The lab leak theory is still taboo in Western media. Feature China/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Covid cases are rising again. In the UK, they have broken through the 200,000 infections-a-day threshold for the first time since April. In America, the sixth wave is well under way. In countries that kept the disease at bay for years, such as Taiwan and New Zealand, numbers are shooting up, driven by milder but highly infectious versions of the Omicron variant. The virus has not gone away, even if its death toll is much lower. But what has disappeared is any real or urgent interest from the media and the scientific establishment in finding out how it started.
Imagine if the accidental launch of a nuclear missile had killed 21 million people. It’s hard to believe the world would shrug and say: let’s not bother finding out how it happened. The Covid pandemic has killed around that number and disrupted the lives of billions. Nothing like it has happened in more than a century; it is the greatest cause of global suffering since the Forties. Yet we still do not know how it started, and much of the world seems to be increasingly incurious to find out.
We co-authored a book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, on this topic in 2021 and it proved to be an odd experience. Eschewing speculation and sticking to what we could prove, we delved deep into the evidence and wove together the threads that linked bat viruses from southern China or Southeast Asia with an outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019. We concluded that it was impossible to be sure yet, but two theories were plausible: spillover from an animal to a person at a market, or an accident in a laboratory or during a research field trip.
In this we are in line with the US government, the G7, the World Health Organisation and the general public, all of whom are on record as saying that they think a leak from a Wuhan virology lab is a strong possibility that deserves to be investigated. The latest WHO report two weeks ago confirms this, saying that it is important “to evaluate the possibility of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into the human population through a laboratory incident”. That is huge news. It means that an accident caused by human error may have happened on the same scale as a nuclear missile destroying New York.
Our book received praise from readers: we received letters and emails from senior scientists, politicians, businessmen, journalists, and others commending it as a non-fiction whodunnit.
All that was gratifying. But it stood in marked contrast to the reaction in much of the media. CNN invited us on to discuss the book then cancelled at the last minute — at the behest of their health editor. The BBC simply ignored the book altogether, as did the other mainstream US and UK networks. The topic remains taboo in much of the mainstream media. Reviews were mostly bad — in both senses of the word. That is to say, they were highly critical and inaccurate. In some cases, the authors said things that made clear they had not read the book but had made up their minds to dislike it. Not one but two virologists told us on Twitter that the book was full of lies — and that they had not read it. An odd thing for anybody to admit to, especially a scientist.
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington invited us to give a presentation on the book, then cancelled the invitation. We asked the Royal Society if they had considered a debate on the topic of the origin of the Covid pandemic: no, they said, it’s not a proper topic for scientific discussion. What? We tried a couple of other learned societies: no, sorry, too controversial. Seriously.
Opinion polls show that the public generally thinks the virus began with a lab leak. So virologists who think it did not ought to be keen to have an opportunity to make their case, rather than avoid debate.
We think we know why people feel so threatened by Viral. After all we are not lab-leak extremists and we have also been attacked by those who are. But by taking down credible moderate voices, our critics within the scientific establishment are polarising the issue and casting the lab origin hypothesis as one that is only championed by anti-science or uninformed groups. As Professor Jonathan Haidt of New York University has pointed out, on social media these days it is common for activists to spend a lot of time criticising moderates on their own side of an argument.
The Chinese authorities have made it clear that any discussion of a possible lab leak is — in their view — xenophobic bullying. “The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman on 10 June. (Although they also argue that a lab leak of Covid from US laboratories should be investigated.) This stance from the Chinese government puts universities and scientific journals in a tough spot because of their increasing dependency on Chinese funding and patronage.
Science funders are embarrassed to note that, as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University has recently documented, some of the funding that went into collecting and manipulating bat viruses in Wuhan came from the West, so better to let that sleeping dog lie. Virologists are worried that fingering a lab leak will affect their flow of grant money or result in more oversight and regulation of virology research. One scientist told us that: “If we investigate and expose an error on the part of scientists, then the public will no longer trust science.” As if choosing to deliberately not uncover a possible error would make people trust science more.
Science journalists generally see their job as cheerleading for scientists, not investigating them, so have largely refused to engage with the evidence for a lab leak. Some environmentalists would prefer the episode to be a cautionary tale about the destruction of rainforests. The issue has rapidly become partisan with Republicans largely driving the calls for an investigation. Bipartisan efforts and proposals to investigate the origin of Covid — a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than a million Americans — have proceeded at a glacial pace. Many younger commentators see blaming a Chinese lab as more racist than blaming Chinese eating habits for some reason (despite the fact that no bats or pangolins were found to be sold in Wuhan markets in the years leading up to the pandemic). And so on.
In short, there is a confluence of vested interest that results in a lot of motivated reasoning. It is hard to find anybody, with the exception of a few fringe media outfits, who is being paid as part of their day job to investigate the possibility of a lab leak without fear or favour. The people who have persisted in keeping the lab-leak hypothesis alive, against staunch opposition by some virologists and the media, are doing it in their spare time and at their own expense — as are we.
One of the commonest criticisms we have received from scientists is that by writing a book we are profiteering from a pandemic, an odd charge to come from people also earning salaries and grants to investigate the virus and its effects. Anyway, we took an early decision before the book was published, which we made public, to give away half of the proceeds from the book to charity.
Perhaps the oddest reaction we get from scientists, politicians and even journalists is this: why does it matter? The pandemic has happened, it cannot be undone and we may never know how it started, so why rake over the coals and stir up animosities? We find this astounding as an argument. If we don’t know how this pandemic started, how can we inform strategies to stop the next one? If we don’t investigate, what signal does that send to bioterrorists? If we shrug our shoulders, what respect does that show to the memory of the dead? The risk of lab-based outbreaks does not disappear if we pretend they are unlikely.
Another excuse we hear for the refusal to engage in the debate is that the Chinese government is secretive and authoritarian, so it will never share the vital information that we need to determine the origin of the virus. This seems to us defeatist, as is the often-expressed view that we cannot know how this pandemic started unless we get cooperation from the Chinese authorities. Like Dr Sachs, we think it is possible that a diligent investigation of the kind that has not yet been launched may yet solve the mystery even without Chinese cooperation. A steady trickle of revelations from within Western institutions has confirmed our view.
The World Health Organisation did in 2020 launch an inquiry into the source of the virus, which unfortunately gave Western governments the excuse to do nothing. It proved to be an embarrassing farce: months of dilatory negotiations over terms of reference, followed by the appointment of experts with conflicts of interest, then a brief chaperoned visit to a few spots in Wuhan, culminating in a press conference at which the WHO meekly endorsed an evidence-free Chinese theory that the virus had been imported to Wuhan on frozen food possibly from overseas. More than a year later, the WHO has now published a preliminary report from its scientific advisory group for the origins of novel pathogens (SAGO), which admits that the lab leak needs to be investigated — 30 months after the pandemic began.
That this pandemic flared up in a powerful and influential country with no free press, little freedom for scientists to speak out and centralised control of information by a totalitarian dictator certainly makes it uniquely difficult to investigate. Had it occurred in almost any other country in the world — the US, India, Brazil, even Russia — we think it would have been impossible to prevent the truth emerging.
But China’s refusal to be transparent has been matched by a determined effort on the part of many Western scientists to prevent a proper investigation getting under way. Despite thinking privately that a lab leak was most definitely possible — as shown by emails revealed through freedom of information requests — these scientists now appear even more keen than the Chinese authorities to tell the media that the matter is settled and they are sure the first infection happened in Wuhan’s seafood market.
Yet no infected animal on sale in the market or elsewhere in China has been found, and there is no evidence of exposure to SARS-like viruses among Wuhan market traders prior to the Covid outbreak. The amount of evidence for a wildlife trade origin of the virus is comparable to that for a research-related origin — both are plausible ways for a bat coronavirus from southern China or Southeast Asia to have made its way to Wuhan in central China, but both pathways remain poorly investigated. As we say to those who claim it definitely came via wild animals in the market, we don’t think you are certainly wrong, but we do think you are wrongly certain.
Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 is now out in paperback.
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SubscribeIt doesn’t count for much but this commenter thanks the authors for their diligence in researching the origins of the pandemic. You are reminding journalists and scientists alike how science journalism should be conducted–much to the chagrin of journalists and scientists.
The authors have correctly diagnosed the problem, imo. There are too many powerful, vested interests that don’t want the truth about the pandemic origins to come out. I doubt we’ll ever have a definitive answer although eventually circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is likely to be overwhelming. Omicron is now the most infectious virus in recorded history. Does anyone seriously doubt the original SARS-cov-2 was the product of gain-of-function research that produced a virus especially well suited to infect humans?
Agree. “If we investigate and expose an error on the part of scientists, then the public will no longer trust science.”
And if we shut the stable door, the horse might bolt.
Thank heavens that this debate is being revived. I am emphatically not an habitual consumer of conspiracy theories: I’m a biologist working in healthcare and have been so for over 30 years. I trained in virology as an undergraduate, with a sound grounding in molecular biology and rational skepticism as a result. It therefore incenses me to watch the leading lights in my professional arena debase themselves as they have done.
I never thought I’d see such closing of ranks and denial of evidence as I’ve seen in the last two years. Their response to the idea that SARS CoV2 originated in a research facility has mostly been the equivalent of a toddler sticking its fingers in its ears and hollering “La La La can’t hear you”. Such toeing of the Party line! Debate has simply been disallowed by the very people whom we expected to be impartial, dispassionate.
To be clear: I don’t claim to have knowledge of any particular origin story for this virus. However, I find the “laboratory origin theory” less readily falsifiable on current evidence than the “wet market theory”. Crucially, I am open to persuasion by fresh evidence: that is what has been lacking in the upper echelons of the life sciences establishment. But then, it’s becoming increasingly clear who is providing the funding, and who can cut it off when displeased.
As for the straw man of “sinophobia” or other such tosh and pizzle: there’s even a name for that sort of dishonest politicking. It’s called “pengci” or “broken porcelain” (and there’s even an entertaining Wikipedia entry on the topic). Essentially it’s hyperbolic outrage over concocted offence: something of a speciality for the apparatchiks of Beijing, I’ve noticed. Sad that we are all so mortgaged to the CCP’s economic wing that we need to play along.
I hear & understand the embarrassment that you feel coming through your post in regard to the behaviour of some/most of your fellow scientists. I’m afraid the threat of shame or dishonour is no longer an important factor for people in positions of responsibility or influence in the western world. By the nature of scientific work I would suggest that they were the last bastion of honesty perceived by the general public. The outcome for the scientific community is that now very few will believe what they say….. unless what is said agrees with their own opinion.
It would appear that days of a person being a scholar and gentleman are long gone.Perhaps only true independece occurs when a scientist has private funds such as Newton, Mendel or Darwin and are are free to pursue knowledge for it’s own sake.
Well said Sir.
The most cogent argument for a lab leak surely arises from a simple probability estimate. If this was a natural cross-species transmission that depended on the particular conditions of a ‘wet market’, it could have happened at any time in any of the hundreds or thousands of wet markets in China. If it could have happened as a result of other cross-species mechanisms, the possible locations for its origin increase to a level that would be difficult to quantify.
In contrast, the lab in Wuhan was one of a very small number (perhaps as few as two in the entire world) that was carrying out ‘gain of function’ research on coronaviruses.
The natural transmission hypothesis essentially states that the fact that Covid had its origins in, of all locations, one of the very few places in the world carrying out ‘gain of function’ research on coronaviruses, and at the same time, is nothing more than pure coincidence. One wonders how its proponents can keep a straight face.
According to Spiked, two of the scientists who in public derided Trump’s claims, emailed privately that the Furan Cleavage site was surely the result of genetic manipulation. Then there was the admission by Prof Lovelock when asked why so few scientists had joined him in ‘recanting his climate alarmism’ – “I’m an independent scientist, others need grants.”
Or the world’s largest vaccine trial cover ups. The “All Cause Mortality” data for the mRNA covid vaccines are, according to a Danish expert, ‘alarming’ – that doesn’t appear to have resulted in anyone with power to change things asking “Should we be giving this vaccine to children?”
Science, like most things has become corrupt and possibly worse, woke.
Fortunately ‘The times they are a-changin’ but it isn’t going to be a pleasant experience for many of us.
Excellent points. (I was waiting for someone to cite the actual profile of the mRNA modified pathogen.) And then, different cultures influence interpretations, even in science. A Level 4 biohazard facility operated by employees from a significantly different background is something to be concerned about. (Not impugning their intelligence, but if, as is said, “distance lends enchantment to the view”, so, significant cultural differences can alter perception, influencing interpretations and consequent unreliable adherence to exacting situations such as a Level 4 Lab.) Diogenes is still needed.
Isn’t this an example of Occam’s Razor?
For the first time in my life I really, really, hope to God (and for the first time, that isn’t just a turn of phrase).that what I’ve just read is some crack pot, hair brained, conspiracy theory. If it isn’t, then the ramifications are truly terrifying. It isn’t so much, that China has tried to possibly cover something up, that is sort of expected. It’s what makes ‘us’ the ‘good’ guys. No, it’s the implication that the people, and institutions, that ‘we’ took for being ‘on our side’, the ‘good’ guys, seem to be in cahoots. While some vested interests, Icarus like, might be reticent, in the extreme, about what fingers they had in the pie, and when, it doesn’t explain why Governments, International public institutions and the media, from around the world, are so worryingly incurious.
Is the entire global population really that expendable ?
Where have you been for the last 2 years
In my, very reasonably priced, ex military, nuclear bunker, complete with tin foil hat, folding deck chair, sipping a margarita, complete with umbrella and a side order of maraschino cherries. And you call me silly, beat that if you can !
It is not in Wuhan is it?
The new weapon of the left happily adopted by the bureaucrats and vested interests of every description: ‘No debate!’
Please let me finish as I interrupt you, seems to be the present media training strategy especially for women.
I am reminded of the problems with safety on the railways and the steps that were taken to learn from mistakes, this still seems true in air travel. It didn’t create a luck of trust in railways but the opposite.
Most people’s reaction to a mistake is to cover it up. Now we have taken to covering up other people’s mistakes for fear of causing trouble.
The ‘may be construed as xenephobic’ justification for concealing the true origin of the virus says a great deal. It shows the distrubing strength of the iron grip that political correctness has round the neck of truth, and how our knowledge making institutions are continually strengthening it by putting (or being compelled to put) *supposed* considerations of ‘hateful thoughts’ ahead of their primary duty to convey events and privide analysis sincerly. If even a catastrophe on this scale falls prey to such thinking, imagine the million other things which are suffering, day by day, to these intentional distortions.
True. The problem is that Donald Trump said that it probably escaped from a Chinese lab. The liberal/left have to insist that it didn’t.
If Trump said 2+2=4 then guess what would happen……
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell!
Having written a new book – THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS – I can confirm that the media are terrified of going near any subject they consider might outrage the woke Twitter mobs.
Not merely Twitter mobs, there is a lot of money and power behind climate alarmism, and a lot of power and money behind denying the lab leak.
Dr. Fauci farmed out illegal gain-of-function research to a black site in China. We only became aware of it when it blew up in all our faces. But the senior Washington insiders never face consequences.
I’ve been amazed at the number of people who I know not to be imbeciles who have dismissed out-of-hand the idea that the pandemic, which began in Wuhan province, might have originated in a lab in Wuhan province that studies the virus. And somehow I’m fascist white nationalist transphobic racist for imagining it could be so. How is human race is becoming so impervious to reason? If I told you I lost my keys and I’m flying to Iceland to look for them, I’d hope you strike me in the head. But if I tell you a 6′ 4″ swimmer with balls isn’t a girl, I’m crazy. Somebody should study this.
I read this book. A technically very challenging read. I found it forensically persuasive.
I want answers. Like everyone else, I had.my civil liberties suspended, was placed under de facto house arrest, saw Parliament emasculated and in effect suspended, the economy has been wrecked, the inflation genie is out of the bottle again. Knowing how this started and the implications for early warning, transparency, international travel, early detection of a new virus, and how we combat it; locking everyone up as if we are all at equal risk, which isn’t the case, or targeting protection on the most vulnerable, these questions must be answered.
Collective amnesia and a “let’s move on” mindset should be unacceptable. Or perhaps we aren’t a democracy any longer and are merely chattels of the big brother state.
The thing is that, if this author is correct, the concept of a “free press” is deeply undermined. Most media (including the BBC, Gardian and Telegraph) appear to have received grants from foundations linked either to the Chineese Government or American “big business”. Their editorial policy consequently suffers.
Similarly, many scientific researchers appear to be compromised by funding from similar sources; many of the uncompromised complain of censorship.
We are left with a rage bag of outsiders, the retired or the awkward to give us their take. Maybe the internet was not such a good idea. It has removed much of the funding from independently minded local media especially in America.
To me it feels like the early stages of the reformation in medieval Germany. Printing undermined trust in the established order. Now our universities, medical establishment, money, form of government and the rule of law are all being questioned.
After the reformation came huge societal upheaval, wars and much human misery before things began to slowly improve. This time we have nuclear weapons so it’s hard to be optimistic about our current prospects.
“Free press”? How quaint!
Nobody cares because we all intuitively know already. No amount of protest from the useful idiots of the communist party of China is going to change that.
We should care because common knowledge is not going to stop the people who created the monster from creating more monsters that will be far worse.
Gain of function research in poorly supervised labs continues in many places… maybe even Ukraine until recently, as strongly implied by Congressional testimony last March.
If it was a lab leak then it seems it is a marvellous example of US – Chinese research collaboration. Well done guys. Just don’t give the Chinese all the credit and pretend it was only possible in an illiberal country. EcoHealth and Peter Daszak did very well in hiding what they contributed: even managed to sneak an article into The Lancet in February 2020 to “stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. Apart from the split infinitive it was very well done.
Actually, the rest of the world would love to prosecute both of you for the untold harm you did to us. Perhaps that explains the reluctance to find the truth.
There is no doubt an element of embarrassment that even if it were possible to establish that that the origin was a lab leak there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. Ideology and politics will trump science and the truth.
Those of us who have really been following covid are not surprised. Look at where large sections of the media get their funding from.
Start tracing back – profits of big Pharma for vaccines (we can even dispute this term – the definition being changed by the WHO fairly recently) which do not prevent transmission , are now being made available for children – and babies from 6months! in USA and yet just this month we have little coverage from the BMJ :
Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out, BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds – The Daily Sceptic
Further during whole covid previous waves no one was told that on average 1,400/500 die every day in the UK, around 500,000 a year. But the real omission by the media -using figures from the ONS
COVID-19 deaths and autopsies Feb 2020 to Dec 2021 – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Release date: 17 January 2022 FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3368
Table 1: Number deaths where COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned death cert, 1 February 2020 to 31 December 2021, by sex and age group, England and Wales – when added up total 6183
So I am not surprised …remember Spanish flu was around for 18 -21 months. After trashing the world economy, causing untold non covid health damage this has been going on for at least 2and a half years.
Really nothing to do with the article, but still as long as you’ve got it off you chest.
I haven’t downticked you but if you were as informed as Ben then you would realise the article is just scratching the surface of what has happened and is directly related to the appearance of Covid SARS 2 and what has ensued in terms of vaccine deployment since then. I didn’t say vaccine development since this has been going on for a lot longer regarding mRNA vaccines and Corona viruses.
The best article I’ve read so far on the possibility of COVID having leaked from the Wuhan lab is Zeyne Tufecki’s New York Times opinion piece from June 25, 2021. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html) Tufecki points out that when it comes to deadly pathogens there have been many documented lab accidents, an outbreak of a virus due to vaccine trials (the 1977-78 flu pandemic), outbreaks of viruses due to laboratory leaks (the second wave of SARS, for example), mishandling and loss of samples, poor laboratory security standards, and cover-ups of lab leaks of viruses and of dangerous experimentation on viruses. It is sobering reading that really challenges the assumption that since most viral outbreaks can be traced to animal-to-human transmission it is therefore rational to just dismiss the possibility of a lab leak origin. Very sobering reading.
There was a leak of foot and mouth virus from a broken pipe line at Pirbright in 2003. I think most of these incidents happen because of a daisy chain of factors – for example – someone forgot to shut a valve and a safety circuit wasn’t working correctly and a monitoring instrument was not calibrated and so on and so on. I think the usual cause is not deliberate intent but complacency and incompetence and I think that’s what happened in Wuhan.
The conspiracy is to hide the c**k up.
“Vanity Fair”, of all places, has illumined the self-serving, circle-the-wagons efforts of many of the scientists, grant chasers, and media publicists to deflect inquiry into Covid’s origins away from the lab leak hypothesis. Prominent people, many still in positions of authority, appear daily with their hear no, see no evil expression firmly in place.
When President Trump speculated that Covid may have originated in a lab these people couldn’t rush out fast enough to contradict him. Like the Russia Collusion Hoax, they are now stuck with a position they must hold at any cost.
Vanity Fair astonished me. It’s worth googling their articles.
Cui bono? A lot of virologists in the West were either involved in funding of work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — indirectly the American NIH provided funds — or are dependent for their funding on people with some connection to that funding, or aspire to do gain-of-function experiments in their own labs, or have some other vested interest in the lab leak being false.
The old Upton Sinclair dictum, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” applies here.
This dovetails with the existence of off-shored laboratories dealing with novel pathogens at several sites in Ukraine. Perhaps that partially accounts for the Biden government’s funneling considerable money to the Ukraine, without much popular support for doing that. One would think that weaponized pathogen research and its funding would be the very thing WHO (the UN) was created to prevent, but sadly, almost the opposite …
I recall reading (since “Viral” was published) that Moderna patented the Spike protein in 2016 which I thought put the seal on the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source, leaving the only field for speculation as – was its release accidental or deliberate? Has anyone more info. on the Moderna patent?
Honestly, if I were going to deliberately release a pathogen it wouldn’t be anywhere near where its development is common knowledge. Speculating about a deliberate release at Wuhan is nonsensical.
I upvoted you, and I have no idea why anyone would downvote you.
But there was the strange case of the covid-19 in northern Italian wastewater as early as 18 December 2019.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53106444
If it were a deliberate release, that is what it would look like. But then why would it also appear in Wuhan? That could only be accidental, surely?
Covid was in Europe in 2019, France had a proven blood sample from early December 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/french-hospital-discovers-covid-19-case-december-retested
The fact the massive vaccine project was an almost perfect cover up of any evidence for that is also curious. Anti-body tests on non-vaccinated who claimed to have had covid in 2019 could prove it, but once you get the vaccine, it’s possibly game over. Though I understand the antibody profile of the vaccinated differs from the infected only.
The North of England certainly had a Covid like flu in late November early December 2019, I had it. Curiously the only others in my family to show symptoms were the older men.
It was very bad flu but it was unusual in the amount of coughing from ‘deep’ in the lungs, which apparently was peculiar to the original Covid. I was in quite ill and in bed for over a week and the cough remained well into the new year.
Then there was the Bradford Choir claim in January, but that also went very quiet despite being on the BBC Diary.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52589449
I refused the vaccine because I wanted to confirm it was Covid I had (I also didn’t want to be part of the World’s largest vaccine trial). In July 2021 I had the chance of an anti-body test. The testers were sceptical of my claims, but the anti-body response was that I was immune. I had a large spike anti-body presence. Their conclusion was I had Covid when I claimed in 2019 or else had a no-symptom Covid at some point. I doubt that I had no symptoms, given my age and the symptoms and condition I was in during 2019.
I was then not ill at all for 2 years, but then caught it again 2 years almost to the day in late Nov 2021. This time I could test for it, but it was hardly a problem, I just felt tired so went to bed & slept for 4 or 5 days
I might agree such a release seems illogical, but that does not rule out accidental or a premature accident (intended eventually, but not there and then).
No, it doesn’t rule out accident. Premature accident? Speculation with no evidence to support it.
More intriguing to me is the global response. Virtually no Government refused to lockdown. Which strikes me that they all KNOW it came out of the Wuhan lab, but didn’t know exactly what it was that had gotten out. I believe they feared a bio-weapon had gotten out and reacted accordingly, having done so, when for example the Diamond Princess Petri Dish accidental experiment showed it wasn’t the new black death, they had committed themselves too far to draw back. Now we have what the UN, particularly UNICEF I believe, warned of – The Economic consequences of lockdown leading to far more deaths than from Covid. I believe they suggest in the hundreds of millions. Our NHS data for cancer diagnoses for one has me wondering if that isn’t an underestimate.
I will also add the question: Where have you been for the last two years? The Moderna patent was only one of 120 identified by the ”crusader” Dr. David Martin dating back to around 2002 concerning the SARS Covid virus, mRNA vaccines, Spike protein, Ace receptor, PCR test, etc., all linked to N Carolina univ., NIH, FDA, NIAID, Pfizer, Moderna, Fauci, Daszak. The Chinese probably only had a subcontractor’s role in this and I’m inclined to believe that the leak at the time was accidental. The above mentioned US authorities and all experts shouting down conspiracy theories are undoubtedly in the pockets of Big Pharma which could explain a lot of what’s been happening over the last two years although the WHO and Fauci have been planning pandemic management exercises on a worldwide release of a pathogen since 2016-2019. If you want to know more then you’ll be entering the realm of conspiracies. The thing is, a number of the supporters of such theories are qualified and reknowned specialists (were, until cancelled and ridiculed) in their field of virology, vaccines, immunology. Don’t focus on Wuhan, look further west.
Thank you, Matt Ridley and Alina Chan, for your steadfast efforts to bring to light the truth of the origins of the Pandemic. It has been disheartening to see how dedicated some are to stonewalling further discovery and how disinterested so many are to finding out the truth. You work and that of a handful of others is all the more important for it. Please keep pushing forward.
The Lab Leak will be exactly how it occurred in everyone’s collective minds once it becomes politically advantageous to do so. It will happen but it will be when they decide it’s the right time for maximum effect. Who is they I don’t know exactly but this is how it will unfold. We will be gaslit about all the denial in the past and all the collective work of the truth-seekers will be verified and used as if it was always going to be that way. Wait for it …….Tedros will make a big pronouncement sooner or later…….
Dear Alina and Matt
Thank you for this update. I read your book, in which it struck me you bent yourselves completely out of shape to be fair to both hypotheses. And you’ve given voice here to the moral hazards and conflicted interests that lie at the heart of the silence. Ah!
But one inconvenient truth can’t be ignored: the longer we all fail to produce zoonotic candidates, despite trying our level best (I think you say the nearest animal DNA match is only 96%, which leaves an unbridgeable 4% leap), the closer the probability of lab leak / accident approaches 1.
So just sit tight. The world will eventually come to you, just as it has come to realise how damaging lockdowns were, closing schools, masking children, vaccinating 6 month olds, etc etc. The truth does out in the end 🙂
And our government is signing up to the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty and promising to abide by the dictates of this organisation.
They answered their own question in the headline. “western experts are blinded by vested interests”. Proving COVID leaked from a lab would, as the authors mention, be like proving the CCP accidentally nuked a small city. It would probably guarantee a complete economic and political split, Cold War II, and the people who have huge sums invested in China would lose billions, so of course, they use their influence to keep the issue off the public radar. The media are some of the worst offenders given how much effort they have put into just getting into the Chinese market. Disney already self censors their own movies just to get them into the Chinese market. Other media giants do the same. Why should we be shocked they have no interest in pursuing a theory, that, if proved true, could cost them billions of dollars. Politicians only care about scoring political points, and the CCP’s behavior makes them easy targets without something so uncertain as an investigation. COVID might have come from a lab, but maybe not. On the other hand, it’s not in dispute that the Chinese government is running concentration camps in Xinjiang, conducting cultural genocide in Tibet, violating treaties by cracking down on democracy in Hong Kong, conducting economic warfare, threatening Taiwan, etc. So many easier targets to score easy political points.
There is no doubt that origin of COVID-19 is the central question of the pandemic. Our view of science itself and its role in society will be shaped by the resolution of that question.
One other point though – I view the authors comparison of press freedom in China vs “the west” to be naive. I think it may be more accurate to say that the Chinese government is more proficient at brute force control of the media/news etc. I am not convinced that western governments, corportate interests etc. are any less effective in controlling the narrative than the Chinese government.
Another article based on “crapological” science. Even the figures are taken out of the magician’s hat. The article indicates: that “[t]he Covid pandemic has killed around that number” (21 million) while, even accepting the “official” numbers, Wolrdometer, the WHO and John Hopkins University cite deaths:around 6,350,000 as of June 26. 21 millions indeed!
Apparently you are unaware of or don’t believe in the statistical methodology which has been widely used for several years to estimate the “true” or actual number of cumulative deaths attributable to disease outbreaks or similar long-term or wide-scale mortality events. Such estimates are more likely to include a large proportion of the deaths that were not reported or known.
You’ve recognized the WHO as an authority regarding Covid-19 mortality, so I presume you will be accepting of the statistically-rigorous methodology that the WHO endorses to develop the very estimate which you find so implausible – see: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/estimating-global-and-country-specific-excess-mortality-during-the-covid-19-pandemic .
A recent paper in The Lancet evaluated human mortality associated with the Covid-19 pandemic from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021 and – using a similar methodology to that recognized by the WHO – “estimated that 18·2 million (95% uncertainty interval 17·1–19·6) people died worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic (as measured by excess mortality) over that period.” https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext .
It seems entirely plausible (and conservative) that an updated estimate of “excess deaths” would reveal an additional 3-million lives likely were lost worldwide due to Covid-19 during this first half of 2022 – especially given that almost 1-million deaths were officially reported/recorded as directly resulting from this pandemic after Dec. 31, 2021 through today (e.g., according to Worldometer’s tally).
Two points:
Ignore case numbers, they are meaningless because they are unrelated to symptoms and disease outcomes; and
The suppression of the lab leak proof is part of the idiotic support for Fauci and his work around of gain of function research that is illegal in the U.S. Fauci is a criminal and has committed crimes against humanity.
He should be tried by an international court, and when found guilty should be tossed down a very deep 8 foot diameter hole.
Who’s to say that the virus didn’t emerge from a lab in the USA and was first detected in china?
if it did emerge in the USA im fairly sure it would be covered up, likely in a more sophisticated way than in china as the US are more wise to the ramifications of being blamed for this. China could simply shrug it off, USA has far more to loose by being ground zero for cv19 or any global pandemic.
And who is to say that the fairies at the bottom of my garden didn’t mix up the potion and magically fly it to Wuhan to release in the market there. Evidence be d*mned, I’m going for this theory.
So I think it is generally accepted that the only lab conducting significant research on bat coronavirus was located in the city where COVID-19 first appeared.
No intermediary viruses (from which COVID-19 might have evolved) has ever been found outside a lab. No infected host animal (which could have carried the virus from bats to humans) has ever been found outside a lab.
Make up your own mind.