Why We May Never Learn the Origin of the Novel Coronavirus

Building on the site of the World War II-era Japanese biological weapons research and testing facility at Harbin in China (source).

by Thomas Neuburger

One of the more interesting side issues in the “novel coronavirus” story is its biological origin. ("Novel coronavirus" simply means "new coronavirus," as opposed to those already known to scientists.)

Where did the virus come from? We’ve seen many stories that state affirmatively (but without evidence) that the virus crossed the human-animal boundary in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China, a place where fresh meat and fish are sold to the public. We’ve also seen speculation (also without evidence) that the virus “escaped” the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a level-four biological research facility known to have been doing research on coronavirus.

Because the stories that the virus came from the Wuhan lab are associated with Donald Trump, and because they are seen as part of his “blame China” agenda, they are largely and widely dismissed by writers who act as intermediaries between expert opinions and what the public should be nudged to believe.

This dynamic is also true of the various Russiagate stories as well; because Russiagate theories hurt Trump, they are given wide credence by “thought leaders” in the media — the same intermediaries, in other words — even when they’re patently absurd. Chris Hayes, for example, gave many prime time minutes to Jonathan Chait and his theory that Russia “may have been” been grooming Trump as a Russian asset since the 1980s.

Again, patently absurd, but we live in absurd times. Chait’s original article appeared in no less respectable a venue than New York magazine. Its editors may have been off that day. Not sure I can say the same for Chris Hayes’ editors.

So it’s difficult to sort out the truth-bearing wheat from anti-Trumpian chaff. Much anti-Trump opinion is solidly grounded, and when it is, it’s given media space to breath and be seen (and be seen and be seen and be seen). Where Trump is right, however, the response is silence, at least from the mainstream press, and relegated to the rightwing press, where people can be nudged to discount it.

The coronavirus origin story has been caught and victimized by that dynamic. Here’s how Wikipedia, which these days and on select topics is heavily politically edited, describes the debate about the origin of the novel coronavirus (live links in original; emphasis added):

In January 2020, theories, some of which invoked a belief in a conspiracy, circulated that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from viruses engineered by the WIV, which were refuted on the basis of scientific evidence that the virus has natural origins.[3][4][5][6][7] In an opinion column in the Washington Post, Josh Rogin wrote that US State Department cables from 2018 raised safety concerns about WIV’s research on bat coronaviruses.[8] In April 2020, U.S. intelligence officials launched examinations into unverified reports the virus may have originated from the accidental exposure by WIV scientists studying natural coronaviruses in bats.[9][10][11][12]

Leading virologists have disputed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the institute.[13][14] The virologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which studies emerging infectious diseases, has noted estimates that 1-7 million people in Southeast Asia who live or work in proximity to bats are infected each year with bat coronaviruses.[13][14] In an interview with Vox, Daszak comments, “There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let’s compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it’s just not logical.”[14] Jonna Mazet, Professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis and director of the PREDICT project to monitor emerging viruses, has commented that staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained at US labs and follow high safety standards, and that “All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident.”[13]

Now comes a new story, from Newsweek no less, that says the obvious — if no one knows for sure, then no one knows for sure — but this time with a look at the arguments that make each side at least plausible.

The hook for the article is a study that says just this and offers evidence for a lab origin. Note in the description below how much the study is discounted by the author and the sources he chooses to quote, despite the fact that its message, again, is simply the uncertainty (emphasis added).

Scientists Shouldn’t Rule Out Lab As Source of Coronavirus, New Study Says

A new scientific analysis of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has argued that scientists should not rule out the possibility that the virus originated in a laboratory setting, no matter how likely or unlikely that could be.

While U.S. officials and intelligence agencies have held out the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China has dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory. The scientific community has generally agreed with China’s position that the Coronavirus jumped species in nature, probably at a wet market in the city of Wuhan. That view has been in part based on the evidence that the COVID-19 virus was not genetically manipulated….

The new study, which has not been peer-reviewed and was published on the site bioRxiv hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, notes that the novel virus is “well adapted for humans.” It was authored by scientists from the Department of Zoology & Biodiversity Research Center at the University of British Columbia, the Fusion Genomics Corporation and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. bioRxiv cautions that studies published on its site should not “be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.”

“Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected,” the authors of the study explained in the abstract.

“The sudden appearance of a highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 presents a major cause for concern that should motivate stronger international efforts to identify the source and prevent near future re-emergence,” they warned.

The analysis explains that there is still no clear evidence to point to a precise origin of the virus. The researchers explained, based on the genetic makeup and samples of the virus, it remains unclear whether SARS-CoV-2 adapted inside an intermediary animal host, within a human, or in a laboratory setting. It could have potentially jumped from species to species within a lab.

There's a clear nudge for the reader in all of this doubt-casting, despite the main point of the research, which, again, is stated in the abstract:

“Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected.”

The authors go on to emphasize the importance of determining the virus’s origin: “Even the possibility that a non-genetically-engineered precursor could have adapted to humans while being studied in a laboratory should be considered, regardless of how likely or unlikely.”

This is certainly as much "evidence" as the wet-market theory offers.

The Trump Dimension; the China Dimension; the Biological Warfare Dimension

I mentioned in the introduction that this story is difficult to follow because writers and reporters, many of them anyway, are invested in the Trump dimension — the part of their brain that stands up and says, “But what if this helps Trump? Do we want him re-elected? Do I dare agree with him in public?”

Clearly that dimension should not be a reporter’s concern, as others like Ryan Grim and Matt Taibbi have noted many times. Still, Grim and Taibbi are not in the mainstream of industry opinion on that. Thus the Trump dimension influences the story.

Another dimension through which the story can be seen is via the nascent war with China that Trump opponents think Trump is trying to gin up. Most reasonable people — certainly all U.S. elites with manufacturing and financial ties to China — think provoking greater hostilities is short-sighted in the extreme, not to mention costly.

Thus any angle of the coronavirus origin story that enflames anti-China sentiment is seen, among civilians and elites, as dangerous to the U.S. national interest — and certainly dangerous to the interests of consumers of Chinese goods.

The last dimension through which this story can be seen leads to the dark world of biological weaponry. I doubt there’s doubt in any American’s mind that the Pentagon has a well-established biological weapons program, carried out in high-level labs of our own, many of them civilian in the same way that much of the nuclear weapons program is handled by the private sector.

Would it be surprising then if China were running a biological weapons program using its own civilian labs? Of course not.

None of this speculation is proof, however, and as the article states, there’s “no clear evidence” that points to any precise origin. Yet elsewhere in the piece, the writer says, “Scientists and the intelligence community have largely dismissed conspiracy theories that the virus was genetically manipulated. Many scientists have also stressed that it is more likely that the virus arose naturally than that it leaked from a lab, although there is not yet conclusive evidence for either theory.” (emphasis added)

If there’s no evidence for or against a “lab origin” theory, why does the writer, in his own voice, call it “conspiracy theories” to think so? Clearly he’s editorializing here, or his editors are editorializing for him.

Even if the Origin Is Learned, Will the Public Ever Be Told It?

Which brings me to my main point. It’s as far “out there” as a reputable publication like Newsweek can go to say in a headline that “Scientists Shouldn’t Rule Out Lab As Source of Coronavirus,” and even then the writer feels obliged to layer in caveats and editorialize against a “lab theory of origin” as not mainstream enough to be mentioned without "conspiracy theory" derision.

The most common belief by those who notice this discrepancy is that the writer’s self-editing comes either from his “Resistance journalism,” his belief that it’s his duty to help bring an end to the Trump presidency by discrediting it at every turn, or from his understandable unwillingness to criticize China. (For the cost of criticizing China in public, consider what happened after a mere NBA coach criticized Chinese handling of the protests in Hong Kong.)

But please consider also the questions this story raises about the state of biological warfare research in the world’s major powers like the U.S. and China:

• Is such research going on? Almost certainly.

• Is it in U.S. military planner’s interest to make sure this research isn’t publicly discussed? Of course.

• Are biological research facilities a danger to public safety? Of course. All weapons of mass destruction are a planetary risk. As much as the Pentagon would like us to believe biolabs are 100% sealed from the world and pose no threat, that can’t possibly be true.

• Finally, should biological weapons of mass destruction be researched and manufactured at all? Is it fundamentally immoral of any nation to engage in it, including our own? These are questions no one conducting such research wants a complacent nation to ask, regardless of the answer.

So even though the novel coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 women and men worldwide — an appalling number, wouldn’t you think? — discussing even the possibility that its source is a lab leak somewhere puts all biological research labs everywhere under question, and especially those labs tasked with developing the most deadly disease vectors they can create.

The problem with that discussion, even more than the Trump problem or the war-with-China problem, makes this discussion — what's the origin of the novel coronavirus? — almost impossible to have.

And yet, as the authors say, since it’s obvious no one knows where the thing really came from, “we need to take precautions against each scenario to prevent re-emergence.”

With 300,000 dead and counting, that too should be obvious.