Here's the latest from the Wall Street Journal editorial page:
If I were Tim Trevan I'd be pissed. Nowhere in his op-ed does he say that scientists got the lab leak theory wrong. He says only that a lab leak is "a possibility" that's "self-evidently plausible."
Trevan does accuse some unspecified "others" of trying to suppress dissent about the origin of COVID, but that's it. He doesn't say that the scientific consensus about a natural origin of the virus is wrong. He never comes close.
But I guess that was unacceptable to the editors who run things at the Journal editorial page, so they just made up a headline more to their liking. Boo-yah.
NOTE: If you want to check up to make sure I summarized the article fairly, just click the free link here.
But the claim that a lab leak was a false conspiracy theory and that natural origin was proven is clearly false.
Scientists got the Lab Leak Theory wrong. They may or may not have gotten the origin of COVID right - we do not yet know.
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I've yet to see a single scientist (or anyone for that matter) say that the lab leak was definitely false and the natural origin was proven with absolute certainty.
What has been said is that there is no or very little evidence to support the lab leak theory, while there is more convincing evidence suggesting a natural origin (by the way, a lab leak can also be a natural origin, since the "natural" part refers to the origin of the virus itself). Making one a more likely scenario than the other, but still without definite evidence either way.
What has been called a conspiracy theory is the notion that the lab leak origin is a certainty that has been intentionally suppressed, which is ludicrous considering that it would involve pretty much the entire world virology scientific community, including both private and government.
It seems to me that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And the lab leak theory is pretty extraordinary. But proponents have released no evidence in support of a lab leak; they’ve simply asserted that it’s possible because China has destroyed evidence of the wet market. But to claim, as the FBI does, that Covid is an engineered bio weapon that escaped from an unspecified laboratory without offering a single piece of evidence strikes me as an astonishingly extraordinary claim.
Mitch Guthman - I have no idea if Covid was a naturally occurring variation or a lab leak.
However, I look at the information below. Globally, lab leaks occur about once per year, perhaps more often as a lab has little incentive to disclose this information. To me, that means that a lab leak is a valid possibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents
"Globally, lab leaks occur about once per year"
I looked at the link. It shows no such thing. Some of the events are lab accidents within the lab, not lab leaks.
Joel - my point, lab leaks occur more often than I, or many other people realize. You assume, a within the lab leak, never gets outside of the lab: the data, does not support your point of view.
There was an avian flu out break because a lab leak: further, possibly a mad cow outbreak n the UK was caused by a lab leak. Finally because of disincentives, I suspect lab leaks are under reported.
Basically, a lab leak is not a crazy explanation for the origins of Covid: in contrasts, a lab leak is far from certain the origins.
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/01/biosafety-avian-flu/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/aug/06/footandmouth.ruralaffairs10
"my point, lab leaks occur more often than I, or many other people realize."
Sorry but no. Lab leaks do not occur more often than you think.
"You assume, a within the lab leak, never gets outside of the lab: the data, does not support your point of view."
Again no, it's your point of view that is not supported by the data.
"There was an avian flu out break because a lab leak: further, possibly a mad cow outbreak n the UK was caused by a lab leak. Finally because of disincentives, I suspect lab leaks are under reported."
This is whole, made up, unadulterated bullshit.
The Intercept article refers to two lab accidents within a lab working with the H5N1 avian flu virus. But neither accident resulted in a lab leak, or an outbreak. So you are flat out making stuff.
For the second one, the outbreak was of foot and mouth disease, not madcow disease, so why the need to hype the severity?
Shock value? And as stated in the article, it was only a possibility that the outbreak started from sewage water coming from a laboratory, not a certainty. Also worth nothing, is that the lab was part of a vaccine production facility, not a high level biosafety lab. The lower down the biosafety level you go, the less stringent the security protocols, but then, also the less severe the type of viruses or other microorganisms that could be found there.
The lab leak is not a crazy explanation, but for COVID it is one with no evidence supporting it so far unless one considers "there's a lab nearby and the Chinese are sneaky" as evidence.
"perhaps more often as a lab has little incentive to disclose this information"
This is nonsense. Every single lab that works with viruses (or any type of biological material really), needs to jump through a mountain of red tape from university ethics boards, biosafety boards, funding agencies, and government regulators in order to operate. Not being forthcoming when an accident of any kind takes place is a high speed highway to getting the lab shutdown and funding terminated.
The incentive is always on accurate reporting rather than concealment.
Solar - a couple of points.
1. We may disagree on my analysis of history, but bottom line lab leaks happen and its certainly possible Covid was a lab leak.
2. You assume all labs, globally, follow world class standards, the individuals involved all have high ethical standards etc. Once again, I think the weight of history is on my side of this argument
1. Lab leaks can happen, yes, but they are an extremely rare occurrence (a lab accident, which is far more common, is not automatically a leak), and yes it is possible it happened for COVID, there is just no evidence suggesting that is what happened.
2. Depends on the type of lab you are talking about. Biosafety standards are international, that's how the whole biosafety level came to be, and when it comes to level 4 labs, which are the ones handling the most dangerous viruses, there aren't that many in the entire world. Labs of this magnitude aren't mom and pop shops that can be setup on any corner. The community of scientists that works within these facilities is also not that large, and for the most part they are familiar with each other.
Far too many of those thinking it was a lab leak seem to think these type of facilities are of some sci-fi Umbrella Corporation type of secret lab, or a Bondesque secret lab government type of operation. When the truth of the matter is that is not the case. Not saying they are error free, after all, that is why all those rules are in place, to reduce the possibility of errors, and to minimize harm if/when errors do occur.
"I think the weight of history is on my side of this argument"
Based on what?
How many confirmed lab leak outbreaks (meaning a virus somehow got out of a lab, and then spread widely in the community) can you list in the past 50 years?
Solar -
1. I already provided a list of reported lab leaks.
2. I note this list lacks reports for cold war era events, that have been suspected by many.
3. I do not believe that all labs, globally, actually practice world class standards and use top notch equipment.
4 I already mentioned two situations are likely the result of lab leaks.
5. Authority's with the US government have differing views on the lab leak and Covid. As you likely know, the FBI and Dep of Energy believe (with low confidence) this was a lab leak. Four other US agencies believe Covid was a naturally occurring event.
6. Yes, I believe that people cover up things: certainly, not all lab leaks are broadly known.
I do not know the origins of Covid. However, thus I believe both a natural event or a lab leak must both be seriously considered.
Perhaps this may be a plausible theory:
Let's say a scientist as this lab is involved in an accident and inflects himself or herself. Perhaps it's unwitting. Perhaps this scientist transmits the virus to animal while visiting a cave or wet market, or perhaps another human in these places. Things begin to spread. And there you go. It's just like the movie predicted
Studies say that 60% to 80% of readers read the headline but not the story. That may be higher at the WSJ, where everyone can read the headline but non-subscribers (usually) cannot read the story.
Mission accomplished.
Hmmm. I scan headlines for articles that interest me. I don’t assume the headline is accurate—it’s just a headline. I would bet that many readers approach reading news sources the same way. Do you know anyone who relays news based solely on headlines? There are probably such people, but they would soon self-select to a group whose information is considered untrustworthy. That group is unlikely to be 80 or 60 percent of news readers. And would they even remember headlines of articles they decided not to read? Maybe, maybe not.
Does your source address this possibility?
Somewhere a nail is smarting from your hammer!
Conservatives are working to replace the bald eagle as our national symbol with the cassowary,
https://twitter.com/gnuman1979/status/1632169533673811969
Seems unlikely. Cassowaries have never lived in the Americas, much less the US.
Neither has Vladimort Puddin' but they'd vote for him for president and throw a riot when he loses.
Here's why you're wrong. Trevan is, in fact, saying that the scientists -- who immediately dismissed the lab leak theory -- were wrong to do so. The key is which scientists are wrong.
Moving on to his post.
I suggest listening to Jon Stewart talk about this -- https://youtu.be/pWsFTeKRRQk?t=1387
Trevan is correct; there was suppression of dissent. It happened because of politics. Trump made the issue toxic and people ran to their corners of the debate, such that true debate has been stifled.
You've never presented readers with an ambivalence -- you say "we don't know", but you believe the issue to be settled. You claim 95-5 odds in favor of natural spillover from the wet market, which is far more confident than saying "we don't know" or any single intelligence agency having "medium confidence".
My path followed Trevan's. I thought it seemed very likely that it was natural spillover like SARS and MERS before it. And I changed my mind after we saw lots of evidence that made the lab leak a realistic possibility.
it’s literally been possible to read about various lab leak hypotheses for more than three years at this point. It’s about the least effective “suppression” imaginable. Also, the vast bulk of the virology community continues to hold that zoonotic spillover remains by far the most plausible explanation.
Can you point me to the poll? I haven't seen the data on this.
So you and JS did “your own research” on the crapper? I am sold.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-leak-intelligence-reports-arent-scientific-conclusions/
It's impossible to ascertain the value of a piece of intelligence, let alone comment on it, without knowing what it is. Why people waste time writing about such stuff, is beyond me. Would you like to debate the data supporting zoonosis?
The evidence isn't concrete, as folks like (the self-interested) Michael Worbley would like to portray it.
https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1631834361455853568
Generally speaking, the evolutionary evidence only shows that it could have come from the wet market in Wuhan. It cannot exclude a lab leak.
Those who want to believe in zoonosis have to accept linear evolution -- that's the only way the evolutionary evidence can be deemed as proof of the wet market zoonosis.
*Worobey
>> Trump made the issue toxic and people ran to their corners of the debate, such that true debate has been stifled.<<
Trump made the issue toxic by blaming China (while at the same time saying Covid was no big deal and would soon just disappear) and siccing his lunatic followers on any random person of Asian heritage. It wasn’t genuine debate or even political finger pointing. There was actual physical danger to Asian Americans.
I don’t believe that where it mattered, in the scientific community, there was actually any stifling of research or debate.
As an Asian American, I have felt the brunt of the violence. Thank you very much for your concern!
As an issue, the topic has been (politically) reflexive. Even Jon Stewart notes this.
"As an issue, the topic has been (politically) reflexive. "
You assume the entire world scientific community bends to the will of US politics.
The reason so many experts in the field have downplayed the lab leak origin is because there is little to support it from a scientific point of view, not because they cowered under fear of political pressure.
From the start of the COVID pandemic to today, nothing with actual scientific value has come out that would make anyone who originally thought there was little, or no evidence to support the lab leak origin to change their mind. Those who have, have done so purely out of their own emotions and feelings on the topic.
No. I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I wrote.
Point me to one article citing circumstantial evidence pointing to a possible lab leak coming from KD. He doesn't do it. He's got 95-5 odds on zoonosis at a wet market.
It's tiring to keep reminding people to have an open mind and citing the circumstantial evidence of a lab leak. I'm not doubting the evidence provided in support of zoonosis; I'm telling you the conclusions are not as solid and clear cut as they -- and others -- make it out to be.
"No. I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I wrote."
This seems pretty straight forward to that conclusion.
"Trevan is correct; there was suppression of dissent. It happened because of politics. Trump made the issue toxic and people ran to their corners of the debate, such that true debate has been stifled."
His schtick is "If you can't make me say I'm wrong I win." Don't give him free entertainment.
Yeah, there's suppression of dissent in the public sphere. Look at SoV. She can't help but spread her toxicity.
Here: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-origin-debate
Trump poisoned the well. Conservatives jumped on the wagon and people reflexively dismissed the lab leak theory, at least initially.
Wait, so this was your point after all? Why the complaint about how I got to that conclusion about your comment then?
Regardless, thanks for the article but that is a single person stating her opinion. Yes, she admits that is why she dismissed things initially, but the "Many initially dismissed lab spillover because of the original messenger (Trump) ..."
Is a non substantiated claim. Perhaps in the US it could have played a bigger role, but do you seriously think that scientists from Germany, France, the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere gave two fucks about Trump's rants when it came to doing their job according to their training?
It's the similar nonsense we heard about Hydroxychloroquine, and Ivermectin. Where it became a mantra among primarily right wingers that these drugs were not supported by the scientific and medical community just due to Trump supporting them, while being completely oblivious to the reason being that there was little evidence supporting their efficacy.
Did the opinions of these countries change when Trump was voted out of office?
We are all humans, vulnerable to all sorts of biases.
If I ask you to keep an open mind on the lab leak theory, would you? Or nah, you've pored through the evidence and understood the shortcomings of each piece?
Well, see, here's the thing. No one gives a shit what you think. You can believe COVID was part of the Boys from Brazil plan for global domination for all I or anyone else cares. It's your head and welcome to it.
But that's not good enough for you. You're here trying to provoke people into to trying get you to say you're wrong. That sort of negative attention seeking -- and of a particularly nasty sort at that -- tells me there's something wrong with you.
All you ever do is troll everyone you disagree with. You're toxic.
If I'm wrong, why don't you at long last just shut the fuck up? I already told you I don't care what you believe. And for my money, nobody else does either. Yet you go on and on and on ... and on. So prove me wrong 😉
I reject your paradox and your toxicity.
I don't have to accept your terms of retort, especially from someone who can't practice what she preaches.
Ding ding ding! She shoots, she scores! We have a winnah![1] Now kindly fuck off you nasty, attention-seeking troll.
[1] Pointing out that you are, in fact, a nasty, attention-seeking troll is orthoganol to whether I care about what you believe. As if you didn't know that already.
You can call yourself a winner all you want, you're still toxic.
+1
When I want a well researched, informed, accurate presentation of an important issue, my first choice is to head for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They are the best. No hyperbole, misleading summaries, or fear mongering whatsoever.
Maybe if Kevin tells us a few hundred additional times how shitty the Wall Street Journal is, we’ll finally believe him!
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page is shitty wether Kevin tells us so or not. The rest of the journal is normal and often good journalism.
The headline seems to be a fair summary of the article. If you didn't already know that the current scientific consensus is a zoonotic origin of Covid, you could easily read this as assuming the lab leak hypothesis is true. What scientists (and the author) initially got wrong was to dismiss a lab leak as implausible. But you have to read very carefully and have background knowledge to understand that he is talking about the plausibility of a lab leak, rather than the supposed fact of a lab leak.
"Technically true but only if you read the whole piece carefully and critically and also know a fair amount about the subject to begin with because otherwise it's misleading" is an extremely low bar for journalistic headline-writing.
Kevin read the article as pretty straightforwardly factual, and the headline as a misleading representation. I think both the article and the headline are misleading. Neither commits the lie direct, but are suggestio falsi.
Oh, I agree 100%. Speaking false while maintaining a pretense that you are arguably technically accurate is the refuge of skilled scoundrels and the WSJ editorial page in general (on its better days, I guess--my sense is that they don't bother with the techincally accurate part all that much).
I agree. In fact the whole editorial was probably written to fit a head line like this one. It also tries to simultaneously safeguard the author's intellectual reputation. I am a bit more cynical about these things than Kevin is.
Funny, I have read a decent amount on this, and my reading was that it most likely pointed to the zoonotic origin but no one has claimed they have all the evidence. Logic would say the lab leak is plausible. I doubt many scientist are dumb enough to rule much out when your info comes from China.
Made ya look, though. And that's all that counts.
Unfortunately, you got it in one.
This is a classic case for Ockham's razor. Who is correct the community of experts in the field or some amateurs with a political axe to grind?
The "Lab Leak" theory is really a collection of theories, and calling it a "lab leak" obfuscates what is going on.
1. It was created in the lab by people deliberately trying to create a bio-weapon and escaped. No. No markers for gene insertion, etc., so no evidence for an engineered virus.
2. "Gain of function" research. The lab was looking at viral evolution, but no evidence that the lab was trying to direct that evolution to a virus the would start a pandemic. It's possible that, when looking a viral evolution, they inadvertently created COVID or a precursor to COVID. The lab, the city, the country all went into CYA mode and is not releasing all information. That does not mean the lab did create Covid or its precursor. Evidence against this is that we have a pretty good idea of the animals the lab was working with--and they are not the intermediate host people are looking for. High probability this did not happen.
3. Well, one of the researchers picked it up in the field and/or they brought back an animal that was infected with it already. This is the same as the wet market being the source. The only difference, more animals and people went through the wet market, there was way more interaction between different animals and people there, so much more likely to be generated in the wet market. The spread did start in the wet market--that has pretty much been nailed down.
There is conflation between some people saying a researcher could have picked up COVID in the field and spread it in the city, i.e. "Lab Leak", with "Lab Leak" meaning an engineered virus by unscrupulous people.
On #2:
GoF is specifically directed at trying to test the evolutionary scope of a virus -- can it become more infectious, deadly, and cross species.
It is in the public information space that WIV was using BSL-2 and BSL-3 to conduct such research, rather than BSL-4.
On #1:
The center of this is the furin cleavage site. Why? Three reasons.
First, this was exactly what Eco Alliance proposed to DARPA, which was rejected. It was also what Eco Alliance previously did with MERS and then misled (intentionally or not) everyone about its prior research.
Second, it was erroneously suggested that this could only occur artificially in this situation with coronaviruses, which led many to conclude the presence of the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 as dispositive. It wasn't.
@Solar
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence supporting the lab leak theory. The evidence in support of the wet market spillover is no less circumstantial, and definitely not dispositive. One of the key pieces of oft-cited evidence that was previously claimed by its authors (Worobey) to be dispositive, was rewritten to remove that claim before final publication.
I'm of the belief that it is ~36-34-30, in favor of lab leak theory over wet market or another means. It is not a remote possibility, but rather, a very plausible pathway.
1. WIV used BSL-2 and BSL-3 to conduct Gain of Function research involving genetically-modified mice carrying the ACE2 gene, (presumably) using serial infection, with bat coronaviruses. Why would you use mice w/ ACE2? To see if you can get a virus to crossover to humans.
2. Reports show that WIV had a panic situation on cleaning its facilities, back in late fall 2019. Specifically, its cleaning agents had been eating away at the stainless steel surfaces.
3. At least one of the bat coronaviruses had the closest % genomic match to SARS-CoV-2 to any other variant and species-dependent lines.
4. WIV removed its coronavirus catalog from online access in mid-January.
5. Intelligence picked up infection spike in November.
6. The Chinese underreported infections, but by inference of the number of deaths, we know there were a lot of infections that weren't officially tallied from November.
7. The data Chinese authorities collected from the "first" infections were from late December. At that point, there are two distinct lines and possibly more, but those others burned out. (This is the same evidence used by wet market proponents, btw. The wet-market proponents insist this is evidence of circulating virus at the market, but the other take is that the virus had been circulating in humans for at least a month.)
What supports natural spillover.
1. This has happened many times before, particularly China, where there are multiple known reservoirs of coronaviruses. The Chinese regionally have antibodies to specific coronavirus reservoirs.
2. The genetic lineage shows a direct link (a handful of mutations, by inference, closely tied in chronology) between what was sampled at the wet market to that which was collected by the first known infections.
3. The samples around the wet market showed a concentration around an area previously documented to hold wild animals whose species are known reservoirs of coronaviruses.
4. Of note, one pangolin coronavirus sample previously documented elsewhere, had certain markers that nearly perfectly match the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
What other pathways are there? Someone or some group which had been previously infected elsewhere in China with a less virulent strain, brought it back to them to the wet market or to some part of Wuhan. There, it circulated and made a fateful virulent turn.
None of this is dispositive. If you think the evidence leans towards natural spillover, explain. I certainly don't think the odds are 95-5 or 99-1 in favor of natural spillover. The only evidence that will be dispositive or shift the odds clearly towards natural spillover is finding the reservoir that is chronologically separated from the original SARS-CoV-2 by a few years. We're not there.
Are the Chinese even looking?
I saw at once point that in samples taken from people in South Africa who were immunocompromised the virus was seen to be mutating at a fantastically higher rate than it would in people who had functioning immune systems.
Perhaps rather than an animal vector all it would take would be for one or two immunocompromised persons, as in two people with HIV living together, to contract an otherwise unlikely animal virus that would be able to mutate dramatically in their systems.
Seriously folk, there's no point in reading the Wall Street Journal for news, might as well watch Fox News, or ask your four year old for cogent economic analysis. We have more important things to do that to listen or think about that hateful rag.