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.
  

What If Trump’s Candidacy Is Over By Halloween? Here Are A Few Replacement Kooks Most Republicans Can Probably Get Behind.

-By Noah

Forget Halloween. Will Herr Trumpf’s candidacy for the highest office in the land even last that long? Might it be over by Labor Day? Oh the irony of a Republican nominee for president dropping out on Labor Day. Seems sort of appropriate to me!

It would be the most amazing irony of all if what finally did Donald Trump in were his non-stop attacks on an American Muslim soldier, Captain Humayan Khan’s ultimate sacrifice and that soldier’s Gold Star parents. It’s an attack that Trump’s supporters are cheering and defending every day at his rallies and on TV.

The Republican sentiments behind the attacks on Capt. Khan and his family happen to be a key factor at the heart of the forces that are now tearing the Republican Party apart. On the one hand, they claim to love the military. On the other, they love to express hate for Muslims, resisting no opportunity to do so.

This situation is a very conflicting thing for Republicans. The Republican Party is in a state of Civil War with some at the top of the party worried that Trump’s extremist and bonkers candidacy will jeopardize the party’s control of both the Senate and the House; not to mention state and local offices. It’s not that they don’t like what Trump is and what he stands for; it’s more in the way he presents himself and constantly, so blatantly, reveals what the Republican Party is really about.

Let’s not forget that the Republican Party’s current standard-bearer, with his constant appearances as a guest on FOX “News,” took the lead in the Republican Party’s birther movement, a prominent party movement that, to this day, claims that President Obama is a “secret Muslim” who wasn’t born in the U.S.A. Even in the party’s recent Kleveland Kook-Fest, invited speakers such as Antonio Sabato Jr. made that charge from the convention stage, to wild cheering and approval from the thousands of Republican delegates and party supporters in the audience. This is more than Trump. It’s about the millions of Republican voters who have so eagerly put him where he is today. They built this.

One of Trump’s key spokescretins, Katrina Pierson, as a guest on the execrable Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show, has now even blamed President Obama for Capt. Khan’s death. Capt. Khan died in 2004. Barak Obama wasn’t even yet a Senator in 2004, let alone President. Such, though, is the logic of today’s Republicans. Tuesday night saw another CNN contributor, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, yet again bring up the old Republican chestnut Obama is not a citizen meme.

There have always been fringe, wacko candidates for president. In Millburn, New Jersey, the town I grew up in, there was an eccentric dentist named Dr. Cornell Grossman who ran for president about six times, starting, I believe, in 1948. Considering the mutual tooth obsession, maybe he was a precursor to Vermin Supreme (see above clip, if you haven’t already had the pleasure), but Dr. Grossman was harmless. I just would not have trusted him with the laughing gas. He got about 21 votes nationwide in the 1968 election. He lived and practiced in a large haunted-looking Victorian mansion that was right out of The Adams Family. Our family chose to go to a dentist in a neighboring town.

Times have changed since then. There is no longer a crackpot filter that confines oddballs and crackpots to running as candidates of tiny, insignificant political parties. The best, if not the only, evidence of there being no crackpot filter, in recent years, has come from the Republican Party itself. There is power in social media and nutball radio. Trump’s ascension to the very top of his party proves it.

Think about who Trump beat out for the honor of leading his party: Ben “Xanax” Carson? Rafael “Ted” Cruz? Carly “Pink Slip” Fiorina? Chris “Not sorry I ate all the pie” Christie? 2012 offered the likes of Herman Uzbeckie-Beckie-Stan” Caine”, Rick “Can’t count to 3” Perry, and Michele “Fema Camps” Bachmann? In 2008, a crazy, senile old megalomaniac named Rudy Giuliani spent $50 million on his candidacy and got one whole delegate for his foolishly spent money. Giuliani, like Trump, is a big fan of Vladimir Putin.

Really, when you look at it rationally, how are the crackpot politicians I just mentioned any different than Vermin Supreme or any of the other wackos I’m about to introduce you to? At least Vermin Supreme knows he’s a performance artist. The people that the Republican Party has been trotting before us in recent years are all such sociopathic, narcissistic headcases that they have no idea how they come off to medical people and normally adjusted voters.

The continued digression of potential offerings from the Republican Party is only going down, down, down. I have no doubt that now, after Donald Trump got the Republican nomination, a complete babbling loon like Texas Rep. Louie “Bestiality” Gohmert is now thinking of himself as viable for a 2020 run. I bet similar thoughts have crossed what’s left of the mind of His Royal Pomposity Bill O’Reilly. Scott Baio anyone?

Is it really now such a leap for the Republican Party to go just a little further into the realm of mental darkness and choose someone along the lines of Vermin Supreme. Can it even be called going further? Donald Trump may seem to some people like he is also a performance artist like Vermin Supreme but he’s not. Trump is a man who is hanging ten on the doorstep of an insane asylum. There is a “Make America Great Again” straitjacket in his future. It will be made in China, no doubt, just like the rest of the Trump clothing lines. Vermin Supreme may, in fact, be a better choice for America, no? Mr. Supreme, as the New York Times would call him just may be Donald Trump’s long lost brother, the brother the family kept hidden in the attic, but maybe the family got it backwards.

As the world cringes and America shrugs, it is clear from the daily photos and outrageous pronouncements of Donald Trump, that we have a major party candidate who is in the throes of an emotional and mental crack-up. There are even rumblings and murmurs of concern coming from his own party, including, apparently, RNC chairman Reince Priebus who has been the architect of the attempts to legitimize Trump as a reasonable candidate.

Do Priebus and other Republicans now have some sort of buyers’ remorse kind of thing over the monster that they have engineered? Until this week, Washington has been strangely silent on the issue of Trump’s mental well-being.

Finally, no less a national figure than the President of the United States, Barack Obama, a man given to being irritatingly phlegmatic and reserved no matter what, has felt compelled to speak out. It’s that bad.

The Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president…and he keeps on proving it.

Brian Duffy, a veteran of Desert Storm and newly elected head of the VFW has issued a statement on Trump’s fitness for office.

There are certain sacrosanct subjects that no amount of wordsmithing can repair once crossed… Giving one’s life to nation is the greatest sacrifice, followed closely by all Gold Star families, who have a right to make their voices heard.

Other veterans groups such as VoteVets, the American Legion, and the Vietnam Veterans of America have issued similar statements, with the VVA calling Trump’s statements “disgraceful and un-American.” John Rowan, National President of the VVA says:

VVA joins the chorus of congressmen and senators, veterans, and Military service organizations, in condemning the flagrantly disloyal utterances of the Republican Party nominee for President.

So far, only two of those members of Congress are Republicans. However, as I write this, words like ‘intervention’ are being tossed around by a few Republicans while most remain silent or openly continue to support their guy. Media outlets such as MSNBC and even some of the staunch Trumpists at FOX “News” are reporting that Reince Priebus, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich want to meet with their boy about his need to change his tone. You can be forgiven if you are now humming “Send In The Clowns” to yourself.

So, what is the alternative for the Republican Party? For some Republicans to be even talking about things like “intervention” goes a long way in telling us just how far into the nutball world their party has gone. Would they dump Trump and put Pence at the top of their ticket? There is an existing mechanism in both major parties to do such a thing. Would they just dump the whole ticket altogether? I would not hold my breath on that but you know what they say about desperate times.

We have the past history of Republican actions to point out what direction they would move in if such an extreme measure was taken. We cannot expect a political party that has steadily moved in the direction of complete, utter insanity for the past 50 years to suddenly reverse course. The current emotional and mental breakdown of the Republican Party and the emotional and mental breakdown of Donald Trump go hand in hand. They are manifestations of each other. The marriage of Trump and the Republican Party was inevitable. Is this a case of ‘til death do they part?

The Republican Party does not move forward. Taking the more positive direction is unknown to them. This is a party of lunacy and low road politics. A small number of Republicans are beginning to issue self-serving, lip-service missives about being marginally appalled by Trump’s actions but the truth of their feelings lies in the fact that they have not withdrawn their endorsements or money. For instance, Trump still holds the proud endorsements of Republican Party leaders such as Paul “Crazy Eyes” Ryan, $enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former party presidential nominee John McCain, the man who gave us another nutball, Sarah Palin. Who knows where this will go? Do not expect profiles in courage from what passes for republican leadership these days.

The fact that the recent Kleveland Kook-Fest, chose Donald Trump as their leader is only the latest manifestation of the depths to which Republicans will go when choosing a standard bearer. Insane Dick Nixon? Mindless dementia patient Ronald Reagan? Drug and alcohol damaged Dubya? All of the other 2012 and 2016 Republican Primary candidates? It’s worth noting that even the endorsements of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and every single other white supremacy group in the land did not give the Republican Party pause and deter them from nominating Donald Trump and singing his praises. Why would they?

The Tea Party, the power center of the Republican Party, created in large part by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, adopted tri-corner hats with teabags dangling from the brims. Will Republicans soon start wearing boots as hats like Vermin Supreme? Will Mr. Supreme be debating Hillary Clinton in October?

Or will they look to one of these other crackpot possibilities for the top of their ticket? Will we soon see Chris Christie and his wife standing on stage with one of these people? Which one might they choose to lead their party against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats?

First, they could, with typical insincerity, lack of a sense of irony, and/or extreme cynicism, reach out to gay, Latino, and African-American voters in one fell swoop with Pogo Mochello Allen-Reese, aka the “Patriot Prancer”?

Pogo is a former stripper and Christian crusader from San Antonio. He is already running as a Republican and hopes to create jobs by convincing Oprah to move her production company to San Antonio.

Second, there’s the infamous David Jon Sponheim and his America’s Third Party. Why would David Sponheim be an ideal replacement for Trump, you ask? Well, just check out his video!



Sponheim, a former Democrat, also offers nightly video chats. That’s a lot more that Trump’s paltry wee hours bizarro tweeting.

To be fair-- and I’m always fair-- there is at least one “independent” candidate for president, Ms. Tami Stainfield, that may actually be more nuts than at least most Republicans, and therefore might not fit the bill as a Trump replacement. One, she is a woman, but she is no ordinary woman. Two, although she gained experience by having run back in 2012, she is a woman who is known for speaking in tongues and claiming that men and robots have taken over her brain and use her to speak for them. So, maybe, on second thought, Tami would work after all. You decide:



There are others, of course, many others, but Mr. Supreme has the advantage of being willing to reach out to all Americans. His offer of a free pony to all Americans is awfully hard to beat!



Vermin even got his name on the New Hampshire Democratic Primary ballot and proudly stated to the media that you could now see ‘Vermin’ as an honest, transparent voting option on the ballot. Unfortunately, he didn’t do very well in the primary. Perhaps that was just due to the fact that he chose the wrong party to run with. Obviously, he would have done better to throw his boot into the Republican ring.

While we can laugh at or with the Vermin Supremes of the world, Donald Trump is no longer a source for amusement. Real vermin are leading the Republican Party. Once you’ve nominated Trump, you can nominate just about anybody.

Vermin Supreme may not be the only possibility for Republicans, but he may be the most sadly logical one now, if only because he has now run at least three times and has offered every American that free pony. If Trump really has all the money he says he has, maybe he could save his wretched candidacy by also offering us all free ponies. Absurd as things are, maybe it really could save his campaign. “You’ll all get a great pony! It will be the best pony, a huge pony, believe me!” Complete with all the horse manure you could ever want.