I've mentioned several times that the bulk of the scientific evidence points to a natural origin for the COVID virus, but you may be wondering just what that evidence is. First off, there's this:
The early cases of COVID in Wuhan clustered almost entirely around the Huanan Market. That's a helluva coincidence in a city of 11 million if the virus actually originated somewhere else. Note that the virology lab is eight miles away.
Second, there's the fact that there were actually two COVID lineages in the early days and both of them cluster around the Huanan Market. It's possible to conceive of one lab worker acquiring the virus, traveling directly to the market, and then having the virus spread from there. Unlikely but possible. However, the odds of two lab workers doing the exact same thing with two separate lineages is literally a one-in-a-million longshot. It's far too remote a coincidence to be believable.
Third, there's no genomic evidence of a non-natural origin. The famous furin cleavage site, for example, is found in other viruses. It isn't that hard for this short string of nucleotides to mutate its way into another virus.
There's more, and one of the best guides to the evidence is Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. A journal article he co-authored in Science is here. A good NPR interview with him is here. And a one-hour lecture he gave a few days ago is below:
UPDATE: I originally located the Wuhan virology lab in the wrong place. It's about eight miles from the Huanan Market, not 15 miles.
"The early cases of COVID in Wuhan clustered almost entirely around the Huanan Market."
That is based on data supplied and controlled by the Chinese government, and therefore useless.
Yes, but it's very early data from before Covid was associated with the Huanan market. Very unlikely that it was manipulated at that point.
You don';t know whatthe Chinese government knew at the time. They realized they have a problem some time before the rest of th world did, but we don't know how long. They clearly tried to manipulate the data early on, for example by stopping doctors from reporting about the serious cases they have (we know that from the story of the doctor that broke).
Is is unreasonable to trust the Cinese government on Covid, and anything that is based solely on data from them is simply not serious.
The early data is what the local hospital provided before anyone knew there was a pandemic of any kind going on. They are literally the first cases reported.
What is the ground for making these statements?
As far I know, all data on the subject went through the Chinses CDC. Certainly that true for the WHO data, and the most often quoted research article about it (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715). You actually know about research based on data that didn't go through the CCDC?
Provided to who?
Obviously, the US was not collecting data from local Chinese hospitals "before anyone knew there was a pandemic of any kind going on".
The first cases were only reported to the Chinese government which prohibited release of the information. We have no idea to what extent the information that the CCP finally released was changed.
1. If you accept the Huanan Market super spreader event 8 miles from WIV as strong evidence that the market was connected, then why do you not accept the emergence in Wuhan, site of WIV and 500 miles from significant bat caves as strong evidence of a lab leak?
2. There have been multiple superspreader events centered around markets. WIV staff go shopping just like everyone else and Huanan was reasonably close to WIV and a major market that attracted people from all over Wuhan. Why would it be surprising if patient 0 from WIV or a family member s/he infected went to Huanan to shop?
3. If it seems unlikely that WIV would accidentally release two separate COVID strains, isn't it even more unlikely that two separate COVID strains would coincidentally spread from animals to people at the same time in the same market?
One can easily imagine a lab accident that releases multiple viral strains at once (ie. failure to properly clean equipment that results in a mixture of different viral strains on a sharp that then scratches a worker). How would you explain the coincidence of the market? (And BTW, two strains does not mean two lab workers - one person can be simultaneously infected with multiple strains.)
The biggest argument against zoonosis, however, is the Chinese cover up. If the Chinese did not suspect their own lab, then what did they have to hide?
These seem like good arguments to me.
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If you reject the Chinese data, then there is no data. "No data" supports "no conclusion".
"Third, there's no genomic evidence of a non-natural origin."
In principle, you mayhave non-natural evolution that looks obviously non-nature. But you can also have non-natural evolution that looks the same like natural one.
You really are losing the plot.
I don't think it is non-natural evolution, becaus eI don't think the Chinese scientists know enough to do that. But we don't have evidence for or against it.
I have no idea what the answer to covid origin is. My question is why a government agency would have made a statement that they think it was a lab leak — but only have “low confidence” in that judgment. And why would Christopher Wray go on Fox News of all places to announce the FBI believes it was a lab leak?
The fact that we had anthrax stolen from a US lab and sent to people in the media should have been all we needed to know labs need better lab security.
Your 'plot' comment is an interesting one. Many certainly do see this as a narrative that needs to be shaped around a plot. The plot drives how data and opinions are used because the point is to further the plot.
Others are more interested in the information and let the information tell the story.... but as you remind us, many have a plot to try to advance.
I used it as a metaphor, to mean something "fails to understand the basics", rather then relating to actual plot.
But given your need to create a plot and advance a narrative in search of data...its an interesting choice of words.
Accidentally saying the hidden part out loud is a bit funny.
Interesting point.
What plot you think I created in the messgae that you responded to?
You're setting up a non-falsifiable test here. Could COVID be non-natural? Sure. But there's no genomic evidence to support the idea. That's the best we can ever say about *any* genome.
I am not setting it. This is how it is. Lack of evidence for non-natural evolution is simply not useful information in this case , and cannot be used as evidence for or against any hypothesis, But you listed it as evidence that it evolved naturally.
The normal evolutionary path of viruses is a natural one. When it isn't, there are characteristics that indicate it was modified in a lab. So far there is zero evidence suggesting this virus was modified in any way, while the evidence it does exist, is in accordance with similar naturally occurring viruses. That is evidence supporting a natural evolution.
"The normal evolutionary path of viruses is a natural one. When it isn't, there are characteristics that indicate it was modified in a lab. "
That just shows that you are ignorant of biology, and have too much confident in your knowledge. Lab changes maybe easy to sopt, or may not be easy to spot. It depends of what are the changes. For single base mutations, for example, there is absolutely no way to tell.
Note that I am saying it was eveolved in the lab, Just that we don't have evidence either way.
I have no evidence either way. Neither does anyone else here.
Given that, I prefer the simplest hypothesis: that it emerged from the intense animal-people contact at places like the market, just like SARS and MERS and a hundred years of influenza have done.
But I do easily recognize a troll with an ax to grind. A concern troll. Yehouda is classic. "Note that I am [not] saying it was eveolved in the lab, ...". This is a troll who denies that he's grinding that ax but writes post after post picking away at any possible doubt at whatever his theory of the day is. That's not critical thought, it's trying to maintain deniability.
Sorry, not working. And you know it, too. The tell is the increasingly insulting language. "That just shows that you are ignorant of biology".
Please go troll some other blog. And Kevin, don't waste your time arguing with a troll.
Exactly. Go with the most parsimonious explanation. Science 101.
The guys a nutter. Click on his name; it's a link to his site. Apparently he's got a hate-on for Noam Chomsky, a hate-on for the reviewers who rejected his submissions, a hate-on for those who do not dismiss his theories as crackpot ...
But he'll show, just wait and see BWAH HA HA HA HA!
China conspirathy theories cannot fail. They can only be failed.
Actually, pretty much everyone who pays attention knows how to do non-natural evolution. You just do serial passage between animals. See https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Gain-of-Function-Research.aspx. This leaves no telltale genomic evidence.
In addition, the lab leak theory does not require any non-natural evolution or DNA manipulation. The simplest (and probably most likely) explanation is just carelessness with samples from the bat caves of Western Guangdong / Eastern Guangxi that WIV scientists frequently explored or even a WIV scientist coming back from a sampling expedition already infected from his work in a cave.
The simplest (and probably most likely) explanation is just carelessness with samples from the bat caves of Western Guangdong / Eastern Guangxi that WIV scientists frequently explored
Uh, no. The simplest explanation is natural zoonotic spillover: infected animals gave it to humans. This has been the cause of countless epidemics throughout human history.
We cannot rule out the lab leak theory at present, true. But this explanation is definitely not the simplest. Rather it's the one that fits your preferred narrative.
I imagine that many people in the Chinese government and scientific community also wondered early on whether SAR-COV-2 could have originated in the Wuhan lab. If US intelligence had picked up this chatter -- and I imagine that they would -- it might lead them to speculate "with low confidence" that the virus spread originated with a lab leak.
Since the Wuhan lab studies coronaviruses that have been collected in the wild, often from bats, an accidental leak of a natural virus would likely bear no fingerprints from the lab.
I think that a lab leak remains a possibility, but I think it is much less likely than a zoonotic leap at the wet market in Wuhan. IT took over 3 years to discover the original source of the SARS virus, and without Chinese co-operation, finding the source of COVID is probably a lost cause. There are already so many secondary animal sources and it has mutated so many times, that it may be impossible to trace reliably unless an original bat reservoir somewhere in rural China can be located.
If intelligence agencies were basing their assessment on that kind of chatter, I would expect the suggestion of a lab leak to come from the CIA or NSA or any other agency that is responsible for foreign intelligence. But why the FBI?
Nobody knows. But Wray implied that it was an engineered biological weapon, which suggests that the FBI has a Chinese source making that claim.
Why wouldn't China cooperate in finding the animal source, unless they have something to hide?
It’s an authoritarian country and nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news.
They did indeed "pick up this chatter," but it's incredibly ambiguous language. ProPublica published an article about this back in October [https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab].
Now, this is only one line of investigation, and it isn't even close to proof positive because it doesn't look at biology at all, but it is certainly suggestive. As to the quality of Reid's translations, there's some question. I don't have the sources, and my Chinese is nowhere good enough to do this sort of work. But it turns out that I know someone at DIA who works on this kind of stuff, and he says Reid's work is trustworthy.
without Chinese co-operation, finding the source of COVID is probably a lost cause.
Why? China has plenty of capable scientists.
I’ll assume this post will attract the conspiracy theorists, but since I am always curious about things like this I went ahead and watched the hour long video Kevin links to. Very persuasive. Kevin already alluded to the part in the second half about 2 crossovers which makes the question basically moot. All the known evidence always pointed to a non-lab origin.
You will never satisfy the “you can’t trust China” conspiracists, but to the rest of you I ask: How many times have you heard a made up Fox News political point and thought, Gee, those Republicans obviously know what they are doing and should be in charge? How many times have you heard a Putin apologist talk and thought, “I sure am glad he’s denazifying Ukraine?” How many times have you felt relieved that China put those awful Hong Kong democracy protesters in jail? It isn’t that hard to spot propaganda.
OK, when you only have one source it can sometimes be hard to figure out what the truth is, but the moment multiple people start reporting on the topic, it’s normally pretty obvious.
For what it's worth, the DoE's change appears to be centered around the Chinese CDC and not the Institute of Virology which is also in Wuhan. They were investigating COVID like diseases but appears they weren't set up to reverse genetics.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/27/politics/intel-community-covid-origins/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHACkULrga8
I don’t and probably never will understand the scientific evidence for or against lab leak. So I just rely on Occam’s razor. Pandemics are a feature in human history. Many of those have come from zoonotic crossover. Why wouldn’t this one?
Lab leaks have been pretty frequent in the modern era so same reasoning applies.
COVID related viruses are endemic in the bat caves of Western Guangdong, hundreds of miles away from Wuhan. Wuhan people do not eat bats. But WIV scientists explore those caves, take samples, and bring them back to WIV to analyze and experiment on.
When COVID came out, the Chinese government hid as much as it could. Almost as if they had something to hide.
Now apply Occam's Razor again.
Sure, I’ll apply Occam’s Razor again. Pandemics throughout history, much longer than there have been labs to leak, have come from animals. Why not this one?
You think you made a good Occam’s Razor argument, but you had to explain a bunch of shit about wuhan bat caves that I doubt you actually know anything about except what you read on the internet somewhere. That’s not a simpler explanation than “pandemics have come from animals before.”
"Sure, I’ll apply Occam’s Razor again. Pandemics throughout history, much longer than there have been labs to leak, have come from animals. Why not this one?"
because this is the first time that a zoonotic jumper was immediatley highly tranmissible in humans (enough to overcome health system in developed countries). Historically, zoonotic pathogens needed some time to adapt to humans before they became highly transmissible.
That is why I believe this one also spent sometime adapting, by circulating in China for few months at least, and maybe few years, before becoming transmisible enough to be a problem. That is orthogonal to the question of its initail source, but it does mean that data from the end of 2019 doesn't tell much about its source.
If all 11m contracted the virus, I would still note that the problem with this assertion is, that no one disputes (AFAIK) the wet market as an amplification source. Infections occurred before mid-December when genetic sampling was being collected.
Actually, Worobey says there were likely more than just two. The conclusion isn't that two lab workers spread two separate lineages. It means that the infections were circulating -- either in the animal reservoir or humans -- for much longer than the December 2019 timeline.
The first part is true. But, it does not exclude the possibility. The coincidence of (some of) the same researchers having previously inserted a furin cleavage site in MERS, and applying for a grant w/ DARPA to do the same thing with bat coronaviruses is what's driven this narrative. The second part is exaggeration. This was the first coronavirus variant (AFAIK) documented with a furin cleavage site.
The strongest circumstantial evidence in support of natural spillover is that it has happened often in the past, specifically with China, and that there are documented antibodies in response to wildtype coronaviruses in China.
Your turn.
Stop trying to make 'Your turn' happen. Now FOAD you miserable little troll.
I would be interested in watching Alina Chan debate Michael Worobey, wouldn't you?
KD, why don't you try spending some time trying to make the case for an accidental lab leak? One of the enduring memories of college is that of the future California state librarian pounding into us the notion that we have to understand all sides of an issue, not just the one we agree with. It's also something good lawyers do.
"I would be interested in watching Alina Chan debate Michael Worobey, wouldn't you?"
No, I really wouldn't. Worobey has a great deal of expertise in viruses and viral evolution. Chan doesn't. (She's a post-doc at the Broad Institute, where I'm a staff scientist in a lab working on viral outbreaks and viral evolution. We've never heard a peep out of her.)
But expertise is rarely what settles debates.
It's not about settling a debate, but also, it doesn't have to be debate style.
It's about creating a public forum for two (or more) people to present contrasting positions to help people open their minds or feed their brains with information that they wouldn't have otherwise absorbed.
I pick Alina Chan because she's been unrelenting in retort (apparently), and the most visible critic against the most visible proponent, Michael Worobey. Who would you pick?
'You refuse to debate me when I say the Earth is flat because you know I'm right.'
If there were any evidence that the Wuhan lab had an immediate precursor of SARS-CoV-2 on hand, a lab leak would be a strong candidate. Since there's no trace of such evidence, however, a zoonotic origin is a priori more likely than a lab leak: zoonotic infections are vast more common than infections from lab leaks. Coupled with the location of the early cases, that makes a lab leak quite unlikely. Unless some new evidence shows up, of course.
Has the CCP given outside investigators access to determine if WIV had an immediate precursor of SARS-CoV-2 on hand? Nope.
The absence of evidence is due to China locking down access. That, alone, should tell you what they think we might find.
As a certain president would say "Oh, c'mon man".
China locks down all kinds of things, especially embarrassing ones. It's surprising when they don't.
This is China being China. No conclusion to be drawn.
Yeah, China being China feels like the simplest explanation for this argument about why they won’t allow anyone in. Like of course they would not. It’s China.
After the pandemic began, the region around Wuhan was scoured for a wild ancestor. None was found. The closest known wild relatives of SARS-CoV-2 are bat coronaviruses in Yunnan province, which is hundreds of miles from Wuhan.
If this pandemic had started in Yunnan province, there would be zero dispute that it was zoonotic. But WIV is *by far* the most likely vector to carry a Yunnanese virus to Wuhan.
Centuries of history and mountains of experience say never trust an authoritarian government. I'm not 100% convinced that it was a lab leak - as I say in my comment below, maaaaaaybe Covid jumped from bats to humans naturally in Yunnan but wasn't contagious enough to attract notice initially, then evolved to a more contagious form after spreading to Wuhan. But Occam's Razor points to a lab leak, possibly via the gray market sale of used lab animals to the Huanan market.
Centuries of history and mountains of experience say that pandemics have come from animals before, so why not this time? We all want to think we’re so far advanced that it must have been deliberate or an accident from one of our very advanced research centers, but that’s special pleading.
If there were any evidence that the Wuhan lab had an immediate precursor of SARS-CoV-2 on hand, a lab leak would be a strong candidate.
Exactly. People make statements as if they (wrongly) believe the WIV was some kind of black box, top secret bioweapons lab. In fact it's a normal scientific laboratory. Its scientist attend conferences, publish research, give lectures, and so on.
I have seen it suggested that the virus may have leaked out of WIV via the gray-market sale of used lab animals. It's said that Chinese lab workers sometimes supplement their income this way (though I don't have a particularly credible source for this claim). If someone from WIV sold some used animals to the Huanan market and some of those animals had various iterations of Covid, that would explain the two lineages.
The closest known wild relatives of the Covid virus are bat coronaviruses in Yunnan province - hundreds of miles from Wuhan. WIV was studying bat coronaviruses and is the most obvious path for a virus of that family to end up in Wuhan.
I do not for a minute believe that Covid was in any way deliberate, or a conspiracy - if it was a lab leak I have zero doubt that it was unintentional. But carelessness can be just as damaging as malice.
(I've also sometimes wondered if there might have been an "antecedent strain" of Covid in humans that was less contagious and spread too slowly to attract notice. Then someone carrying it went to Wuhan and it mutated into a more contagious form in the body of someone who was regularly present at the Huanan Market, setting off the pandemic. That would provide a plausible path from Yunnan to Wuhan that doesn't involve WIV, but it leaves the two-lineage question unresolved.)
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