Covid Origins
Where did Covid come from? There are two leading theories: a natural zoonotic spillover, most likely from a Wuhan wet market, or the escape of the virus from a lab, most likely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). For reasons both inane and infuriating, this argument has become politicized and polarized (like so many other things), to the point that everyone is spinning the facts and cherry-picking facts that support their argument. There’s a lot of blame to go around here, from congressmen trying to score political points to scientists not wanting to jeopardize their research agenda, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight one of the most egregious offenders: New York Times science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. In May of 2021, she tweeted that the lab leak theory had “racist roots”. Others had already said this, but this was a leading media figure with a large public platform. It became not only incorrect to say that Covid may have escaped from a lab, but immoral. Unsurprisingly, the public discourse quickly shifted away from the theory that made you a bad person and toward the one that was either factually true or false.
I could rant and rave all day about how harmful it is to add moral significance to an objective question, but that article has been written many times before. The only aspect I want to call attention to is that between the two theories, it seems that blaming a Chinese wet market for a pandemic that killed millions of people would be more racist than claiming it escaped from a government facility. Regardless, in the interim, the tide has slowly turned. The leading scientific paper that supported the zoonotic transmission was authored by scientists who seem to be more unsure in their private communications than in their published results. There are also indirect ties between the US funding bodies and the Wuhan lab. Several US agencies have since thrown their support behind a lab leak, albeit with low confidence. Then there was this article in the New York Times, detailing why a lab leak is the most likely.
I always leaned toward the lab leak hypothesis because of the existence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Think about it this way: if a novel, deadly disease popped up in Atlanta, Georgia, what would the likely source be? There are certainly several options. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest in the world, so perhaps a disease started elsewhere but was discovered in Atlanta because of a traveler. Atlanta is also home to a zoo and a world-renowned aquarium. Perhaps there was a zoonotic spillover.
Then there is the CDC. Headquartered in Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one of the world’s leading experts in the most deadly pathogens known to man. They are the lab that’s allowed to keep some of the most deadly substances on planet Earth. To take one example, only two labs in the world have vials of live smallpox. One is the CDC. Thus, if a novel disease appears in Atlanta, the CDC is the most likely culprit. There are certainly other possibilities, but lots of cities have large airports and zoos. Only Atlanta has the CDC. Only Wuhan has the WIV.
The debate over zoonotic transmission vs. lab leak will continue to rage for some time. We will likely never know for sure where Covid came from. Instead, we need to balance the various pieces of evidence and be satisfied with what is most probable, not what is certain. To that debate, I’d like to add two points that I haven’t seen being made. The first is more of a question, the second more declarative.
First, how can a zoonotic spillover from the Wuhan wet market be distinguished from a lab leak that resulted in a super spreader event of a disease that was already spreading? One underreported aspect of Covid is it takes some time to reach epidemic status. One infected individual in a city doesn’t cause an epidemic days later. It takes weeks to months. The first Covid death in the United States occurred in California on February 6th. The victim hadn’t traveled abroad, so that means the virus was already circulating in the US in late January, and likely even earlier. Yet the US wouldn’t be in the throes of Covid for another month. The first hospital to far exceed capacity, Elmhurst Hospital in New York, wouldn’t get overrun until the first days of March. California didn’t reach epidemic level until December of 2020. This is not a disease that goes from patient zero to hundreds of deaths in a matter of weeks.
The US and China may have had different Covid trajectories for several reasons, but the point remains. Covid was in the US for over a month and a half, and possibly for far longer, before it became an epidemic. At a minimum, the first death in the US occurred four weeks before the first hospital was in a crisis. Thus, if the earliest cases in Wuhan were traced to a wet market in December of 2019, and those cases were part of a significant cluster, the disease had already been spreading for some time. As early as December 12th, patients in the late stages of the disease were already in hospital beds. I want to stress that I’m not an epidemiologist, so I may be making some obvious errors. It seems to me, however, that the wet market has the hallmarks of being an early super spreader location rather than the origin. There are other problems with the wet market hypothesis as well, not least of all that once that was identified as a possible origin, all testing would be heavily biased. Cases associated with the wet market were much more likely to be identified than cases associated with other locations, thus inflating the market’s importance.
The stronger doubt I have about the wet market hypothesis is the provenance of the data. Why are there not more questions about where this data is coming from? There is strong reason to doubt its completeness. Now, it’s easy to accuse someone of being a conspiracy theorist for doubting the data without any proof. Anyone would acknowledge that the Chinese government has the incentive to cover up a lab leak and spin the data to make a wet market seem culpable, but without any evidence, it’s just an empty theory.
Here’s the thing, however. We know that the Chinese government attempted to cover up the origins of Covid. They admitted it. On December 30th, 2019, a doctor named Li Wenliang wrote a series of messages on a WeChat group of doctors giving information about a SARS-like disease that had been spreading in Wuhan. Even then, he knew this was dangerous. He asked that this information be kept within the group. Another doctor in the group warned that they should be careful, lest the group chat get shut down. Lo and behold, the Chinese government noticed. On January 3rd, just four days later, police took Dr. Li in for questioning and made him sign a formal statement promising he would not do such a thing again. Later, a national television station aired a report accusing him of “rumor mongering”.
The Covid coverup by the Chinese government began on January 3rd, 2020. There is no doubt or argument for that fact. They interrogated a doctor and made him publish an apology for telling the truth. For trying to warn other doctors in a private message that there was a new disease spreading and they should take precautions. It is clear that the doctors in that group knew saying anything against the party line could result in harsh discipline. Why in the world is the scientific community treating data produced by the same society as being unbiased? Any data given after January 3rd needs to be viewed warily. I feel like I must be missing something here. When Monsanto or Exxon funds a study, people are cautious about the conclusions, and deservedly so. The same applies here. Does anyone think if there was hard evidence that Covid escaped from a lab it would ever see the light of day?
We will likely never know with certainty whether Covid emerged from a lab or an animal crossover. Continue to follow the discussion and let's see where it leads. I hope that today scientists can investigate a lab leak, zoonotic transmission, or even alternate theories without fear of opprobrium. Just keep in mind that we are dealing with known bad actors that have no compunction at hiding the truth, and treat the data they produce accordingly.