The former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade is no stranger to controversy. Now he has written a long essay arguing that the “lab leak” hypothesis is more plausible than the “natural origin” theory.
As readers may be aware, there are two main theories for SARS-CoV-2’s origin. One maintains that the virus originated in bats, and then jumped to humans, most likely via an intermediate host species. The other states that the virus originated in a lab, but then accidentally escaped, perhaps due to inadequate safety protocols.
At the start of the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by many scientists and much of the mainstream press. Since then, however, more and more evidence has emerged that casts doubt on the alternative, natural origin theory.
Back in January, New York Magazine ran a long essay by the journalist Nicholas Baker, which tentatively argued the lab leak theory could be right. Then in March, Undark ran a piece by the science writer Charles Schmidt, stressing that the virus’s origin is very much an open question. At the end of March, The Telegraph ran a similar article by the author Matt Ridley and the biologist Alina Chan. (Indeed, the pair are writing a book on the pandemic’s origin called Viral, to be published later this year.)
In his new essay, Wade adopts a more forceful tone. Though he acknowledges “there is no direct evidence for either theory”, he maintains that the lab leak theory provides a far better explanation of the available facts. As Wade notes:
It’s documented that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells and humanized mice. This is exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged. The researchers were not vaccinated against the viruses under study, and they were working in the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 laboratory. So escape of a virus would not be at all surprising. In all of China, the pandemic broke out on the doorstep of the Wuhan institute. The virus was already well adapted to humans, as expected for a virus grown in humanized mice. It possessed an unusual enhancement, a furin cleavage site, which is not possessed by any other known beta-coronavirus, and this site included a double arginine codon also unknown among beta-coronaviruses.
By contrast, there are several pieces of evidence that the natural origin theory has great difficulty explaining:
No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did. There is no evidence from hospital surveillance records of the epidemic gathering strength in the population as the virus evolved. There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else. There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons.
Though some scientists claim we may never pinpoint the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2, the debate will no doubt continue over the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, Wade’s essay is worth reading in full.
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Imagine that a truly dangerous manmade virus was released as germ warfare. Governments would be falling over themselves to find and push vaccines knowing that the usual rules of viruses dying out would not be followed . If this is the case here why doesn’t one Government “break ranks” and say it was China wot done it?
Because this is covert asymmetric-bio-warfare. Since the Iraq war warfare has been more clandestine in nature and involved the convoluted sponsorship of “combatants” by all sides in a Kissingeresque game of geo-political manipulation. Nation states no longer fight conventional wars, it’s of no use to “us” to go to war with the Chinese nation state. That would lead to a conventional nuclear escalation and rampant nationalism, a mode of warfare now left behind in the 20th century. Instead, combatants are sponsored, ideas planted, refugees funelled, resources moved, debt transferred etc. etc. all in a bid to achieve aims. Now it looks like bio-warfare is possibly an active part of this asymmetric war.
Christopher Hitchins was so right about Kissenger and I had my doubts about Nixon bringing CCP back in from the cold in the 70’s.
They nominally let them back in but the systemic differences that would normally have led to war could not be overcome. If nuclear weapons didn’t exist China would have been swallowed up by the western powers years ago in a hot war. Rightly or wrongly those nationwide differences of priorities and resources that lead to war have not been addressed so we are now stuck in a situation where the elites of both sides – who are now pretty interconnected – jostle to bring about the outcomes of conventional war without ever actually drawing swords.
I should have added that opportunism is also one of the viable tactics. Covid-19 may be natural but being used for ulterior motives. That may include the insinuation that it is man made.
And here’s a rabbit hole. The Chinese vaccine differs from those being forced on people around the world. They are full protein nucleocapsid activated vaccines, whereas the Pfizer and AZ create only the spike protein. Now we have this:
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/?s=09
And so the Spike itself causes vascular disease via ACE2 binding and to what extent they can work in any significant way is arguably compromised.
A very convenient revelation for the Chinese vaccine. Is this a bio war being conducted right in front of our eyes?
Pinch of salt and an open mind required.
Very interesting. It’s possible China have engineered COVID and also had already developed an effective vaccine, and were thus confident releasing it would hurt their enemies more than themselves.
Of course it was. And Fauci was responsible for directing US money into this research in Wuhan after it was banned in the States in 2014. That man has blood on his hands.
There was a good YouTube video called The Elephant In The City, doing the rounds a week or two ago, I can’t find it now. This talked about the gain of function experiments being done in Wuhan, which, though illegal in the USA were indeed being funded by Fauci, and which are the most likely cause of the leak.
It has struck me for some time that the coincidences involved make the ‘escape’ hypothesis at least as likely as any other explanation.
I have also thought that intelligence about this origin, reaching government via intelligence briefings could, at least in part, explain the hysterical pan-European response, as well as triggering obfuscation.
Circumstantial, but credible, given what we know about ‘gain of function’ research.
That has been my view for a long time.
I posted a link the other day to a Sam Harris interview in which his subject maintains that an Ebola-deadly virus with ease of transmission and robustness in the field had already been created by western scientists.
While it may currently be ‘safe’ in a bio security lab no such lab is entirely risk free and if those benign guys can do it, so can someone else.
Yes. Isn’t there a film with such a scenario?
Really, it sounds like we should be doing whatever it takes to stop some of these experiments, like Israel with Iran. Especially if biological is likely to be more of a threat than nuclear in this century.
“There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other beta-coronavirus possesses”
Good article but one slight correction – there are some other B-coronaviruses with a Furin Cleavage site.
Just not very closely related.
o/t. Self isolation update.
In a response to this mornings article by Will Jones about the weak evidence for the use of masks I posted about an unexpected but voluntary overnight stay in our major regional hospital from which I emerged on Sunday afternoon having been told that I had come into contact with a Covid in the ward and must therefore self isolate for ten days.
At 16.00 on this wet & miserable Bank Holiday Monday afternoon I received the following phone call (from memory).
(Confirm ID) “Hi Karenovirus, my name is ‘Judy’ from Infection Control at (hospital)”.
‘Suppose I’ve got it too’ thinks I even though my test on ‘mycare’ website was negative.
“When you left yesterday you were told that one of the (6) patients in your ward had tested positive for Covid19 and that you would have to self isolate for ten days.
After further investigation on the gentlemen he was found to be Covid negative so now you don’t have to self isolate”.
My flabber was duly ghasted but I thanked Judy for taking the trouble to call me on a Bank Holiday.
I cannot recall reading about such a reversal of a test result anywhere. One possibility is that they realised it had been conducted in a cack handed way.
Any other suggestions?.
Maybe they had enough ‘positives’ for the day
This is important. I suggest you write to them and ask for a full explanation.
Human cells? Where exactly did they get these human cells?
Let the records state that these dr. Mengele experiments can end badly. No wonder the Christian People’s Alliance was warning from the start about this apparent lab leak.
I’m very sorry if you’ve already seen this, but I just want to get this video out there since it’s the easiest way for many people to understand this important story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Df8HXyhao
Thanks for the link @elephantcity. Interestingly I searched for the exact phrase “The Elephant in the City” on YouTube, and despite scrolling down HUNDREDS of results, this video DID NOT come up.
Well know feature of you tube. Theyll only return what they belive you should see
After the governments and media have painted anyone suggesting this lab leak idea as a conspiracy theorist, it is very interesting that suddenly the wind has changed. But now we have Sir Richard Dearlove (from MI6) and a writer for the NYT posing this as a serious possibility. I think what this means is that after having done a lot of planning and preparation, the security services are now planning to magically come up with “evidence” for this lab leak so that they can place the blame firmly onto China. This will then be used as a pretext for starting a war with China. John Pilger has reported quite convincingly that the US/UK have been diligently planning a war with China over the years – if “evidence” of this was reported, then a large portion of the US/UK population would probably be happy for China to be attacked.
Quite possibly, but the war would not be a war as we know it exactly. It would involve proxies, cyber and economic warfare. Possibly it could go biological. Conventional warfare simply isn’t possible without nuclear conflagration, and carrier fleets (the basis of all post WW2 warfare) are now obsolete.
In fact, there’s a good case for arguing that we are already well into the war.
One odd data point to note is that China has experienced very low levels of this virus, certainly compared to the size of the nation. That fact has to tell us something.
It confirms to me that China created this virus so that it doesnt attack their own people genetically speaking to the same degree that it attacks people of other nations. I also suspect now that Wuhan wasnt the release point, what we saw from there was a show so that if we found out that the virus was a bioweapon China could claim that its release was an accident because it was first found near the Wuhan bioweapons lab. In reality the weapon was released deliberately on the people of other nations.
Certainly my take on this!
The available figures from China are in the ‘fairies at the bottom of the garden’ league.
I seem to remember rather a lot of people believed in the Cottingley fairies. (And the Piltdown fraud for that matter).
Just like the available figures everywhere else.
I suspect their bogus low numbers came originally from the CCP in Wuhan (who feared reprisals from Beijing if they were honest), but by the time Beijing discovered the fraud they were compelled to stand by those numbers, because by then Covid had become a global pandemic.
The rest of the world would likely have taken more timely and decisive action had China’s numbers been honest from the start, and the Chinese know that: they now believe they can’t come clean because if they did the rest of the world would be hell-bent on revenge.
If Covid was a bioweapon designed not to harm ethnic Chinese, wouldn’t it be obvious very quickly because ethnic Chinese minorities in the West would suffer hardly any damage unlike the rest of the population?
And just think, if Trump had said it was probably zoonotic then the whole MSM would have ruthlessly investigated and proved it had come from a Chinese lab leak (or deliberate release!).
There have been credible reports of SARS-CoV-2 being identified in tissue samples from well before Dec 2019, and not in China. How does this fact fit in with the Wuhan lab escape theory?
It doesn’t have to have escaped in December, that only when the cover up was initiated. No testing no Covid remember.
However its a very good question regardless
This story from The Palm Beach Post identified 11 people from one small Delray Beach Florida neighborhood who had symptoms in November and December – and all 11 tested positive for COVID antibodies in April.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20200516/coronavirus-florida-antibody-tests-bolster-suggestion-covid-spread-early-in-florida
This Seattle Times story identified two people in Washington state who had symptoms in December and later tested positive for antibodies.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/antibody-test-results-of-2-snohomish-county-residents-throw-into-question-timeline-of-coronaviruss-u-s-arrival/
This story identified an Alabama couple who had symptoms in December and tested positive for antibodies multiple times in April, May, June and now even in January 2021 (more than a year after their onset of symptoms). The husband nearly died from the virus the first week of January 2020.
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/06/25/an-alabama-man-nearly-died-from-covid-19-the-first-week-in-january/
This You Tube clip is an interview with the mayor of Belleville NJ. He had bad symptoms in November 2019 and has tested positive for antibodies twice. He thinks he contracted the virus at a conference in Atlantic City where several other attendees also became sick with COVID symptoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpB3Lm0IP9w&fbclid=IwAR2HFr4-3PLI6LAcdpgGRknnSLFCPCbZDG8APbgfVm5iJC04h2FM80klq30
WSJ story – COVID antibodies found in 106 American Red Cross blood samples collected between December 2019 and January 2020. And the study was only from a few weeks in just nine states.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449
Excepts from this WSJ story:
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found evidence of infection in 106 of 7,389 blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states across the U.S., according to the study published online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.”
The study’s authors, for reasons not fully explained, say that these findings “may not” be “generalizable” to the public at these points in time.
However, if once did extrapolate these findings to the population at large, he would find that at least 3.78 million people may have had undetected or unacknowledged signs of infection in December 2019 and January 2020.
Also, never explained by authorities is how at least 16 Americans from four geographically-dispersed states could have tested positive for COVID antibodies when everyone of these people experienced COVID symptoms in November and December 2019. Were all 16 of these people “isolated” cases. How did these people contract the virus if it wasn’t “spreading?”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found evidence of infection in 106 of 7,389 blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states across the U.S., according to the study published online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.”
If someone reads the actual CDC study – released Nov. 30, 2020 – they will see that 1.43 percent of the archived Red Cross blood specimens showed signs of “COVID infection.” The study’s authors, for reasons not fully explained, say that these findings “may not” be “generalizable” to the public at these points in time.
However, if once did extrapolate these findings to the population at large, he would find that at least 3.78 million people may have had undetected or unacknowledged signs of infection in December 2019 and January 2020.
Also, never explained by authorities is how at least 16 Americans from four geographically-dispersed states could have tested positive for COVID antibodies when everyone of these people experienced COVID symptoms in November and December 2019. That is, how did these people contract this virus if it wasn’t even in America at this point?
This theory was well investigated at least 10 months ago. Intersting that the media seems to have ignored it until now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFjQyLqOxI
But there is copious evidence the virus was spreading – and spreading widely – in nations throughout the world even before the Wuhan outbreak. For example, in the U.S in November and December of 2019. How is this explained?
I’m not saying the virus did not originate in China (or Wuhan), but if it did, it would have had to “escape” much earlier to have already spread to, say, Washington state, New Jersey, Alabama and South Florida by November or December 2019. And positive antibody tests confirm the virus HAD infected people in all of these states by these months.
Also, the ONE study done of archived Red Cross blood shows signs of virus infection in 1.42 percent of blood donors in mid-December 2019 and mid-January 2020. These blood samples were found in nine U.S. states. How can this be explained?
I also found it strange that no other study of archived blood units – from different points in time and collected in different states – has ever been performed.
One of the original conspiracy theories involved the “world military games”, which took place in Wuhan in autumn 2019. Huge contingent from US and other nations. UK didn’t take part. Allegedly a lot of athletes became sick while over there. Whether they brought something back, or took something out, who knows. I tried relating size of team to outbreak size, but of course anything could have been going on in the months prior to March 2020, because it isn’t so noticeable until the propaganda starts.
Yep. That’s one of the main “conspiracy” theories. Who knows if it’s true? I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand though. It is a FACT (if one believes in antibody test results) that people in four different American states had COVID in November and December. I don’t think ALL of these positive antibody results could be “false positives.” Plus, one of these ladies – who was sick with all the COVID symptoms in December – has now had at least three positive antibody tests.
The big “tell” to me is that the CDC has not questioned a single one of these 16 people. It’s like they know what they would find if they did do a legitimate investigation into these likely “early cases.”
I don’t trust the Chinese government. But I dang sure also don’t trust the U.S. Government. In fact, if U.S. Government officials tell me that A happened, I’m betting on B. This is based on much experience and observation.
Would the U.S. authorities advance and push a whopper of a lie?
Of course it would. Even today, half of America believes Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and that the government of Iraq was responsible for the 9-11 attacks.
Do I think the U.S. government could make up a cover story that China was responsible for the “China flu?” Ahm, call me cynical, but, ah, yes.
BTW, the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain.
How is this even a debate? They find a v similar virus in the bat caves, where people died after shovelling the bat poo. They experiment on it in the Wuhan lab, inc. “gain of function” and then despite the billions of people in China, it just happens to turn up in the population OF THE SAME CITY. These are undisputed facts. Then you have China’s all round shady behaviour around it, which can only be said to be done with such a lack of self-awareness that they just don’t really care that everyone knows.
Plus I don’t care what anyone says about Bill Gates or The Great Reset etc It’s clear to me that all the ways in which our lives have changed have been to more closely align with life in China.
The recombinant viral vector vaccines in the AZ and J&J mold are methods of immunization that use live replicating viruses that have been engineered to carry extra genes derived from a pathogen that produce the proteins against which the body generates immunity.
This sounds very much like the kind of virus/vector vaccine that Professor Luc Montagnier claimed leaked out of the Wuhan lab – COVID19
“The possibility is probably they wanted to make a vaccine against the Aids. So, they took small sequences of the virus and they installed them on the larger sequence of the coronavirus.”
Coronaviruses are considered ideal candidates for viral vectors.
Their potential as viral vectors for HIV vaccines were considered to hold particular promise.
It would seem that COVID-19 has been carefully derived from a specific population of bats, smuggled from one BSL-4 laboratory into another, partially bio-engineered by having the genetic coding for a novel spike-protein region inserted that matches that for HIV and then passed through either cultured host cell lines or a series of hosts having similar cell receptors to humans, such as ferrets, to accelerate and direct its mutation and smuggled out of the BSL-4 laboratory to infect the general population. A dual-use gain-of-function project linked to a vaccination program gone rogue.
Professor Luc Montagnier also stated he believed that the genetic inserts from HIV applied to the coronavirus would gradually disappear as the virus mutated.
Professor John Lee theorized that the virus may have been more lethal in China and as it mutated, it became less lethal so it could spread.
A vaccine that re-inserted that code may set up cytokine storms throughout the planet.
“Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2020/05/12/plague-ship-red-death-resolution/
Growing investment in bio-science, loose ethics, integration between, government, academia and corporations, access to pathogens, vaccine technology, weaponization, modified germs capable of being let loose by controlled proxies, the capacity to create various levels of macro and micro economic and bio-power dependencies, and the desire to leverage the capability to act as global saviour as James Giordano described the goals of China, but also markers for the Supra-national Deep State.
The recombiant viral vector mode of immunization in the Az and J&J mode, using live replicating viruses that have been engineered to carry extra genes derived from a pathogen that produce the proteins against which the body generates immunity.
This sounds very much like the kind of virus/vector vaccine that Professor Luc Montagnier claimed leaked out of the Wuhan lab – COVID19
“The possibility is probably they wanted to make a vaccine against the Aids. So, they took small sequences of the virus and they installed them on the larger sequence of the coronavirus.”
Coronaviruses are considered ideal candidates for viral vectors. Their potential as viral vectors for HIV vaccines were considered to hold particular promise.
Professor Luc Montagnier stated he believed that the genetic inserts from HIV applied to the coronavirus would gradually disappear as the virus mutated.
Professor John Lee theorized that the virus may have been more lethal in China and as it mutated, it became less lethal so it could spread.
A vaccine that re-inserted that code may set up cytokine storms throughout the planet.