security.”
Poynter (6/17/21) also reported that Biden’s decision to have US intelligence agencies investigate Covid origins have prompted news outlets, factcheckers and Facebook to change their posture towards the lab leak theory:
As a result, some news outlets have revised or corrected some of their prior reporting. Facebook reversed its ban. PolitiFact removed its fact check from its database, but archived it “for transparency” and added an editor’s note.
It’s certainly true that people like Trump and Pompeo are notorious for being shameless liars, and blatantly promoted the lab leak theory in a cynical attempt to scapegoat China for the US’s disastrous handling of the pandemic (FAIR.org, 3/24/20). However, NPR’s statement implies that the lab leak theory should be taken more seriously in part because President Joe Biden is perceived as a more credible source, despite his own documented history of serial lying (FAIR.org, 1/22/20; Intercept, 3/9/20).
Letter not an endorsement
The “serious new reporting” cited by the Washington Post (6/10/21) comes mainly from a eugenicist and the reporter who helped make the phrase “aluminum tubes” famous.
Like NPR, the Washington Post’s “The Media Called the ‘Lab Leak’ Story a ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ Now it’s Prompted Corrections—and Serious New Reporting” (6/10/21) pointed to the publication of a letter by 18 scientists in Science (5/14/21) as one of the main reasons for “a kind of tidal change” in coverage. That letter argued that “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable”:
We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts.
What media outlets like Newsweek (5/14/21) reporting on the letter often failed to make clear is that scientists calling for an investigation of the lab leak theory is not the same as suggesting that it is probable. Most scientists currently think that Covid-19 has a natural origin, because there is a well-documented history of natural spillovers leading to most disease outbreaks (like HIV, MERS, Zika and Ebola), and of scientists warning of the increasing likelihood of pandemics due to the climate crisis and human activity altering terrestrial and marine environments, which increases the nature and frequency of human contact with wildlife harboring diseases.
Some of the signatories to that letter have taken pains to emphasize that they are not endorsing the lab leak theory, and some are even highly skeptical of the hypothesis (LA Times, 6/3/21). Their relatively uncontroversial goal was merely to urge the World Health Organization (WHO) to devote more effort to determine the origin, whatever it might be, before expressing a categorical opinion.
Iraqi WMD–style reporting
The uncritical retailing of convenient intelligence claims is highly reminiscent of Michael Gordon‘s notorious Iraq War work. Co-author Warren Strobel, on the other hand, once knew better.
The Washington Post wrote that another “tentative bit of new information to chew on” responsible for the shift in coverage was the publication of a dubious report from the Wall Street Journal (5/23/21). The paper cited anonymous “current and former officials” for the claim that “three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care,” with “symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
As FAIR (3/29/16, 7/6/16, 1/11/21) has repeatedly documented, anonymous sources are notoriously unreliable, often with nefarious agendas. Besides relying on unnamed officials, another issue with the Journal report is that its lead author, Michael R. Gordon, co-authored (with Judith Miller) the notorious New York Times report (9/8/02) that was perhaps the single piece of journalism most responsible for deceiving the nation about Saddam Hussein’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction (WSWS, 6/1/21).
Both the Journal and the Post are careful to note that the report should not be taken as an indisputable fact, even though that article was cynically seized on and misrepresented as evidence by some lab leak proponents. Yet outlets like CNN (5/24/21) treated the Journal’s dubious reporting as fact when it asserted that a “US intelligence report found that several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized.” And the Biden administration’s directive to intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to determine Covid-19’s origin happened mere days after the Journal report was published.
The Journal report doesn’t specify whether the WIV researchers had Covid-19, or whether their illnesses were even linked to the lab—as opposed to getting sick outside the lab—and WIV director Yuan Zhiming has disputed the Journal’s reporting (Global Times, 5/24/21): “Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation [of sick researchers in autumn 2019], and I don’t even know where such information came from.”
Dr. Shi Zhengli, the WIV’s famed virologist responsible for scientific breakthroughs in studying coronaviruses, has challenged US intelligence agencies to produce the names of the supposedly sick WIV researchers to verify their claims.
If the Journal report is false, it wouldn’t be the first time similar claims from anonymous US officials turned out to be untrue. A sensationalist ABC report (4/8/20) based entirely on anonymous sources claimed that the US National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) possessed a report purporting to show that the White House was informed about the pandemic in November 2019 (suggesting China’s leadership was aware of an out-of-control disease outbreak and was hiding crucial information from other countries). It was later debunked by the NCMI’s director, who testified that “no such NCMI product exists.”
Even if the hospital visit occurred, this still is not evidence the WIV had SARS-CoV-2 in its lab, and a mere alleged hospital visit shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as evidence the three supposed researchers were suffering from a severe illness. People in China often visit hospitals to see specialists for common ailments like fevers and headaches—instead of going to a private doctor’s office or community clinic—because most Chinese doctors in urban areas practice in public hospitals (New York Times, 9/30/18).
Specialist in pseudo-science
Nicholas Wade’s book attributing cultural differences to genetics brought rebukes from scientists who study genes; “Our findings do not even provide a hint of support in favor of Wade’s guesswork,” said one (Science, 8/8/14).
The other major event the Washington Post cites as responsible for the “tidal change” in coverage was the publication of “a lengthy review of the known scientific evidence about the lab theory by Nicholas Wade,” described as “a veteran science correspondent formerly with the New York Times.”
Notable left-wing journalists like Thomas Frank (Guardian, 6/1/21) and Jonathan Cook (6/1/21) have cited Wade’s article as having “dynamited” their “complacency” on the debate, with Cook claiming that it “blew open the doors that had been kept tightly shut on the lab-leak hypothesis.”
Those who cite Wade rarely mention the track record that makes him a highly dubious source (FAIR.org, 7/2/14). He has a history of misrepresenting research to promote pseudo-scientific falsehoods, like using “genes” to explain national differences in cultures and economic standing (Science, 8/8/14).
Although I previously cited scientific arguments for a natural spillover and debunked older corporate media claims for “evidence” of a Wuhan lab leak (like Post columnist Josh Rogin’s misrepresentation of scientific research, and a US diplomatic cable about “safety issues” at the WIV) in another article (FAIR.org, 10/6/20), it’s still worth addressing several of Wade’s purportedly scientific arguments in his more than 11,000-word, non-peer-reviewed Medium article (5/2/21) that was later reprinted on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’s website (5/5/21).
Where the viruses are
Despite the credibility conferred by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists‘ reprint (5/5/21), Nicholas Wade’s influential piece on the lab leak theory includes numerous leaps of scientific logic.
To start with, Wade makes a common mistake among lab leak proponents by assuming that the presence of a lab studying coronaviruses in an area where the outbreak of Covid-19 was first detected is an inherently suspicious coincidence:
For the lab escape scenario, a Wuhan origin for the virus is a no-brainer. Wuhan is home to China’s leading center of coronavirus research where, as noted above, researchers were genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. They were doing so under the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 lab. If a virus with the unexpected infectiousness of SARS2 had been generated there, its escape would be no surprise.
As several virologists have explained, the WIV specializes in coronavirus research because many coronaviruses have been found in and around China (around 400 new strains of coronaviruses have been discovered in bats there, and zoonotic spillovers are more common than one might think), and the WIV’s proximity to the first detected Covid-19 outbreak is not inherently suspicious (Nature, 6/8/21):
Virology labs tend to specialize in the viruses around them, says Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in Hamilton, Montana. The WIV specializes in coronaviruses because many have been found in and around China. Munster names other labs that focus on endemic viral diseases: influenza labs in Asia, haemorrhagic fever labs in Africa and dengue fever labs in Latin America, for example. “Nine out of ten times, when there’s a new outbreak, you’ll find a lab that will be working on these kinds of viruses nearby,” says Munster.
Researchers note that a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan isn’t surprising, because it’s a city of 11 million people in a broader region where coronaviruses have been found. It contains an airport, train stations and markets selling goods and wildlife transported there from around the region—meaning a virus could enter the city and spread rapidly.
It makes sense that there would be a laboratory researching coronaviruses in southern China—where a lot of the cutting-edge research on coronaviruses is being conducted—because that places scientists closest to where coronaviruses are often found in nature.
Outbreaks’ distant sources
After searching for 15 years, scientists found a genetic match for the virus that caused the 2002 SARS outbreak in a cave hundreds of miles from where that outbreak first occurred (Guardian, 12/9/17).
Wade makes another geography-related error when he claims that it’s “a stretch” for the pandemic to “break out naturally outside Wuhan” and make its first appearance there without “leaving any trace” through an intermediate animal host. He also claims that a direct spillover to Wuhan from horseshoe bats (which are a natural reservoir for beta-coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2) is “unlikely” because the two closest known relatives of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were collected from bats living in caves in Yunnan province, 1,500 kilometers away (about 930 miles), when their range is supposedly only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles).
But Wade failed to note that there is precedent for the first people detected with a beta-coronavirus infection living far from the bats of Yunnan province. In 2002, Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) originated from Yunnan bats, but the first outbreak in humans was recorded in Foshan, in China’s Guangdong province, nearly 900 miles away (approximately 1,450 kilometers). Scientists suspected that the SARS-causing beta-coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) had jumped from bats to humans through an intermediate host, but could not deduce how it appeared on a farm in Foshan (Business Standard, 6/15/21).
Yet, more than a decade after the SARS outbreak of 2002, WIV researchers discovered that villagers near bat-ridden caves in Yunnan province had high levels of SARS antibodies (which means they had been exposed to SARS-CoV-1) without necessarily ever having been sick. While scientists still aren’t exactly sure how SARS traveled that distance, they are fairly certain SARS originated in those bat caves before passing onto a mammal host to infect humans much farther away.
In a hypothetical Covid-19 scenario, if the bats in Yunnan province are the initial source of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19), and if Wuhan is where the pandemic originated among humans, Wuhan being relatively far away from Yunnan doesn’t necessarily make the zoonotic spillover hypothesis less likely.
Origins hard to pinpoint
“Confirming the circumstances and key participants involved in the early emergence of an infectious disease is…difficult to track and even more difficult to prove,” Scientific American (6/9/21) noted.
Another common tendency among lab leak proponents like Wade is misrepresentation of what is reasonable to expect from scientific investigations searching for the animal source(s) of a novel disease outbreak. Wade misleads his audience by implying it is easy to quickly find animal hosts for viruses, citing how the intermediary host for SARS was found in four months, and the host of MERS within nine months. He contrasts that with Chinese researchers not finding either the original bat population for SARS-CoV-2 or an intermediary host population after 15 months.
In reality, it is very difficult to pinpoint the animal sources that cause pandemics. For some viruses, the animal sources are only implicated after years or decades of large-scale international investigations. Investigations into an animal source that immediately follow a viral emergence event face the additional difficulty that most viruses of interest only infect animal hosts for a matter of days—and a preceding animal outbreak has often already peaked before an outbreak among humans, leaving few animals still infected (Scientific American, 6/9/21).
Wade is being especially manipulative by only citing how long it took to discover SARS’ intermediate host, but omitting that it took scientists 15 years to find evidence that the SARS virus was originally at home in bats. The animal host for Ebola is still unknown, even though the first Ebola outbreak occurred in 1976 (Nature, 5/27/21).
It is not surprising that scientists haven’t discovered the animal sources yet, and it would still not be surprising if scientists never find any of the direct sources, because it is a very difficult process, with searches for intermediary hosts for many viruses often being unsuccessful. Wade is wrong to conclude that “the more months pass without the natural emergence theory gaining a shred of supporting evidence, the less plausible it may seem,” as though scientists ordinarily pinpoint the natural origin of pandemics as a matter of course.
Viral structure no ‘smoking gun’
The viral feature deemed suspicious by Wade “probably evolved multiple times because it provides an evolutionary advantage,” Nature (6/8/21) reported.
Wade also misleads his audience when he notes that SARS-CoV-2 is the only SARS-related beta-coronavirus that “possesses a furin cleavage site” (a feature that helps the virus enter cells):
It possessed an unusual enhancement, a furin cleavage site, which is not possessed by any other known SARS-related beta-coronavirus, and this site included a double arginine codon also unknown among beta-coronaviruses.
He omits that many other coronaviruses also have furin cleavage sites, including ones that cause common colds. Virologists Angela Rasmussen and Stephen Goldstein (Washington Post, 6/4/21) argued that SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site actually demonstrates the opposite of what Wade purports it does:
Another key feature often cited as evidence of laboratory origin is the furin cleavage site, where the spike protein is cut in half to “activate” viral material for entry into cells. The viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 don’t have this site, but many others do, including other human coronaviruses. The furin site of SARS-CoV-2 has odd features that no human would design. Its sequence is suboptimal, meaning its cleavage by the enzyme furin is relatively inefficient. Any skilled virologist hoping to give a virus new properties this way would insert a furin site known to be more efficient. The SARS-CoV-2 site has more of the hallmarks of sloppy natural evolution than a human hand. Indeed, a timely analysis last year showed convincingly that it is a product of genetic recombination, a natural feature of coronavirus replication and evolution.
As further “evidence” of the uniqueness of SARS-CoV-2’s features indicating an engineered virus, Wade and other articles promoting the lab leak theory (e.g., Vanity Fair, 6/3/21) also cited the eminent virologist David Baltimore’s hyperbolic remarks on SARS-CoV-2’s peculiar double CGG combination of nucleotides coding for the arginine amino acid in the furin cleavage site, as pointing to a human engineered virus:
“When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus,” said David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of CalTech. “These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2,” he said.
However, Kristian Andersen pointed out in response to Baltimore that while it’s true that CGG is less common than other codons for arginine, the CGG codon is also found outside the furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, and the genetic sequences that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. Baltimore subsequently retracted his “smoking gun” claim (Nature, 6/8/21; LA Times, 6/8/21).
Andersen, one of the most vocal defenders of the natural emergence theory of Covid-19, has been the subject of recent controversy following the publication of an early email exchange he had with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The emails showed Andersen contemplating whether SARS-CoV-2 was engineered before changing his mind days later, and co-authoring an influential Nature study (3/17/20) that found no reason to “believe any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Andersen has since clarified that his early email exchanges with Dr. Fauci occurred before he had conducted research that caused him to reject his preliminary hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, because he found that the features which initially looked unusual were later identified in related coronaviruses (New York Times, 6/14/21).
Climate denial rhetoric
“There is no evidence — not a smidgen — for the claim that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory,” writes Michael Hiltzik (LA Times, 6/3/21).
This is a nonexhaustive rebuttal to Wade’s article; scientists and others have written their own critiques of Wade’s article (Forbes, 5/20/21; LA Times, 6/3/21). But one disturbing trend among lab leak proponents like Wade is how often they engage in rhetoric similar to climate change deniers, insinuating that the only reason their minority view isn’t as accepted is due to widespread corruption among scientists and left-wing media bias:
They [virologists] have common interests in seeking funds from governments and in not being overburdened with safety regulations…. Virologists knew better than anyone the dangers of gain-of-function research [i.e., deliberately altering organisms or viruses to gain more pathogenic characteristics]. But the power to create new viruses, and the research funding obtainable by doing so, was too tempting.
Another reason, perhaps, is the migration of much of the media toward the left of the political spectrum. Because President Trump said the virus had escaped from a Wuhan lab, editors gave the idea little credence.
The claim that dominant media in the US are on “the left of the political spectrum” should serve as a warning not to rely on Wade’s critical thinking abilities. Reporting on the coronavirus, corporate media have reflected the anti-China lean that is common across the US foreign policy establishment (FAIR.org, 5/15/20, 1/29/21, 4/8/21).
His assertion about scientific conflicts of interest deserves perhaps a little more attention. One of the people Wade singles out for criticism is zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, for organizing and drafting the widely circulated Lancet open letter (2/19/20) that condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” without disclosing the fact that EcoHealth Alliance had funded coronavirus research at the WIV. Wade noted that if SARS-CoV-2 did escape from research his institution funded, Daszak would be among those who might be held culpable, yet he didn’t disclose this conflict of interest in that letter.
However, if it’s theoretically true that bad actors like Trump and Pompeo could nevertheless be correct about pandemic origins, then the logic cuts both ways: Researchers like Daszak can still be correct about Covid-19 having natural origins, despite whatever conflicts of interests they may have.
‘Can’t be ruled out’ a weak claim
Dan Samorodnitsky (Massive Science, 5/26/21) “It’s naive at best and violent gaslighting at worst to pretend that supporting an evidence-free hypothesis that clearly adds fuel to the idea that China inflicted Covid-19 upon the world, that they did this to us, is noble scientific dispassion.”
A few final notes on logic. One fallacious mode of argumentation lab leak proponents use is citing a lengthy list of incidents where viruses are known to have leaked from labs around the world, while glossing over the lack of any evidence that the WIV was in possession of SARS-CoV-2 before the Wuhan outbreak, a necessary precondition for a Covid-19 lab leak.
If one assumes without evidence that WIV was hiding its pre-outbreak possession of SARS-CoV-2, and lying about it afterwards—the kind of leap that is the hallmark of a conspiracy theory—one still has to ask what incidents at other labs (Independent Science News, 5/5/20) have to do with whether or not the virus escaped from the WIV to trigger the pandemic. Dr. Shi Zhengli has insisted that there haven’t been any pathogen leaks or personnel infections at the WIV prior to recent lab leak speculations.
If the point of recounting a list of lab leak incidents is merely to point out something as trivial as a lab leak being a “possibility” that “can’t be ruled out,” this is also irrelevant. Proponents of a natural origin theory for Covid-19 never argue that a Wuhan lab leak is “impossible” or “inconceivable.” As Dan Samorodnitsky, senior editor at Massive Science (5/26/21) (who has a PhD in biochemistry) pointed out:
If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a family of viruses that have done this before to do it again. The zoonotic spillover hypothesis is simple and explains everything. It’s scientific malpractice to pretend that one idea is equally as meritorious as the other. The lab-leak hypothesis is a scientific deus ex machina, a narrative shortcut that points a finger at a specific set of bad actors.
Covid’s uncertain origin
Evidence that Covid-19 was circulating around the world before it was identified in Wuhan (e.g., Wall Street Journal, 12/1/20) should unsettle confident assumptions about where the virus originated.
It’s also important to note that it hasn’t been proven that Wuhan is the origin of the pandemic, as one should not conflate Wuhan being the place where Covid-19 was first detected, with Wuhan being the origin of the pandemic. It’s certainly possible that Wuhan is the origin of the outbreak, but there have been numerous reports of the virus possibly circulating outside China in places like Italy, France, Spain, Brazil and the US before or around the same time the outbreak was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019, which adds to growing evidence Covid-19 may have been present outside of China earlier than previously known (Wall Street Journal, 5/5/20, 12/1/20; Conversation, 6/28/20; Telesur, 7/3/20; CNBC, 11/15/20; New York Times, 6/15/21).
Although these reports don’t necessarily mean Covid-19 originated in any of those countries (as they need to be reanalyzed to confirm they’re not false positives), the WHO team which visited China this year has recommended broadening the search for the virus’s origin outside China (Nature, 2/10/21). If Wuhan is not the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, then the Wuhan lab leak theory utterly collapses.
Scientists rarely make absolute declarations on whether a scenario is impossible, and that is a good indicator of professionalism. However, scientists have also noted the difficulties in communicating nuanced views to the public, as many credulous lab leak proponents will treat scientists’ mere acknowledgement that a lab leak is not impossible as more significant than it really is. Merely saying that something “can’t be ruled out” is not a serious argument that a lab leak occurred.
It is important to avoid a politically charged scenario analogous to climate change skepticism, where significant portions of the US population reject the views of most scientists due to the media’s false balance of opposing views.
Thanks to Joe Emersberger and Diana Lu for research assistance.
I don’t really care whether there was a lab leak error. Humans make mistakes every day!
I do care that 500,000+ Americans died, mostly unnecessarily.
I also care if the lab leak theory is meant to ramp up anti- China sentiment to create another bogus Cold War.
Our global community cannot afford wasting $$$, time and people power on this.
Better that we get all riled up about Climate Change and do something about THAT!!!
Well stated! Agree completely!
The blinders leading the blind
Knowing what we’d been told by astute, even prescient Chinese, East Asian, Iranian, Italian, then NYC clinicians; the planets’ epidemiologists and specialist researchers, prior to March. The real question remains: why were Cuomo, Trump and de Blasio, complicit media and “experts” all repeating falsehoods, most of us debunked in the first few days we’d been infected, following Fauci, Barbot & TV telling us, “just go about your lives, as normal,” mass transit is safe, masks are unnecessary, school kids & asymptomatic folks won’t spread it, European commercial travlers aren’t vectors, it’s fomites, not aerosols… This is simply MORE hive-minded agitprop, not serious investigation. Diversion from… whatever: the infrastructure bill, Israel, how NYC lost >33K from a virus that mightve killed a few hundred, and indentured chronically ill with surprise ER bills as so many lost ACA & W4 employment? If you’re not aware that your disruptive NASDAQ portfolio’s 80% increase is based upon smug monitizing of more excess deaths than the US Civil War, that Catastrophe Capitalism’s Great Reset is based upon 1099’d essential workers, being evicted, Ubers reposessed and equity stolen by OTHER desperate gig-peons and it’s unlikely to end well, when mutant strains hot those un-insured, un-vaccinated, un-housed… just maybe you might want to IGNORE that 72″ 5K AMOLED screen telling you what you believe?
Here’s another intriguing view. Per the Military Times, there were military games in China in mid October 2019. Maybe that should be looked into also as the military had that Fort Dix disaster. Maybe the US sent that disease with its personnel to those Oct. games. and the US started this?
At least read the entire article first before commenting.
Joshua, I am a research scientist who also discounted the lab leak theory until I read multiple original research papers that say they can’t find a natural reservoir of virus in the local animal populations. All samples they find in the local populations are either not closely related, or virtually identical to the human virus. The researches all conclude that this is a very strange set of findings. With the original SARS and MERS outbreaks, the closely related virus was found in local animal populations very quickly. This time, they can’t find the local reservoir no matter how many samples they test.
So don’t dismiss this possibility out of hand. Read those original research articles and then ask yourself why it is so hard to find the source this time around.
John, Cho is a Chinese apologist. Read his previous articles. Anything even slightly negative on China gets attacked by Cho. I haven’t read one thing by him that praises the US. He’s the news reporting equivalent of Biden – wrong about everything. Take a logical position on a topic and Cho will write something that bashes America, praises China somehow, or blames Trump.
Hi Tim, there is plenty of blame to go around if the lab leak hypothesis turns out to be true. The US (via the NIH) was funding some of the viral research at the Wuhan lab.
~https://reporter.nih.gov/search/Zqy-vBpRBkyLk4VN8lm7DQ/projects
~https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/03/was-there-a-wuhan-lab-leak/
The NIH funded about $15 million worth of research to be done by “EcoHealth Alliance” which is run by a guy named Peter Daszak, and some of that money went to the Wuhan lab.
~https://reporter.nih.gov/search/Zqy-vBpRBkyLk4VN8lm7DQ/projects
I agree. Fauchi helped fund some of that.
There is absolutely no proof of bats. Coincidence that the first time in modern history we cannot find the animal, but it happens to come from the same city that has the lab studying this very same virus?
The article *literally* links to a study from years back showing how most outbreaks of novel disease *never* have their hosts found.
And in the case of SARS, it took many many years to find the exact reservoir – over a decade!
Typical fascist method of argument: if you can’t rebut the message, slander the messenger.
A little confused by your position here. Mr Cho is anti-American. Biden is the American president. Biden is also wrong about everything. It seems you are anti-American.
Every international position that Biden had taken as a senator has been wrong. I cannot dislike a man and love a country? Biden is moving quickly toward senility. He had no business running for President. He and his wife knew this. Like or dislike Trump, he was and is lucid.
Cho has never written an article where the US did good and another country was bad. I never called a person who didn’t like Trump anti-American. If you hated everything about your wife and wanted to transform her, can you tell me that you love her?
I think you are naturally confused about a whole lot of things.
Why is it that some on the left desire that the US be the root of all that is bad. Wondering is such a person. She hates the US. Every post states the same: “US bad” and “every other place good.” Cho is a bit different. He’s more: “US bad” “China good.” He’s made his bed and cannot escape without eating alot of crow. What does he do? Instead of apologizing and moving on, he doubles down on a theory for which there hasn’t been one bat shown to have started this pandemic. Not one. This is the first modern pandemic for which we don’t know the source.
Why Cho doesn’t move to China is beyond me. Let’s see how long his articles would last there. No freedom of speech Cho. That’s good as long as you keep bashing the US. Try to write one article critical of anything the Chinese don’t like. Anyone wonder how he justifies Mao murdering 75M of its citizens? I’m sure it would go something like – there is no proof, provide me their names, etc.
Occam’s razor points to the fact that the Wuhan lab leaked the Wuhan virus. Where are all the leftists that like to bring up Occam’s razor?
What a silly response. You sound like Bush and Cheney: you’re either with us or you’re against us. Blah blah blah…
Regarding the “US being the root of all that’s bad…”, look, we’re all US taxpayers and we have a right to criticize the actions of our allegedly democratically elected officials and their appointees. The US has a long history of germ warfare research and has knowingly infected US citizens (Tuskegee for example) with diseases. Remember the anthrax scares that were supposed to gin up support for the Iraq war? Hmmm…so a virus emerges in China and the American government and its lapdog media jump to doing what they did in the runup to Iraq…conveniently pointing to a country that they want us to see as an enemy.
I’m so sick of this “the left wants…” nonsense. Nobody ever talks about what “the right wants…” so maybe you could tell us since you’re obviously a “member.”
Who said you didn’t have the right to criticize? Please show me where that was typed. Why is my complaint on your criticism viewed as limiting your rights? Limiting your rights look much more like what Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Youtube do to conservatives. EVERY comment from Wondering is a criticism of the US. Cho has yet to publish a piece that says anything nice about the US. It is shocking that either of them live here since, in their view, this is such a horrible place.
This URL describes the differences between the two better than any other: https://dennisprager.com/column/a-guide-to-basic-differences-between-left-and-right/
I made it this far:
Primary Role of the State
Left: increase and protect equality
Right: increase and protect liberty
Bwahahahahaha! Increase and protect liberty (for some?) maybe?! Successive Supreme Court decisions limiting liberty for everyday people and increasing liberty for the state have come down on party-line votes for decades. Look to any decision walking back individual civil liberties and granting those same liberties to corporations and law enforcement. I would bet you money, that until very recently every single majority decision was the Republican (right) nominated justices and the minority dissent was from Democrat (what the right calls left) nominated justices.
Although today’s Democrats (ala the DNC) are essentially center- to center-right on those topics, all the attention from the center-right corporate media is given to the outliers such as AOC and Ilhan Omar while distracting from the main thrust of the party that’s no different from previous iterations of the Republican party. Namely, dramatically increasing military, law enforcement and surveillance state powers.
But riddle me this. Historically fascists are associated with the right. In what form and for whom would “liberty” be granted in such an arrangement?
Preceding “modern” times, of course the American right stood for “liberty”, but liberty of white people with money and/or land to own slaves, break or bend severely treaties with the Indians and other countries and for settler/colonial whites to steal land and commit ethnic genocide without any punishment whatsoever.
Fascists may come from the right, but the true evil comes from communists (the left). You can chalk Hitler down as a fascist. I’m going to give you Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. Those total about 90M murders versus 6M from Hitler.
Regardless, none of those atrocities could be committed by small governments. They are all committed by large governments. Republicans are interested in small government. Maybe not the elected officials way of acting, but listen to the constituents on the right versus those on the left. The right wants small government. The left wants big government.
150 years ago? BTW, those whites were DEMOCRATS.
Those same atrocities have been committed by ALL colors throughout history. For some reason you lefties only want to hold the US accountable. Never a mention of Japan, China, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe. Just bad US. You don’t have the courage to go to China and say how bad they have been. Where is their punishment?
The Democrats are not Center Right on anything. You’re just a loony far leftist. Everyone to you is to the right
Using the climate change analogy, this article is the climate change deniers perspective. Now Fair has to be fair and publish an article that explains the evidence supporting the lab leak theory.
They won’t publish such an article. FAIR has long ago moved from media bias to publishing far left thoughts. I have yet to see anything that supports a right wing view. If an organization were really challenging the media, the would take a left wing idea and show how it is wrong and that the right is correct. They would do this more than one time. This organization has NEVER done that. That alone shows their bias. Somehow the right is wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME? Impossible. FAIR comes out with a further left position on all things they publish. They run into some problems with their left wing readers when they don’t go left enough.
Want to see how far the Democrats have gone? JFK would not be part of the Democrat party today. Goldwater would still be part of the Republicans.
Which side has moved?
FAIR is ignoring the main point that Wade and others raised: WIV wasn’t just researching coronaviruses, it was “genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells”.
So you “debunk” is debunked, because it is a strawman. Labs in Africa and South America are not genetically engineering Ebola and dengue to attack human cells.
That FAIR is going out of the way to mislead the readers is very revealing of it’s bias and untrustworthiness.
Wade didn’t prove that WIV was doing gain-of-function research. In fact he maliciously distorted a grant proposal to claim that reseachers set out to make a virus with “maximum” possible infectivity – total rubbish on its face and the rest of his interpretation of the grant proposal was unfounded assumption. More importantly, to step around all the evidence pointing away from a engineered virus he speculated that researchers used an “unpublished backbone” to create it – i.e. that engineered a virus a in ridiculously stupid & inefficient way.
The story is that it was ruled out and called a “racist conspiracy theory” by the media and social media giants to begin with.
That’s the story.
Here’s my question regarding a quote from Virologists Angela Rasmussen and Stephen Goldstein you cited:
“Indeed, a timely analysis last year showed convincingly that it is a product of genetic recombination, a natural feature of coronavirus replication and evolution.”
Are viruses enhanced through so-called gain of function research not “natural”? How would one determine that if so? If the laboratory was doing gain of function research, wouldn’t they simply be passing the virus between animals like ferrets until the virion had the properties they were looking for? Wouldn’t that qualify as a “natural” origin from the scientific perspective?
You’re getting a bit semantic. Humans & everything they build ; cities, roads, laboratories etc… could be said to be part of nature in broad sense, Key point is that if COVID had been engineered by humans in a lab to infect humans it would have tell-tale evidence of that in its structure. It doesn’t. Its “backbone” is not one of the ones virologists spent years developing for that kind of engineering. It does not bind to human cells in an optimal way as an engineered virus would, The virus has “O-linked glycans” which also point to it having evolved outside a lab
I’m embarrassed for FAIR, this once great organization. Even your links, such as the link to the sentence that claims “most scientists think” this virus has a zoonotic origin, do not support the claim they’re making. You used to be a good source of news analysis. I used to support you. This is so shoddy and promotes an agenda for who knows what purpose. Maybe it’s just sloppiness but you can do better. Wow. Just wow.
To B Price,
I read the link to the article you are complaining about….and within the linked article, it literally said, “Most scientists say SARS-CoV-2 probably has a natural origin, and was transmitted from an animal to humans.” (copied and pasted.)
This sounds like the point in contention or “WHO WE GONNA BLAME?” is still at the hypothetical stage of the whole inquest process, but is leaning heavily toward animal to human origin.
Also, I couldn’t tell whether you were saying the scientists in the article do not support – as in they do not believe – their own zoonotic hypotheses, or whether you were saying the article itself did not support the zoonotic hypothesis?
Yeah, if it’s the latter, then you need to go brush up on what the scientific method is all about and the difference between hypotheses, theories, and proofs. All scientific inquiries first begin with a hypothesis….in other words a metaphysical presumption, that has yet to be proven, tested, explained or studied.
A lot of laymen or people not familiar with the distinction between a hypothesis and a theory, don’t understand that strictly speaking, their are no proofs in science. There is only evidence based on the study of nature’s behavior.
Even still, evidence only suggests that whatever pattern or behavior discovered, is strongly correlated to whatever phenomenon.
All Cho was doing here in his piece, was reiterating the consensus hypothesis believed within science, which is to say the virus was – most likely – zoonotic.
I don’t know…you tell me B Price…but it sounds like you don’t understand the difference between a thought experiment and one that actually takes place in a lab.
Brilliant and succinct rejoiner to sheer ignorance of B Price and others of like mind here.
Growing evidence of the failure of American educational system in terms of understanding basic scientific concepts and critical thought.
Thank you for a cogent explanation of the situation.
JC – good detailed rundown of the natural origin case. Thanks for the in-depth research!
Some time ago I mentioned the poetry of Stonehouse. He was a Buddhist hermit who lived during the Mongol-Yuan Dynasty, a period of increased connection, war, trade and inequality. His life ends as the Black Death starts its progress. There’s a distrust of thought in the poems:
“I entered the mountains and learned to be dumb
I’m usually to tired to open my mouth
I don’t point out the mistakes of others
my own faults are what I try to alter…”
“The whole Buddhist Cannon is worthless old paper
seventeen hundred tangled vines
who can see through the mess
one thought is still too many…”
“Letting go means letting everything go
buddhahood has to go too
each thought becomes a demon
each word invites more trouble”
There are beautiful passages here too. The translator, Red Pine , wrote an introduction and adds commentaries along with the poems in Chinese and English.
This is a well reasoned article. Bravo to the writers & researchers!
B. Price you said enough to capture my thoughts as well. Shoddy work! There is plenty of evidence of the lab origin supported by credible scientists. I just won’t be going to FAIR for reliable reporting of the facts.
Brilliant and succinct rejoiner to sheer ignorance of B Price and others of like mind here.
Growing evidence of the failure of American educational system in terms of understanding basic scientific concepts and critical thought.
I’m an electrical engineer. I’ll put my knowledge of science against of these pro-China leftists on this site. Cho knows nothing of science. He does know that he hates the US and loves praising all other countries
Josh Cho’s article cites actual virologists and PhDs in biology.
“Tim” cites himself as an electrical engineer which (even if true) is among the stupidest comments I’ve seen under a FAIR article. Sadly (as a mechanical engineer myself) I’ve encountered many colleagues dumb enough to write something like that, so I would not be surprised if Tim really is one.
As a mechanical engineer myself, I would argue that good engineers have a solid understanding of scientific principles like statistics, fluid dynamics and chemistry, along with a sharply trained mind and the attention span required to read technical reports and research studies. Additionally, we know that a problem no matter how complex can be broken down into workable sections and solved.
These qualities should make an engineer capable of parsing truth from misinformation on most subjects, including medical and political news.
COVID-19 has forced me to learn a lot about virology, genetics, biology, and many other areas, but I seem to have a better understanding of the situation the people I talk to who don’t have a STEM background.
Joe: I’m sorry to hear you, as a trained engineer, seem to agree with the sentiments of this article. All you needed to do was look into the author’s previous work and check his twitter feed to realize that this is propaganda.
Also, the lab leak “theory” is quickly becoming fact, as you will undoubtedly see over the coming months. I suggest starting with Nicholas Wade’s outstanding piece on the Journal of Atomic Scientist’s website, and then take a look at the evidence that has come to light since.
Also c’mon man. Occam’s razor isn’t the end all and be all, but when the options for an origin are either a coronavirus research facility half a mile from ground zero or bats over 500 miles away, well. It doesn’t take an engineer.
In conclusion, here’s a hilarious bit that unintentionally captures this entire debate, at least for myself and thousands of other people on twitter
https://youtu.be/WLfAf8oHrMo
Joe, cannot read. I never once said that I’m on the same level as virologists. Arrmand stated that our school system has failed to produce people that do not understand basic scientific concepts. I merely stated that I do understand science and that Cho does not.
Joe, reading and comprehending are different. Strive for the later and not just trying to make a quick cheap shot.
See, this is the danger of knowing a little.
“but when the options for an origin are either a coronavirus research facility half a mile from ground zero or bats over 500 miles away, well.”
In literally the last SARS family outbreaks, the reservoirs were hundreds of miles away from the outbreak. Not only is common sense a bad bases for a scientific judgement, it is directly in the face of existing historical evidence.
Common sense is often used in scientific discovery. Where do these lay people who know nothing of science get this kind of reasoning?
No scientist throws common sense out. That doesn’t mean they only rely on common sense, but it’s always there. Was there a virology lab studying that very same SARS virus near the outbreak? If so, you have a nice exception. If not, why the hell bring it up?
Common sense is absolutely used in science.
For example, in the last outbreak of SARS, how close was a lab doing virus research on SARS. You left that out
Joe, cannot read. I never once said that I’m on the same level as virologists. Arrmand stated that our school system has failed to produce people that do not understand basic scientific concepts. I merely stated that I do understand science and that Cho does not.
Joe, reading and comprehending are different. Strive for the later and not just trying to make a quick cheap shot.