Since the publication on May 14th of the letter in Science calling for a new investigation into the origins of COVID-19, the lab leak theory has officially gone mainstream. Numerous articles testifying to its plausibility have been published, and President Biden ordered intelligence agencies to “redouble” their efforts to examine the virus’s origin.
One of the best articles that’s been published in recent weeks is a piece by Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times. Although she doesn’t come down in favour of one theory or the other (lab leak versus natural origin), she does lay out much of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak. And it’s not in short supply.
To begin with, you have the location of the first outbreak in Wuhan, China – home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (as well as the Wuhan C.D.C.). It would be a remarkable coincidence, many have observed, if the pandemic just happened to get started in a city that hosts one of the world’s major coronavirus research labs.
Some have countered that labs tend to be built where the viruses are. However, this simply isn’t true in the case of the Wuhan Institute, as Tufekci points out. The lab has “been where it is since 1956… It was upgraded and began to focus on coronavirus research only after SARS.” Even Dr. Shi (the “Batwoman”) has said she “never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan”.
Next, you have reports about the rather lax safety standards inside the Wuhan Institute. In 2016, for example, scientists ran experiments on a coronavirus capable of infecting human cells in a BSL-2 lab – a biosafety level that “has been compared with that of a dentist’s office”. And in 2017, a Chinese state-TV story about Dr. Shi’s research “showed researchers handling bats or bat feces with their bare hands”.
Then there is the fact that Dr. Shi, her colleagues and the Wuhan Institute, not to mention the Chinese authorities, have given misleading or incomplete accounts of key events, or have simply withheld information. Aside from the location’s first major outbreak, this is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence for a lab leak. If the virus’s origin is zoonotic, why wouldn’t you let other scientists look over your files?
On 3rd February, 2020, Dr. Shi and her colleagues “announced in Nature that they had found a virus in their database, RaTG13, whose genome sequence was 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2”. Internet sleuths then “combed through genomic databases and found that RaTG13 was an exact match for a bat coronavirus called 4991”, which had been implicated in an unexplained 2012 outbreak of pneumonia among miners in Yunnan. Neither the name change nor the previous outbreak were mentioned in Dr. Shi’s paper.
That same group of internet sleuths also discovered that “a genomic database maintained by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with information about thousands of bat samples… went offline in September 2019”. (The official explanation is that it had been “subjected to hacking”.)
On 10th December, Peter Daszak – organiser of the infamous Lancet letter, and a close collaborator of Dr. Shi’s – dismissed suggestions that there were live bats inside the Wuhan Institute. In a now-deleted tweet he wrote, “We collect bat samples, send them to the lab. We RELEASE bats where we catch them!” However, contrary evidence subsequently emerged.
As Tufekci notes, “The Chinese Academy of Sciences website has listed the Wuhan institute as having at least a dozen cages for bats, and in 2018 the institute applied for a patent for a bat cage. Dr. Shi has talked about monitoring antibodies in bats over time — which would not be done in a cave.”
Most suspicious of all, the Chinese authorities have straightforwardly “refused to share direct records from the lab”. After the publication of the Science letter earlier this year, Dr. Shi told a reporter, “It’s definitely not acceptable” for other experts to review her lab’s records…
Another piece of the puzzle is the genetic sequence of the virus itself, including the presence of a so-called “furin cleavage site” on the virus’s spike protein. This is something that Nicholas Wade discussed extensively in his essay back in May. Tufekci, though, isn’t convinced. She notes, “aspects of the virus that have made some suspect it was bioengineered could also be evidence that the virus evolved naturally”.
The fact that no intermediary host species has yet been identified arguably lends support to the lab leak theory. However, Tufekci raises the possibility that the virus passed straight from bats to humans. In that case, she says, “no intermediary animal is necessary, since it could have been any interaction with a bat – by a villager or a field researcher”.
Finally, there’s the frequency with which lab leaks have occurred in the past. Bayes theorem tell us that the probability of a hypothesis, given some evidence, is a function of the conditional probability of the evidence given the hypothesis, as well as the prior probability of the hypothesis.
If you take all of human history, the vast majority of pandemics have been caused by zoonotic spill-over – which would suggest the prior probability of a lab leak is quite low. However, sophisticated research labs have only been around for a few decades. (We can’t pin the Plague of Justinian on inadequate safety protocols.)
“A better period of comparison”, Tufekci notes, “is the time since the advent of molecular biology, when it became more likely for scientists to cause outbreaks.” In fact, nearly every case of SARS since the original outbreak in 2002 has been due to lab leaks. There have been “six incidents in three countries, including twice in a single month from a lab in Beijing”.
And such leaks are by no means confined to China. In 2007, foot-and-mouth disease “escaped from a drainage pipe leak at an English lab with the highest biosafety rating, BSL-4”. I’m not aware of what percentage of epidemics are caused by lab leaks, as opposed to zoonotic spill-over, but it’s probably larger than we’ve been led to believe.
Tufekci’s article contains a lot of valuable insights, and is worth reading in full.
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In a way it doesn’t really matter whether the virus came from a lab or not, and whether it leaked or was deliberately released.
The major crime committed here has been the response by global governments and the global corruption and crimes against humanity which have been committed since then.
Cui Bono, Arthur, Cui Bono?
Indeed Marvin.
Nice to see you looking a bit more upbeat than normal. Have you been relieved of car parking duties then?
Yep, another distraction for the sheep like masses to use up their limited thinking capacity on; just like Johnstone’s wallpaper or Handcock’s porno movie.
To be fair they probably prefer that kind of “scandal” to the more uncomfortable soul searching involved in realising they have been complicit in the whole shit show.
TLDR….lab leak or bat jump, who cares?
I disagree that it does’t matter.
If any of us through our negligence or wilful actions ended up causing thousands of deaths, you can be sure you would be held responsible and pay a stiff penalty.
A deadly virus coming out of a research lab accidentally or otherwise is no different to a chemical spill causing a bunch of deaths and chronic health problems, for example.
Look at the Grenfell Tower incident. Did people go, oh well, that’s just too bad, let’s just move on?
And the horrors unleashed by this bloody virus directly and indirectly are a million times worse.
If in addition to that, the people who were involved with the lab happen to be also the people that have led the disastrous response and have been acting partly to cover for themselves, as appears to be the case, then we are talking of a crime of colossal proportions.
No, it matters a lot if the virus came from a lab.
Stewart, I agree 100%. If this virus (as insignificant as it is) did not occur naturally and the people who manufactured and released it (intentionally or otherwise) are the same people who are orchestrating the lockdowns and the “vaccine” rollout, then WE ALL NEED TO KNOW THAT!
It also matters how much the Chinese new about the virus, e.g. infection fatality rate, chances of asymptomatic transmission, when they knew these facts, and most importantly if what they new was the same as what they and their stooges in WHO was telling the world. In other words can we trust anything the Chinese and their useful idiots in the West say? I’m sure that most people will agree with me that the answer is NO, NEVER, NOT ON YOUR LIFE.
As you mentioned Grenfell, look where we are with the public inquiry. If there ever is a similar procrastination for the matter under discussion, it would be delayed indefinitely, on the hope that some other excuse will turn up.
Since the middle of the 20th century, authoritarianism has been advancing throughout the west in line with Hayek’s predictions in ‘The Road to Serfdom’. Covid was simply an opportunity to be exploited, regardless of where it started.
Yes. And what is coming down the road because the media are colluding.
It matters enormously, because an engineered virus may well behave and evolve differently to a natural one. We assume from history that viruses evolve to be more transmissible but less deadly, but with an engineered virus, our historical assumptions are invalid.
That potentially poses a whole new set of problems for vaccination efforts and other mitigation efforts going forward.
Biden says ‘re-double your efforts’.
SAGE to examine if this really represents an exponential growth in efforts as Biden implies. Warwick and the London School of Lilt with the Totally Tropical Taste think it’s worse than exponential growth, while the innovative Journal of the Bleeding Obvious has been shut by an ex-LibDem Google intern for saying fibs against Klaus.
In other news a survey says 99.9% of parents don’t care what is injected into their offspring, whereas their pets give them paws…
Meanwhile, from an Aqua park in Almeria the siren song pulls us, pulls us…
Lab leak. Obvs.
The last year has been Global Big Pharma covering up their complicity and funding.
Or worse.
What’s worse?
Well…
Do the vaccines deliver what the virus failed to?
Or is that just the batshit nonsense that one reads on the internet (that comes to pass a few months later)?
Nah, can’t possibly be Lab origin.
Remember all the effort and venom put in by BBC style fact checkers to denigrate the suggestion that it came from a Lab lsst year as Wah! Drumpf, tinfoil hat, orange bad, wacist, don’t understand science.
Dr Mercola had an article about this in March 20, to which there was an instant pile on by the MSM/left with all the above insults and more.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/03/20/niaid-funded-virus-research-and-used-outbreak-against-us.aspx?ui=36c98fd6133c5bf9528fb7553591088a46f9c4af6c84f99ca1d23fec0592b408&sd=20200722&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20210320_HL2&mid=DM823375&rid=1111392787
A sociologist?
Sorry but I think a more informed piece from someone in the CIA or a scientist specializing in this field might be more believable.
The way things are going/have gone, I no longer find ANYTHING believable. Well not from the mainstream, still plenty of competence from people you will never see on TV and mostly banned from YouTube.
I was going to read this, but when it came from the New York Slimes, I
I could not.
That outfit which was up front in denigrating President Trump for blaming this virus on Wuhan and rightly called it the Chinese Flu.
This is all a game being played put by the Globalists. President Trump was telling the world that Chyna was behind a chemical and cyber attack on the West with the help of the Globalist Corporations, in March 2020. All he got for his truth was a Corrupt Globalist Democrat Party throwing impeachment suits against him.
If that wasn’t shameful enough the Globalist owned British Establishment decided to walk away from a strong ally and stand with a corrupt socialist political project called EU. Even though the people had voted to leave.
But the biggest scandal of all is the media. A media that was born out of the need to tell citizens the truth and bring them freedom to make their own informed decisions. The media have been an utter disgrace and an enemy to its fellow countrymen and women. The media have lied, subjugated and twisted the truth for many years but the suppression of a truth that may now depopulate half the Western world and that includes the useful idiots in journalism and politics is a crime to be punished.
The facts that have and still are being ignored or ‘massaged’ need to be gotten out to a much wider audience before this disaster ends up with a Communist CCP treating the West like they treat their own. The few at the very top gaining the best of everything whilst the other 1.2 billion citizens work as slaves and serfs 16 hours a day with no home of their own, no land of their own., no money of their own, no aspiration to a better future.
The CCP celebrate 100 years of communism showing a forty acre Tienneman Square (the square of massacre) filled with identically dressed, happy clappy, flag waving citizens. All working for the CCP. All owning nothing and being happy. All brainwashed and told to ignore the poverty, the torture, the forced abortions, the misery of those outside the establishment. This is what will become of some our grandchildren. Social credit, poverty, one child/forced abortions, working for the Government and if they question that government they will ‘disappear’. Johnson is no conservative. His wife is a closet communist. Most of the cabinet and all the MPs are greedy cowards. There are no words to describe the media’s part in all this.
Spot on and frightening especially your bit about the future.
At the risk of sounding wooly and idealistic, we, as a human race, would be far more capable of rectifying situations appropriately and speedily if we were just a bit more willing to admit to our mistakes and then use some common sense. Unfortunately we are obsessed with looking good or powerful or correct or all knowing. We need to get over ourselves at every level from Davos to govt to CEOs to science boffs to the gobby person in the street, making a video or being incapable of calm debate here. Any surgeon who has made a mistake and had a patient die on the table knows the feeling of having to accept their own inadequacies, admit their mistakes and move on. Lesson learned. Come on, globalists! Sorry but you won’t win this one! Back off!
The New York Times is hardly the font of real or latest news. The lab leak/release is old news, well explained on independent media a year ago.
I was suspicious from the start of so called vaccines, how come they were so advanced in development of a vaccine just at the time it was NEEDED?
It is also a possibility that the virus came from the US lab at Fort Detrick (which had to be closed due to security concerns) and transported to Wuhan during the World Military Games held there where 300 US personnel competed.
Maybe the idea from the US Deep State and it’s Dr. Strangeloves was to harm the Chinese economy. They believed it was not that virulent and there would be no blowback as was the case with SARS -Cov-1, how wrong they were.
Just imagine what the accusations would have been if Covid had originated in a US city just after 300 Chinese military personnel had been there.
The Chinese government has already accused the US of bringing the virus to China.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/chinese-foreign-ministry-spokesperson-implies-us-military-brought-coronavirus-to-wuhan/
UK Media Bubble: It’s only true if it appears in the Guardian or the New York Times.
If the NYT is telling a little bit of truth that must be because the globalists are fighting a longer war with their erstwhile ally – CCP China.