Are you wondering why the "accidental lab release" theory of the coronavirus has been getting more attention lately? It's not because there's more evidence in its favor. Just the opposite: It's because the evidence of a zoonotic origin has been getting harder and harder to sustain.
As you may recall, the initial theory for the origin of the coronavirus had to do with transmission via wet markets in Wuhan. That theory was abandoned pretty quickly when it turned out that several of the very first victims had no connection to the wet markets.
The work after that centered on bats, which are huge reservoirs of coronaviruses. However, since there are no bat viruses that are good candidates to be a SARS-CoV-2 precursor, scientists began searching for intermediate hosts. You probably remember this. Palm civits were candidates at first. Raccoon dogs were on the list. Or pangolins. Or minks. Or ferrets.
For various reasons, all of these intermediate hosts had problems that made them unlikely candidates. At first this wasn't a big issue: it was early days and the search continued.
But eventually days turned into months and then into more than a year. And still no likely intermediate hosts had been identified. We're now at a point where it's been nearly a year and a half and we still have no good theory of zoonotic origin.
That doesn't mean the lab release theory is correct. It just means that it's natural for it to get more attention as the zoonotic origin theory becomes more and more difficult to find evidence for. One problem, though, is that even if a bat virus did escape accidentally from the Wuhan lab, it would still need an intermediate host to evolve into something transmissable to humans. So the lab theory faces the same problems as the zoonotic theory.
There's much more to the story, of course, including the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unusually efficient at infecting humans. However, this cuts against both theories. Even given the fast mutation rate of coronaviruses, it's difficult to figure out how it could become so good so fast in the wild. On the other hand, any lab release theory that assumes the virus was good to begin with implies not just that the Chinese were careless, but that they were deliberately engineering a coronavirus with a spike protein that was designed for maximum harm to humans. There's strong genomic evidence against that, and in any case it requires you to believe that the Chinese were both unbelievably careless and were engineering a bioweapon of some kind. That's kind of hard to swallow.
In other words, it's worthwhile keeping an open mind on this. On the one hand, the Chinese have been so aggressively uncooperative that it's hard to believe they don't have something to hide. This favors the lab theory. On the other hand, we shouldn't let the current lack of success on the zoonotic front provoke us into giving up out of frustration and turning to simpler theories featuring well defined enemies that we never liked much in the first place. Science runs into tough roadblocks all the time, and in another year maybe some genius will have a lightbulb moment and we'll finally have a fleshed-out theory of zoonotic origin that makes perfect sense. This calmer mode of thinking favors the zoonotic theory.
This whole thing might remain a mystery forever. Alternatively, maybe some lab worker from Wuhan will escape to the West with concrete evidence that the virus was manmade. Or else someone will finally come up with a convincing zoonotic story. Stay tuned, and in the meantime don't get too attached to either side.
POSTSCRIPT: Just to be absolutely clear here, my point is that expert opinions about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus haven't just changed for no reason. They've changed because the evidence has changed. The only tricky part is that what changed isn't evidence for the lab theory getting better, but evidence for the opposing theory getting worse.
This doesn't explain why Trump removed the CDC scientists before the infection. If there was a 'bioweapon' release, it only makes sense if it was U.S. scientists who developed the virus and then released it in China after pulling out our people who would have prevented it. Trump had the means and motivation to do this.
That makes no sense.
Ironically, that's a horrible thing I think he wouldn't have done.
It was the Orange Man!
El Jefe was jealous of Jim Boeheim's license to kill.
LOL.
He didn't, from what I read. He definitely made savage cuts in our ability to respond pro-actively - dismissing the NSC pandemic response team in June 2017 and cutting funding for overseas warning posts by 80%. But we still had a CDC office in Wuhan/Hebei. Too bad he ignored the warnings that were coming out as early as October 2019 and had appointed his usual blend of incompetents and grifters to mess up the rest of the CDC. His people even lied about the Obama administration not leaving them a detailed plan for pandemic/epidemic response - and had to retract that pretty quickly when someone pulled it up and made it available.
"On the one hand, the Chinese have been so aggressively uncooperative that it's hard to believe they don't have something to hide." I am strongly reminded of Saddam Hussein's aggressive dicking around of inspectors prior to invasion. Authoritarian states are always going to play cagey — they assume everyone has ulterior motives. I don't see this as evidence either way.
I am strongly reminded of aluminum tubes, mobile bio-weapons labs and Saddam's fleet of killer drones.
The press is getting played again. I see Mike Pompeo's and Steve Bannon's fingerprints all over this latest media blitz.
Not really working. Nobody cares.
The inconvenient fact remains that if - big if - something sinister happened, it happened under Trump's watch.
The next smocking gun will be a whooping cough.
Do you mean "smocking" in the Steve Allen sense?
Saddam Hussein had a clear, specific motive: he wanted to keep Iraq’s longtime rival Iran in the dark about his military capabilities. But I agree with you that authoritarian states have inherent motivation to control information, and suppress as much as possible anything that doesn’t reflect glory on the regime.
& my employers in the People's Liberation Army want to keep the Hong Kongers & Formosans guessing about what's coming.
I've got a great idea. Let's throw some "shock and awe" at the Chinese, invade them, and then send out teams to look for the bio weapons labs. In the meantime, our Coalition Provisional Authority can disband their army, and . . . voilà . . Mission Accomplished! We did it eighteen years ago. No reason it wouldn't work again.
In this scenario, is the Dali Lama the new Ahmad Chalabi or Mohktar al-Sadr?
Saddam's main motivation was past infiltration of UN inspection regimes by US intel.
Lab release??? This variant was seen in China during a 2013 study. It's the mutation that made it more contagious that is in question. It's why China pr is touting a western European mutation.
Yeah, let's make up disease that is not very harmful to humans. This covid is no more harmful than other covids, it just is vastly more contagious. Doesn't fit the lab narrative.
Yes, the Chinese authorities have lied about the Covid virus and what a serious threat it represents. But so did Donald Trump.
"'Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
- Napoleon
The local gov't's were clearly in denial and CYA mode.
The US had surveillance teams (for viral outbreaks) in China--but they got pulled under Trump.
"Although he may seem stupid this is sure
To be an act of malice on his part."
- Shakespeare
"...but don't rule out malice. " —Robert A. Heinlein"
I wouldn't use that source; the man was an idiot. And right-wing bonkers to boot.
He was certainly not an idiot. he had some rather strange views, and certainly went right-wing bonkers later in his writing.
I’m not sure I understand why it matters. If we decide that the Chinese were responsible what would we do about it?
It matters quite a bit in deciding where the world should spend resources to prevent future pandemics. Is the risk of so-called "gain of function" research worth the benefits? Do we need to seriously tighten up safety protocols at virus research labs? Or, should we instead focus on limiting human contact with wild animals, and early detection of newly evolved viruses that can pass from animals to humans?
That doesn’t seem to be the reason it’s getting so much attention in the press right now. In the right wing press it seems to be a way of pointing fingers, justifying Trump, and making life difficult of Americans of Asian heritage.
It took decades to solve the problem for the Marburg¹ virus, and they still haven't for Ebola.
¹ A bat species.
And even the Marburg virus story is still incomplete.
Hell, every year HIV gets older.
And still mostly a disease caught by MSM -- that's not Main Stream Media.
I favor simple ideas. I would suggest that SARS CoV-2 was a human virus all along, and simply mutated into a more virulent form. Occam's Razor says there's no reason to bring in another animal species.
Yeah, I kinda don't get the point of 'this was a pig virus' or 'this was a bat virus' or 'this was a human virus'. We are all mammals.
"Yeah, I kinda don't get the point of 'this was a pig virus' or 'this was a bat virus' or 'this was a human virus'. We are all mammals."
And do you think that all mammals are consistently and constantly exposed to all viruses? All kinds of viruses have evolved to live in all kinds of hosts. We have a pretty decent handle on the viruses that are endemic to humans, but no idea about the vast, vast population of viruses that live in and infect non-humans. How we expose ourselves to those immense reservoirs of potential disease (and how much we study and learn about them beforehand) plays a very big role in whether or not humanity can prevent or mitigate future pandemics.
That's why it's important to know where the infection came from.
Yes, you don't get the point. Maybe instead of polluting the thread, maybe you could read up on virology and get the point, instead of just announcing your ignorance, m'kay?
Once it has 'crossed' into the human population it isn't a bat virus (or whatever) any more. And the fact that it could cross makes the whole category of a 'bat virus' or a 'bird virus' or whatever suspect.
Interesting argument at https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 ?
Wade's reasoning has a big hole in it. He argues that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein *could have been* optimized in a lab to bind to human ACE2 receptors using a gain-in-function process (which virologists use to mak more efficient—err, more contagious—viruses).
The trouble with that argument is that the initial SARS-CoV-2 variant’s spike protein *was not* not the most optimal configuration for binding to human ACE2 receptors. Subsequent mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the wild improved its binding capability — for instance, B.1.1.7 (The British variant) and B.1.617 (the Indian variant) have proved to have better ACE2 binding capabilities than the initial wild variant.
So the WIV lab creation hypothesis requires that Chinese researchers be doubly klutzy. First they couldn’t run a gain-function process to completion, and then they accidentally released the non-optimally-gain-functioned version of the virus.
Here's an article about a canine version of coronavirus that may have infected a girl in Malaysia,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/health/dogs-coronavirus-infections.html
suggesting dogs as an intermediate host, especially given that probably more people in China will consume dog meat than bat.
Actually, that's a different type of Coronavirus that they detected Malaysia. SARS-CoV-2 is from the beta Coronavirus "family" of variants. This canine virus is from the alpha Coronavirus family. That doesn't mean the alphas can't mutate and become dangerous, but the MSM missed the whole point of this research — viz. that all sorts of Coronaviruses have the ability to hop between species, but we never detected them before because we didn't have a generic test to detect any type of Coronaviruses (which is what these researchers developed.
Correction: Poorly worded. I should have said: We never detected that all sorts of Coronaviruses were hopping between species before, because until now we didn't have a generic test to detect all the types of Coronaviruses (which is what these researchers developed). Instead we only had tests to detect *specific* variants.
Even being associated with the lab doesn't necessarily mean it was something they were working on, or even that it was released from there by an accident.
If some lab workers came down with it and it was found to be similar to something they had on site they might easily have assumed it was their fault and began acting like it was.
That seems plausible enough. Mere coincidence with a reflexive cover-up.
I’m content to blame the Chinese lab for this whole catastrophe. Why not? It doesn’t matter anyway.
As I understand it raccoon dogs are shape shifters and might attack you with their gigantic scrotums. Possibly one turned into a human to pass on the disease to humans due to the mistreatment they have suffered over the years.
"Escape to the West". LOL. We get tens of thousands of Chicom immigrants every year. This isn't 1988.
Never say never, but if that's the case you have to believe that the Chinese were either unbelievably careless or were engineering a bioweapon of some kind. Those are both kind of hard to swallow.
Or maybe they were conducting research into virus mutations? That's what I've read on multiple occasions.
the one hand, the Chinese have been so aggressively uncooperative that it's hard to believe they don't have something to hide. This favors the lab theory
It's possible they have something to hide. But it's not "hard to believe" it could be something else if you know anything about Communist China. I think it's entirely possible they're just being prickly or resentful of pushy Westerners. Chinese officialdom (and plenty of ordinary Chinese, if truth be told) has a chip on its shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar when it comes to the century + of humiliations at the hands of foreigners. Or, they have sundry things to hide (the poor state of their record-keeping? general lax safety standards? military secrets? experiments on humans? the possibilities are endless) and aren't eager to allow their people to talk, even though there was no lab leak. Or maybe they suspect a lot of people in Western countries won't act in good faith with whatever information is revealed, even if it's largely exculpatory (can you blame them?). In general, I don't think Westerners have the slightest idea of how closed off Chinese society is to the free flow of information. It's true this tendency doesn't help them in the eyes of foreigners.
This calmer mode of thinking favors the zoonotic theory.
Has a lab leak ever led to an outbreak remotely on this scale? (no). Have ordinary human activities (live animal markets, hunting, livestock raising ranching, logging) ever before been the conduit via which zoonotic viruses infect humans? (Frequently, and most recently with SARS and MERS, both coronavirus diseases). Occam's razor suggests it wasn't a lab leak.
But it can't be ruled out. I do agree scientists are right to keep an open mind about this.
The Chinese government doesn't trust the US, for some strange reason which might have something to do with 70 years of relentless American hostility towards their country. So I guess when the President of the United States blamed China for the pandemic as soon as he realized it was a serious problem; when a good chunk of the American right started braying that SARS-CoV-2 was a Chinese bio-weapon deliberately released to weaken their country; when Trump Republicans in Congress began to gibber about allowing Americans to sue China for damages; when the most extreme Trump Republicans called for Trump to cancel America's debt to China; well Xi Jinping and company might have felt it would be a mistake to allow CIA agents to start unrestricted inquiries in Hubei Province.
"70 years of relentless American hostility towards their country."
Really? It seems to me that until a few years ago, China was America's favorite business partner. We gave up millions of middle class manufacturing jobs to China and in so doing raised 10's of millions of people out of poverty. American consumers bought boatloads of Chinese made goods and turned a blind eye to all the silly details of slave labor and pollution. We did this in the vain hope that they would become a responsible nation. Or maybe just greed. (Acknowledge that the USA is not a responsible nation anymore and hasn't been for some time)
So I don't think the Chinese government has been subjected to relentless hostility. To the extent there has been criticism, it seems pretty well deserved... even more so now.
Millions??? More like hundred of thousands. Automation is hell. Creating jobs production take new sources free market intellectuals can't even fatham.
Foxconn has 1.3 Million employees. Thanks for playing. Try again soon.
Lolz, not for all US end product. Not discussing consumption decrease even, you try again.
America's commitment to the defense of Taiwan is enough for the Chinese to regard it as relentlessly hostile, but that is only one factor. The US has had a consistent policy of 'containing China' since 1949, as evidenced by its persistent efforts to sustain a ring of alliances, complete with a military presence, from Japan and South Korea to Pakistan. The fact that capitalist markets made it rational for US firms to move operations offshore was neither here nor there.
Cancel America's debt to China??? Who cares. China would just cancel US debt financing destroying the dollar. Trump is whore of China. Always has been.
> Are you wondering why the "accidental lab release" theory of the coronavirus has been getting more attention lately?
I saw the thread in my Google News feed a couple of days ago. Google News had a link to let me see all of the articles they had collected in the thread. New York Post. Breitbart. National Review. Wall Street Journal. Nothing from WaPo nor NYT or even LA Times. CNN had one article, which basically said three workers at the lab got sick some time during November. With no specifics as to their disease.
Yeah, I suppose the flat-earth conspiracy theorists could finally stumble upon an actual conspiracy. In the meantime, I'm betting not. I'd keep an open mind if the people pushing one of the theories hadn't proven to consistently be nut-jobs.
"Nothing from WaPo..."
There's a Glenn Kessler "Factchecker" on the Chinese bioweapon lab theory this morning:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/
Ah, the third Glenn in the Derpfecta, along with Reynolds & Thrush.
I think the comment counter should be adjusted. I thought that a higher comment count would mean more interesting, broader and more informed discussion. Instead, I just keep seeing posts by Midgard and Mitchell Young over and over again.
Yeah, the resident trolls are leaving lots of droppings these days.
Again, I gave possible answers. Too me, Covid-19 is just another typical coronavirus that mutated to being very infectious. Would not be the first time in human history(see 1889-94).
I count five comments by me, I count seven by Montytheclipartmongoose.
Why can't Midgard spell? Or punctuate?
It would be better if the comment count listed the number of commenters rather than the number of comments. Then the rest of us could know when the "conversation" under the article is just the same three or four lonely souls yammering away, and when there might be real dialogue going on.
I'm continually surprised how little traction the New York Magazine article from a while back got. It is quite persuasive about the lab origin, and answers the common objections seen here and elsewhere.
The argument is that Covid-19 is the result of misguided gain-of-function research meant to demonstrate the potential threat of engineered viruses, not a deliberate bioweapon, to address one of Kevin's big points.
The lab-leak hypothesis is getting a lot of attention because of a recent WSJ article. But that article simply recycles information that has been known for months. On March 11, NBC News reported:
"Virologist Marion Koopmans told NBC News that some scientists working at a Wuhan lab studying the coronavirus became sick in Fall 2019. She says China revealed the researchers tested negative for the virus, and the evidence does not point to a lab leak."
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/who-team-scientist-wuhan-lab-workers-fell-sick-in-2019-104497733806
The WSJ gussied up their report by claiming it was based on super-double top secret intelligence that was divulged by an anonymous source (of course). Just like 2002, the press is being played.
The concept that China is responsible for creating or releasing the virus as a bio-weapon is illogical. The very reason that the virus has spread so quickly is the very reason that the bio weapon theory is illogical. First, the spread of any virus is a function of population density, China has 1.4 billion people and an area approximately the size of the US, with 328.2 million people. Who is going to come out worse in the end? Second, the world’s economies and populations have become highly interconnected. China is an export economy and imports food, if the planet is turned upside down by a pandemic, who is going to purchase Chinese goods and grow food to feed Chinese citizens? How complacent are starving, infected and unemployed Chinese citizens likely to be? The bio-weapon theory is as illogical as nations having large numbers of nuclear armaments lobbing them at one another. The only caveat I can add, is that I’ve become cynical regarding the rational behaviour of our species. Lastly, the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation - most human infectious diseases came from non-human animals e.g., see this NIH book: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114494/
The concept is dumb because covid-19 is not that serious. It's a low grade pandemic that mainly affected older people.....Much like 1889-94.
"It only killed people's parents and grandparents. It's not that serious"
This is deranged thinking.
The normal flu has averaged 50000 a year. Rhinoceros 5000. Think again. I didn't say it wasn't a pandemic, but a low grade one.
Rhinoceros?? Do we track death by goring or trampling?
According to Mark Sumner over at Kos, the death count in the US alone almost certainly passed 900,000 deaths not too long back. There has been severe undercounting all over.
Comparing the seasonal flu to COVID is kind of dumb. Do we lock down every fall/winter to prevent flu transmission?
50000 seems quite high - maybe 30k?
In any case, why did we ever think that slaughter was acceptable? Because we've been suffering it for centuries? Because the deaths were mostly old sick people? Generic human stupidity?
After this experience, we ALSO know a lot more about minimizing flu deaths, since we had effectively 0 (a few hundred?) this season.
Not sure lockdowns are needed. We need random mass testing, masking, some of the cleanliness hygiene that turned out to be superfluous for covid, and better ventilation in mass public areas.
Keeping people from getting pneumonia and going to the hospital and / or dying from flu seems reasonable and could be done at relatively low cost without disruption, I think.
" Who is going to come out worse in the end? "
And yet we know who has come out worse. If logic contradicts actual evidence it's not the evidence that is wrong. Besides governments make stupid mistakes and decisions all the time. I don't personally think it was a bio-weapon but your first reason is pretty weak.
If it was a bioweapon, the intended targets must have been the Politburo of the CCP, the State Council of China and the rest of the PRC gerontocracy.
China is indeed densely populated. But that alone does not rule-out the (still unproven, and I don't hold that is the story) deliberate release hypothesis. The Chinese state also fully controls the horizontal and the vertical in ways public health professionals only dream of in "the West" which means the Chinese could control the spread within their borders. And that degree of control naturally leads to making the Chinese system look "better" in terms of protecting the citizens.
My personal opinion is that it was a lab fuck up. They might have been studying it for non-mlitary reasons or engineered a natural virus to be worse--as we do all the fucking time with other viruses--and then some one was asymptomatically infected and it was off to the races.
They didn't have to be studying it. Just collecting samples could be enough. Or interacting with people in the area where there is a fair amount of crossover. I recall a study showing a fair amount of antibodies to SARS like viruses in the population where the bats of interest are active.
Quite a few months ago I read an interesting article (in the Seattle Times IIRC - they did a number of very good articles on this as it started spreading in WA) about lower rates of infection in Hebei that indicated that something like COVID-19 or a predecessor had been around the province for a while. Apparently there's a lesser known (to me) part of the immune system that can also confer some protection if "trained" - and people tested in Hebei showed elevated levels of the more effective protective factor.
Regular sample collection in places where new disease variants are likely to arise would be what any smart government would do - and the US did NOT close the CDC office in the province, although they did drastically cut staffing generally in China and elsewhere - (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv-idUSKBN21C3N5)
Is this where Bryan Adams goes for his apology?
KD: the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unusually well designed to infect humans
Any more than any other mammal?
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html#:~:text=•%20Recent%20experimental%20research%20shows,infected%20with%20the%20virus
This piece implies that a third origin - in a natural way in humans - is impossible. Why? How do different strains of colds and flu develop? Do they all come from some other animal or in some lab? Why wouldn't a strain that is "designed" to act on humans be most likely to develop in actual humans?
My understanding is that they've found it in bats, but that these animals are immune, which strongly implies it evolved in them before spilling over (most likely via a different animal vector) into homo sapiens.
Whoa there buddy....
People are frustrated that the origin has not been definitively determined, and are probably frustrated in dealing with the Chinese gov'ts--state and local and...
But it does sound like our officials are commenting on un-vetted announcements.
Yes, more studies need to be done. And yes, issues with the lab cannot be definitively ruled out. And yes, there were a lot of, how shall we say, unorthodox cross-overs, proposed that have since fallen out of favor--but that does not make the case for spillover stronger.
Should note: minks have been infected by humans, the virus will mutate in minks, and minks can re-infect other humans. That does not mean minks were involved in the initial outbreak--but crossovers happen with corona viruses.
Do we have anything with enough support behind it to actually be considered a theory, or is it all still simply hypothesis or conjecture?
I can't believe anyone thinks it's not important to find the source of COVID.
Huge difference between natural and manmade as to how we move forward. If it is found that it was an accidental lab leak, shouldn't this make us question how scientific research was conducted? The Wuhan labs were just as much part of the world scientific community as they were of a political entity. Western money helped finance their research, and Western scientists knew what they were working on.
But if we're going to talk US politics, could it be that the reason this was not taken seriously sooner is that this theory was associated with the right wing, and because of trust in Fauci & other scientists who were previously vocal in their support of this research?
Now it has become impossible to ignore due, as Kevin said, to not finding another source; AND to what we know about the research that was going on in that lab AND reputable scientists demanding an explanation?
Are those of you who are saying "It doesn't matter" conceding that you are no longer sure of your position?
It might be fun to hate the Chinese, but the pandemic and China's governance in general, is, in my view, an externality of globalization.
In other words, whether or not the Chinese "created" the virus in a lab or not, it's world capitalism that moved its factories to China but then didn't plan for what could happen when a virus-producing area like southern China (whether those viruses are man-made or not) was connected to the rest of the world by a huge amount of travel and personal interaction.
So I blame the oligarchs for taking the profits but not wanting to prepare for what their system could, and did, do to the world over the past year.
I do feel that "engagement" has been a failure as far as bringing China towards "liberal democracy" but is (was) there really that much more traffic between say North America or Europe and China as there was between Europe and North America?
They don't necessarily have something to hide so much as something to protect. That being the narrative the Party is virtually infallible in protecting/leading/whatnot the Chinese people and they ways they do so are the best ways. If there was some sort of screw-up at a lab, and there wasn't a sufficiently unprotected low to mid-level bureaucrat or three to sacrifice, then there could not be a screw-up at that lab because that would reflect poorly on the Party.
Kevin, I'm a bit disappointed in this post. It's in the news again because there are reports that workers at the Wuhan lab were sick in November 2019 and were hospitalized, which is more circumstantial evidence that it came from the lab there. There was also a letter in Science from prominent scientists advocating for more investigation into the lab leak hypothesis that also made the news.
I'm just going to go ahead and say, of course it was a lab leak. Sure, yes, there's no smoking gun either way, and so technically it may have arisen zoonotically. But c'mon. A bat-derived coronavirus started spreading in Wuhan, a thousand miles away from where the bats are, but where there is a biosafety level 4 lab known for collecting and doing gain of function research on bat-derived coronaviruses. A lab leak was always the most likely scenario. Of course the Chinese government worked to cover it up; they are authoritarians and don't want to look bad. This was especially the case when President dumbass was looking to pin things on China to deflect from his own mishandling of the crisis.
"you have to believe that the Chinese were either unbelievably careless or were engineering a bioweapon of some kind."
No you don't. There were doing gain of function research, which involves altering viruses to make them more deadly and/or transmissible, as a way of studying them, not to create a bioweapon. Labs in the US do the same thing. And the carelessness is eminently believable, because accidents at labs (including in the US) happen all the time. It just happened that the first accident to result in a worldwide pandemic originated in Wuhan; it could have just as easily started here.
And what about the scientists who assured us that a zoonotic origin was more likely? Those are mostly the scientists who also do gain of function research, whose funding will be threatened if it turns out that that kind of research gave rise to the pandemic. That is why now that other scientists are starting to speak up, as with the Science letter, the tune is different.
The only "evidence" we have that two workers from the lab became ill in Nov 2019 is from a March story in The Australian, which is Rupert Murdock newspaper. It's behind a paywall, but The WSJ repeated this story, saying it was leaked from some top secret source. So no corroboration for that statement. I distrust Murdoch more than I do the Chinese, so I don't think this story should be taken seriously.
And as I stated in a previous post above, the trouble with the gain-in-function argument (i.e that the WIV was trying to make the most contagious variant through laboratory initiatiat natural selection) is that the initial SARS-CoV-2 variant’s spike protein *was not* not the most optimal configuration for binding to human ACE2 receptors. Subsequent mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the wild improved its binding capability — for instance, B.1.1.7 (The British variant) and B.1.617 (the Indian variant) have proved to have better ACE2 binding capabilities than the initial wild variant.
So the WIV lab creation hypothesis requires that Chinese researchers be doubly klutzy. First they couldn’t run a gain-in-function process to completion (which with the way viruses can replicate would probably only take a few days to do at most), and then they accidentally released the non-optimally-gain-functioned version of the virus.
That's not to say the Wuhan lab didn't have some sort wild variant in its virus stash that it accidentally released. But that would add an extra step to the explanation for its origin.
So the WIV lab creation hypothesis requires that Chinese researchers be doubly klutzy.
If the experiment was focused expressly on infectivity, but if the purpose was rather to see the ways in which it would most likely evolve and the most plausible variants that could be expected to appear in the future then you won't necessarily see one random sample optimized for the spike protein.
If it was an experiment.