A couple of weeks ago Public ran a story identifying three Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who became sick in November 2019 with a "COVID-like" illness. If this was true, it would mean they were the first people in the world to contract COVID-19, which in turn would suggest they were the victims of a leak from their own lab, where they were working on SARS-like coronaviruses.
The three scientists were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. Today, Jon Cohen reports in Science that he has gotten comments from two of them:
As for Hu, he categorically denies having anything to do with the origin of SARS-CoV-2. “I did not get sick in autumn 2019, and did not have COVID-19-like symptoms at that time,” Hu wrote. “My colleagues and I tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibody in early March 2020 and we were all negative.”
Yu emailed Science that the charges are “fake news” and similarly insisted there was no basis for the allegations. “In autumn 2019, I was neither sick nor had any symptoms related to COVID-19,” Yu wrote.
There's no way of knowing if they're telling the truth, of course, and promoters of the lab-leak theory had been pinning their hopes on an upcoming report from the Director of National Intelligence that promised to disclose everything the American intelligence community knew about the origin of COVID-19. The report missed its deadline, but today it was finally released. No dice:
Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19. The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19....We have no indications that any of these researchers were hospitalized because of the symptoms consistent with COVID-19. One researcher may have been hospitalized in this timeframe for treatment of a non-respiratory medical condition.
....While some of these researchers had historically conducted research into animal respiratory viruses, we are unable to confirm if any of them handled live viruses in the work they performed prior to falling ill.
None of this proves anything, of course. However, the fact that three scientists in Wuhan became ill in November 2019 has been known for quite a while, and identifying them by name doesn't really change anything. So that was hardly breaking news in the first place.
Natural evolution of COVID-19, subsequently transmitted to humans by an animal host at the Huanan fish market, remains the overwhelmingly most probable explanation of its origin. But it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure.
My problem with the lab leak theory is that proponents essentially "prove" using the same method that has been a hallmark of creation "science": argument from personal incredulity. They don't believe that descent with modification and filtering can result in a virus with novel new features, therefore, scientists did it. It all boils down to that and the fact that there is a virus research lab in Wuhan. That is pretty weak tea.
There were no novel features in SARS2 virus. Every feature is known to exist in other bat coronaviruses.
That's not exactly all there is too it. U.S. Intelligence Agencies analyzed the cross talk between scientists and found "suspicious" remarks that *could* refer to a lab accident and infections... or not. The not-quite-smoking gun for this was scientists who got sick in November. But if they were not sick after all, or were sick with something other than COVID, then the suspicious remarks don't seem to amount to much.
What's weird is that people have so much invested in the lab theory and the wet market theory, and seem to want their theory to be accepted more than they want to get the actual correct answer.
Zoonotic spillover has affected our species countless times before. This includes coronaviruses (Google "Russian Flu"). This phenomenon has always been the most likely explanation for the recent pandemic. But it's not as satisfying as "Evil CCP Laboratory." The whole thing's been a spectacular example of motivated reasoning.
Mike Pompeo began spouting the lab leak conspiracy theory before he stepped down as SoS. He began peddling it to media sources in early 2021. He finally hit paydirt when the WSJ picked it up. It's geopolitics, not science.
Geopolitics? It sounds more like plain old grifter capitalism. Push the product that SELLS!
Mike Pompeo began spouting the lab leak conspiracy theory before he stepped down as SoS
Pompeo was an incredibly irresponsible and cynical official. Just the absolute worst of the worst.
That's the thing about these latest stories. They keep sourcing it to the state department. But do they mean the partisan hacks Pomepeo brought into the department to 'investigate' this. If so, they literally no zero biology and their only expertise is lying.
It *was* the most likely explanation until it was known that WIV had a handful of samples of Bat-CoV from Southern China that were extremely close to SARS-CoV-2, including RaTG13.
That RaTG13 had just a few bits different from a matching furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 made it all the more curious.
That WIV was discovered to be conducting serial experiments using ACE2 transgenic mice, and had turned to creating chimeric coronaviruses, meant that WIV was trying to create a SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This may be misunderstood by many as nefarious, but this is what GoF research is trying to do.
There is nothing conspiratorial about this. The known facts align to a facility trying to create a SARS-CoV-2, and succeeding.
It is not far-fetched. All you're being asked to assume is: WIV succeeded and it accidentally leaked.
Nothing is far fetched if you simply make the necessary unfounded assumptions.
Conspiracy theories are never conspiratorial if you simply accept the necessary unfounded assumptions as well known facts.
" that were extremely close . they are not extremely close. Just closer than all other known coronaviruses. By standard mutation they could not have been the immediate source of SARS2.
The Chinese unleashed a biological weapon on the world. Millions died. Xi used the crisis to consolidate power at home and weaken his enemies in the west. He’s probably disappointed that it evolved to be less deadly over time. I’m sure he’s cooking up another version to unleash on the world during the next US presidential election year.
Or not. Some good came from it. A few republican congressmen died from it and they almost got trump! That would have been worth it.
You're an imbecile or a liar.
Lots of things, including exposure some chemical compounds, produce flu-like symptoms.
The origin of covid has become this century's JFK assassination. The conspiracy theories will never die.
What value is "Lab Leak" over "animal crossover"???
The controversy is a waste of time.
If it leaked from a lab, review procedures and fix.
Then speed the development of the vaccine
Work the problem that is killing people not the problem of who to point the finger at.
THIS
"Work the problem that is killing people not the problem of who to point the finger at."
If you did that, what would Republicans do with their fingers, other than play with women parts?
Too bad the women don't have an Orca to bite their fingers off.
This lab leak thing is mostly interesting as a study in conservative psychology. George Lakoff observed that conservatives are well able to reason out complex causation, but their default is to look at everything as a problem of simple morality. Their default solution to all problems is to identify who is morally at fault and punish them. As often observed, they really need enemies.
I hadn't been able to figure out why conservatives were pushing the lab leak theory; thanks for explaining.
I suppose that if your first instinct is to look for someone to blame, and you are a Trump supporter, it becomes particularly important to find someone to blame who isn't Trump.
Spoken as a true partisan. If you want to understand conservatives, listen to them with an open mind and don't wait until it was translated by someone with political motivations. All that does is give you ammunition, it doesn't further understanding.
My problem is with the idea of "gain of function research." I don't understand the benefits, and it is risky.
I would welcome civil answers to my inquiry.
My guess about "gain of function" is to try to stay. one step ahead of the virus. Gain knowledge of where it might evolve to. Just a guess.
Yep. Basically any work involving viruses can also be characterized as "gain of function", including following disease progression in model animals.
It is definitely riskier if you conduct GoF research in BSL2 zones rather than BSL4.
They weren't doing gain of function research in china. They were taking a virus they could already bind to the human ACE2 receptor ((hence not gain of function) but could not reproduce in human cells. They were then replacing that binding domain with other binding domains that exist in the wild to determine how well this hybrid virus would bind to this domain. This is safer than taking the wild type virus and directly testing it since you could guarantee it wouldn't be dangerous. It also avoids the problem that maybe the wildtype virus wasn't binding because of folding properties in none contiguous parts of the virus shielding the binding domain. You can than identify binding domains of concern and have vaccines that target those domains pre-made and sitting on the shelf, or vaccinate the bats and remove those binding domains from the wild.
I suggest your headline is misleading, although your conclusion is correct, that the release did not make things any clearer.
It is interesting that the release was a summary. There's a subtle divergence between what was written in the summary and what had been leaked.
Pretty sure the statement that the chinese researchers were never hospitalized was not a subtle divergence. And we still have no idea whether any of them actually showed symptoms of the common cold.
What's the context of three researchers becoming ill? Is that out of a population of 50? 200? 1000? And compared to November 2019 or November 2018 at that lab? Or compared to a comparable U.S. laboratory?
I realize that exact numbers are likely not available. but at least **some** context might point in the direction of these three illnesses being indicative of something unusual, or just run-of-the-mill occurrences.
Good point. But having three people out for cold and/or flu like conditions wouldn't be unusual.
There were several thousand workers at the facility. You probably are as good a source as any for how many cases of the common cold per thousand people in the month of Novemeber.
This is very compelling evidence that there is NOTHING to the 'lab leak' theory. Two or three Wuhan scientists got sick in late 2019. None of them appear to have had COVID.
But far more important is the media narrative about the 'lab leak' rhetoric. Even if true, it does NOT -- repeat, does NOT -- mean the virus was created in a lab. Unfortunately, that's the connection most dopey reporters seem to continue making or at least implying.
Our media is hopeless.
I just skimmed the comments - but wanted to speak to one issue.
What is the lab leak theory? It's always made sense to me that the virus escaped from the lab - the lab is nearby and we know that part of their job was to collect viruses from bat caves far from Wuhan. If any of these viruses jumped to humans, no matter how, and leaked to the wider population, this would be a lab leak.
Instead, a lot of commenters are arguing about whether the virus jumped to humans because of the work being done at Wuhan. Given the kind of work they were doing in Wuhan, this seems plausible.
However, whether it was a natural virus collected by WIV or a human-adjusted virus done by the lab doesn't matter. If either of these happened, it was a lab leak, and the Wuhan lab was responsible.
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