Alina Chan is doing the media rounds for her upcoming, much-hyped book on COVID-19 lab origin. For political reasons this kind attracts the most MSM attention, and Chan claims her book explains the subject to nonscientists, but in the scientific circle the book is met with indifference if not ridicule.
An interview (https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/01/how-did-the-covid-19-pandemic-start) reveals exemplarily how empty her evidence and arguments are, not surprising since they always are, whether made by Chan and anybody else. This is all they have, i.e., nothing. During the interview with Nathan Robinson, Chan made arguments and assertions over and over, without providing any solid evidence to back them up. Robinson has no biology background to evaluate or challenge her; despite reading other essays and wanting to be critical, Robinson didn’t bring up any counterpoints until near the end of the interview, before letting her off the hook easily.
It is a long interview, but Chan offered little dry stuff, which can be summed up in three interrelated arguments. Everything else is either nonsensical or not worth responding because of the lack of substances.
The first Chan argued is that there is an overlap between natural origin and lab origin such that “lab-based” includes a WIV worker being infected by a natural virus, either during field collection, or from growing the virus in the lab. This reflects precisely the lab origin crowd trying to save their behinds by muddling the water and moving the goal post when all their other/previous arguments have fallen apart, and 1) it can’t be allowed to stand, and 2) it still doesn’t pass muster.
People who are not simplistic and misled, paraphrasing from the interview, will surely remember that these same individuals, including Chan, have been yelling bioweapons, GOF, smoking guns, etc, since 2020. None of that has panned out. They last resort, therefore, is expanding their reach farther and farther so that it might hook on the natural origin train. This is a blatant attempt at cheating, pretending to be serious and pretending to be right without ever being so.
Then, even that novel and innovative definition has zero evidence for and plenty against. SARS-CoV-2 or close relatives never came up in scientific records prior to 2020. WIV studied only SARS related CoVs prior to 2020, according to publications, suggesting that whatever other CoVs WIV had, WIV merely collected and at most sequenced them, but never grew and amplified them. WIV has always maintained that no one at WIV was infected, and nobody working at WIV, Chinese or otherwise, either inside China or outside right now, has revealed anything unusual at WIV. All is in the public record, hence a blanket no-no. The CoV collection database at WIV shielded from the outside since late 2019? You bet that someone overseas has a backup record of it, and if anything juicy is there the whole world would have known long ago. Furthermore, whatever CoVs WIV has, nature has many orders of multitude more, and no matter how much field work WIV does, it is utterly neglectible compared to regular human interactions with the environments. WIV won’t go to virgin places, for they survey only where the locals have told them there are bats. Just from pure math it is like Chan shouting at a pool of water while ignoring an ocean.
Chan cited WIV growing SARS-like CoVs at BSL-2 facilities, but for what? We shouldn’t study CoVs? She talked incoherently about that. The need for lab safety? Who would disagree with that, but what does it have to do with COVID-19? Chan may scare laypeople, but not real scientists, because most CoVs including SARS-like CoVs don’t infect humans, and BSL-2 is perfectly fine and used for this line of work universally. Besides, and again, there is no evidence any CoV infection at WIV, and no evidence WIV had COVID-19 samples until late Dec 2019. Chan et al.’s strategy is to churn out irrelevant information to mislead people, and when the previous assertions failed, without exception, to move onto a new one, which will suffer the same fate undoubtedly. But as long as there is a market, she will have an audience: who needs science when your entire thesis is based on faith?
The second is best told in Chan’s own words: “I’d say that comparing the categories of evidence between natural and lab-based origins, they’re pretty even. But it’s true that the proximity factor favors the lab leak hypothesis. So if you look at historical evidence, precedents of natural viruses versus those that have escaped from labs, there’s pretty strong cases for both natural and lab”.
This is sheer ignorance and lunacy, her audacity to quote “historical”. Throughout history, did any nascent pandemic originated from a lab? Hell never! THIS is historical evidence: natural 100, lab 0. If a lab studies a known disease, and it sickens a lab worker, that at most counts as an escape, not a new disease, since the disease is already known. And such instances are rare, always easy to trace, and have never caused much harm to the public. THAT is also historical evidence. Her argument makes sense only if WIV had the virus prior to the outbreak, but as described above, she has exactly zero evidence.
Hence Chan’s case is even weaker than a sand castle. 1) History shows natural 100, lab 0, far from “even”. 2) Historically, the emergence of infectious diseases, what and where, features a great deal of randomness and unpredictability. COVID-19 being first reported in Wuhan may well be due to chance, further having nothing to do with WIV. 3) It is a scientific truism that Wuhan first reporting COVID-19 doesn’t mean SARS-CoV-2 originated there. LA reported the first AIDS cases, but LA is no origin. The talk of “proximity” has little meaning. 4) Regarding “proximity factor”, if WIV is a proximity factor, there are many more: Wuhan has over 10 million people, more people, more markets, more shops, more proximity to infections. Wuhan is a major transportation hub, so trains, buses, and airplanes are all proximity factors!
The third argument by Chan is that Peter Daszak and the WHO work in China can’t be trusted. But even if they can’t be trusted, have any studies thus far revealed lab origin? Can we trust anything Chan and crowd have produced instead? The answers to both questions are decidedly NOs. No matter what the MSM and political circles say, it remains a consensus among biologists that COVID-19 is of natural origin ever since Feb 2020.
Moreover, why can’t Peter Daszak and the WHO work in China be trusted? Has any evidence up to 2022 overturned their major conclusions in 2020 and 2021? Again an emphatic NO. Much has been cried about the WHO work in China was no investigation, but what kind of investigation you want or think was feasible, and any precedents for that kind of investigation you like? The official designation appropriately called it a joint study. The outside team will always depend on data provided by the Chinese, and the goal was to find possible answers and suggest subsequent work. It is still scientist to scientist, based on scientific data, judgments, and arguments. Even with differences in data interpretation you have to trust each other, otherwise there is no basis for anything.
All data support WHO team’s conclusion, but not Chan’s belief, which is why she tries to discredit it. But since she has no evidence herself, she is left to question the “investigation” and Peter Daszak’s COI. But Peter Daszak was only one among many in the WHO team. Is he really that powerful, or all the other scientists have no independent minds of their own? Then still, has the WHO conclusion or Peter Daszak’s argument for natural origin undermined by any new findings by 2022? Of course not. Sowing doubt without providing anything substantial but blaming Chinese coverup is so easy under the current political climate, but the natural origin theory has only strengthened since early 2020.
A related, recent development is that E-mails were leaked showing Fauci and Collins advising against lab-made talks, even when some scientists had the suspicion in early 2020, which ostensibly proved that Fauci and Collins were hiding sth. But these E-mails and MSM reports failed to update how those scientists feel in Jan 2022. It is likely that most if not all no longer support lab origin, because there is now simply no evidence for but much against it. This means how much Fauci, Collins, and Daszak were correct all along.
To summarize everything concrete:
1. WIV didn’t know about or have the virus prior to COVID-19.
2. The few CoVs that WIV worked on prior to 2020 were not SARS-CoV-2 or precursors. GOF of those CoVs won’t produce SARS-CoV-2.
3. The CoVs WIV have collected and the act of sample collection itself are nothing compared to nature.
No evidence contradicts, while all the evidence, records, and math, support natural origin. Chan et al. have produced no evidence or valid reasoning against, despite spending the last two years searching for, inventing, and twisting facts and arguments, all of which have invariably failed. Attacking Fauci/Collins/Daszak won’t reverse fortune, only making them look farsighted.
But how about even Fauci admitted we need to consider all possibilities? It is actually scientist talk, as scientists are a cautious bunch and never say never (an oxymoron), which differs fundamentally from what Chan means. Nobody says you can’t test lab origin, or anti-evolution, for that matter. But the same scientific rigor must apply, which Chan et al have failed repeatedly and completely. Only in theory, there is a remote possibility that a WIV worker got infected in the wild but recovered without leaving a trace, but then nobody can prove it, whereas the math number game dictates that possibility is miniscule compared to those of “natural” occurrences. What the lab conspiracy theorists do is like saying since we don’t know origin of the universe, we should consider God creation 50% possible. There is a famous historical book on that, many people in the world believe in it, and miracles accepted without scientific explanations. It has evidence stronger than the lab origin theory!
Last though, what is the origin of COVID-19? First we have to define “origin”. Because strictly speaking, pandemic origin is like absolute 0 temperature: you might get close to it but never achieve it. The Delta and Omicron variants, for example, can be traced back to the SARS-CoV-2 reported in Jan 2020, but what about the precursor of SARS-CoV-2, without which COVID-19 wouldn’t have had happened? Biology means that there must be a precursor virus, then a precursor to the precursor, and so on. The search can be infinite; if he “blames” one virus, she can always go back in time to “blame” its precursor. Consequently, the origin question is never tidy or sexy, better left for professionals to debate.
But how about limting it to finding the patient 0? Bat 0? The time and place the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a person? These may be what movies depict, but scientists still realize that is mission impossible. No first-time infectious diseases have got that kind of resolution. So scientists have to settle on a looser, nuanced criterion, a range, or a scenario that is probable yet by no means definitive, ready to change when new evidence emerges. Unfortunately, the public and even many scientists are frequently confused by this operational origin definition. For one, they think the origin question has been completely settled. For two, they try to jam lesson from one disease into another.
A common refrain is that since origin of SARS was solved quickly, there must be sth fishy when we don’t know the origin of COVID-19 two years later. Well, SARS origin was not solved quickly, and even now it is only a theory, a good one, but still a story or probable scenario nonetheless, never 100% fixed (more later). And there are many other pandemics we know far less about their origins, with COVID-19 being no exception. However, even if we don’t know everything, we have known enough about human history, records, and virus analyses to conclude that it is natural like every other pandemic.
The study of SARS origin is often invoked to guide that of COVID-19, but the narrative commonly described in MSM is unsatisfactory if not downright problematic. The SARS origin issue is often reported as “solved”, while in fact the prevailing answer must instead be treated as a working hypothesis or probability. Maybe it gives a hint, but other scenarios are possible as well. Lab origin excluded of course.
The conventional wisdom is that SARS originated from a wet market in Guangdong where SARS-CoV jumped from a civet or another animal/mammal to a human. Following this roadmap, many scientists in the COVID-19 natural origin camp conjecture that an unknown mammal transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to humans in a market in Wuhan. There are many holes in the evidence and thinking, leaving aside the question of whether Wuhan is truly the Ground 0 (BTW, markets are not unique in China; they are all over the globe).
Right now out of the 80K animal related samples tested in China, including from markets in Wuhan and their suppliers, no SARS-CoV-2 was found. Since no sampling is exhaustive, it is entirely possible that they missed the positive. It is also possible that animal 0 died without a record. But a more vexing question should be: how did the animal get the virus? Both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 came from bats. Guangdong didn’t find the SARS-CoV bat, and Wuhan markets had no bats, so another animal must carry the virus. If the general suspicion is correct, then 1) an animal carried SARS-CoV-2 and infected people at the market, or 2) several animals at the market had compatible CoVs, which recombined to produce SARS-CoV-2.
Consider 1) first. Note that markets are only where the animals are sold, and people have to grow them in a farm at the countryside or catch them in the wild, away from big cities such as Wuhan. Then farmers/hunters/merchants/drivers have to transport them to the city markets. In other words, animals spend much more time and contact more people away from the markets than in the markets. If an animal had SARS-CoV-2 already, why didn’t it infect the farmer, hunter or anybody else before it arrived at the market, as the farmer, hunter, family, or fellow villagers would have had plenty of time, days or months, in close contact with the SARS-CoV-2 animal? Even suppose infection occurred at a Wuhan market, how can one be certain that it was due to the animal, not someone transporting the animal to the market who was infected earlier and then infected others at the market? Or the farmer/hunter/close contacts were infected in the countryside, came to Wuhan without the animal, and infected people? In short, a simple analysis of time and math finds 1) hard to defend.
A simple analysis of biology and math reveals 2) to be even less plausible. Granted, its aggregate possibility is not 0, no lab origin, but giving it 5% is likely still overgenerous. At the minimum you had two animals (this number gives it the best chance), each with a suitable CoV, placed close together inside a market, and there must be enough time for one CoV to infect the other animal, enough time to recombine a new SARS-CoV-2 inside the animals, and then enough time to infect a human. A lot of unknowns here: what were the animals that together produced SAR-CoV-2? The same or different species? How could two “random” CoVs meet and recombine to form SARS-CoV-2? As wildlife animal trade is technically illegal (depending to the definition of “wildlife”), there weren’t probably many such animals in any market, which were often hidden and separated. So, what were the odds of all these low possibility events happening at the same time without disruption, e.g., an animal being killed before SARS-CoV-2 emerged?
Many epidemiologists think what is believed happening in Guangdong and SARS happened again in Wuhan and SARS-CoV-2, but the case with SARS is never shut, so its lesson for COVID-19 is not automatic, due to the simple reasons outlined for 1) and 2). Even in lab research when virus recombination can be sped up, no new CoVs have been reported that way. To overcome the low possibility in 2), one can argue these markets are like incubators for viruses: it is true a single event like 2) is extremely rare, but if you have enough animals in enough markets for enough time, one of those days things will happen, and this time a Wuhan market was just unlucky. This is a valid point and why the aggregate possibility is not pegged at 0.
But following the same logic, why only markets in big cities? Look at the more “natural” settings, people living in the countryside and mountains, wildlife are much more numerous and diverse, more bats definitely. People and animals have a far longer time mingling, and there are local markets at well. So we have both natural and commercial “markets” in rural areas all around the world. Human population wise there may be parity between the cities and countryside, but in terms of animals and time spent around with animals, cities are no match. If markets at big cities are virus incubators, areas outside are incubators many times bigger. Therefore, if 1) or 2) happened at a Wuhan market, huge chances SARS-CoV-2 had already infected people earlier, outside the market. If one argues that it was infection at the market that led to COVID-19 pandemic, everything else being irrelevant, then how do you know for sure that it was not someone getting infected away and then infecting others at the market? Or there wasn’t a low grade transmission elsewhere before a superspreading event at the market? A beautiful theory slain by ugly probabilities.
Thus, focusing on markets in Wuhan is akin to looking at a tree but missing the forest, not necessarily wrong but likely misleading. The same rings true for SARS. Shi Zhengli of WIV, the scientist most maligned by the lab theorists, found SARS-like CoVs in bats in Yunnan, China, geologically and ecologically connected to SE Asia but a distance away from Guangdong, 10 years after SARS, thereby demonstrating that SARS originated in bats, and serological studies identified local villagers in Yunnan with antibodies against SARS, suggesting infections apart from the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. What is missing then is how to get to Guangdong, but the first zoonotic jump likely occurred well before Guangdong.
Therefore, the most probable scenario in COVID-19, based on biology, ecology, history, and math, is as follows. The first human transmission from an animal occurred in a rural area. The virus spread in the countryside undetected for various reasons. Initially cases were low, transmission sporadic and trajectory erratic, but spreading got wider over time due to human movement and traffic. Eventually it arrived at a city or cities. Markets, stores, etc, provided an opportunity for a superspreading event. Pandemic ensued. If the time between the first zoonotic jump and pandemic was long enough, the virus might even evolve in a human host to become more transmissible or pathogenic. When we look for clues about the origin, of course we have a better chance of identifying the later events in cities, but due to the passage of time and loss of records, whatever happened earlier and elsewhere was more likely gone. We just have to accept that nature operates without human noticing and without a paper trail. This chain of events, while speculative for COVID-19, hold true for known diseases in history.
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