COVID-19 lab leak theory
[1] Available evidence suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was originally harbored by bats, and spread to humans from infected wild animals, functioning as an intermediate host, at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019.
[85][15][86] Benign exposures to pathogens (which do not result in an infection) are probably under-reported, given the negative consequences of such events on the reputation of a host institution and low risk for widespread epidemics.
[18] While the proposed scenarios are theoretically subject to evidence-based investigation, it is not clear that any can be sufficiently falsified to placate lab leak supporters, and they are fed by pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking.
Cooper draws a parallel between the Wuhan lab leak narrative, and the machinations of fictional supervillain Fu Manchu, who is "expert in the deadly application of animal and biological agents" and who has been depicted on television shows as threatening the West with lethal diseases.
[98] In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, speculation about a laboratory leak was confined to conspiracy-minded portions of the internet, including 4Chan and Infowars, but the ideas began to get wider traction after accusations about a "Chinese bioweapon" were originally published by Great Game India and then republished by the Red State Watch and Zero Hedge web sites.
The fact that scientists have not been successful in finding an intermediate host that picked up the virus from bats and passed it to humans is seen by some as evidence that supports a lab leak, according to The Guardian.
[100][101] University of Utah virologist Stephen Goldstein has criticized the scientific basis of Redfield's comments, saying that since SARS-CoV-2's spike protein is very effective at jumping between hosts, one shouldn't be surprised that it transmits efficiently among humans.
"[108] The United States, European Union, and 13 other countries criticized the WHO-convened study, calling for transparency from the Chinese government and access to the raw data and original samples.
[119] Members of DRASTIC, a collection of internet activists advocating for the lab leak theory,[120][121] have raised concerns over a respiratory outbreak that happened in the spring of 2012 near an abandoned copper mine in China, which Shi Zhengli's group investigated.
[74][127][128] According to emailed statements by Shi Zhengli, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, her lab has not conducted any unpublished gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses, and all WIV staff and students tested negative for the virus in the early days of the pandemic.
[139][140] A common occurrence among other coronaviruses (including MERS-CoV, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1, and appearing in near-identical fashion in HKU9-1), the site is preceded by short palindromic sequences suggestive of natural recombination caused by simple evolutionary mechanisms.
Additionally, the suboptimal configuration and poor targeting of the cleavage site for humans or mice when compared with known examples (such as HCoV-OC43 or HCoV-HKU1), along with the complex and onerous molecular biology work this would have required, is inconsistent with what would be expected from an engineered virus.
[143] Co-investigators on the rejected proposal included the EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric from UNC, Linfa Wang from Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore, and Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
[153][154] The report alleged that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in humans as a result of gain-of-function research made on the RaTG13 virus, collected in a cave in Yunnan province in 2012, which was afterwards accidentally released some time before 12 September 2019, when the database of the Wuhan Institute of Virology went offline.
[169] In February 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States Department of Energy, based on new intelligence, had shifted its view from "undecided" to "low confidence" that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.
[180] The report stated that while the lab leak theory could not be ruled out, the overall assessment of the National Intelligence Council and a majority of IC assets (with low confidence) was that the pandemic most likely began as a zoonotic event.
[183][184][185][186] The earliest known recorded mention of any type of lab leak theory appeared in the form of a tweet published on 5 January 2020, from a Hong Kong user named @GarboHK, insinuating that the Chinese government had created a new virus and intentionally released it.
[193][better source needed] Chinese researcher Li-Meng Yan was an early proponent of deliberate genetic engineering, releasing widely criticised preprint papers in favor of the lab leak theory in the spring of 2020.
[195][196] After she released her preprints, political operatives (including Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui) arranged for Yan to flee to the United States in the summer of 2020 to engage in a speaking tour on right-wing media outlets, as a method of distracting from the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"[195] In September 2022, a panel assembled by The Lancet published a wide-ranging report on the pandemic, including commentary on the virus origin overseen by the group's chairman Jeffrey Sachs.
[201] In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian called the lab leak theory "a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science".
[214][215] The Guardian stated that the WSJ article did little to confirm, in terms of good, quality evidence, the possibility of a lab leak;[216] a declassified report from the National Intelligence Council likewise said that the fact the researchers were hospitalized was unrelated to the origins of the outbreak.
[222] Science educationalist Heslley Machado Silva describes the idea of a China-produced virus as part of "xenophobic social network crusade" akin to a far-fetched movie scenario, which has nevertheless garnered many millions of internet adherents.
[34][228][229] A BBC China report stated that on 14 February, Chinese president Xi Jinping proposed for biosafety to be incorporated into law; the following day, new measures were introduced to "strengthen the management of laboratories", especially those working with viruses.
[209][210] In April 2020, The Guardian reported that China had taken steps to tightly regulate domestic research into the source of the outbreak in an attempt to control the narrative surrounding its origins and encourage speculation that the virus started outside the country.
[231] In the United States, anti-China misinformation spread on social media, including baseless bio-weapon claims, fueled aggressive rhetoric towards people of Asian ancestry,[232] and the bullying of scientists.
[233][234] The letter was criticized by virologists and public health experts, who said that a "hostile" and "divisive" focus on the WIV was unsupported by evidence, was impeding inquiries into legitimate concerns about China's pandemic response and transparency by combining them with speculative and meritless argument,[26] and would cause Chinese scientists and authorities to share less rather than more data.
[238] Two Rutgers University faculty members – Richard Ebright and Bryce Nickels – have been prominent social media posters advancing the lab leak position, and have continually attacked COVID-19 researchers, and compared them to nazis and Pol Pot.
[225][224][249][250] The chair of the Board of Governors of the American Academy of Microbiology, Arturo Casadevall, said that, he (like many others) previously underestimated the lab leak hypothesis "mainly because the emphasis then [early in the pandemic] was on the idea of a deliberately engineered virus".
[258][259] In March 2023, James Alwine and colleagues argued that continuing to frame the lab leak hypothesis as being as likely as natural spillover was responsible for a misdirection of scientific effort, which could compromise progress towards preparing for future pandemics.
