Has the lab leak been proven false? That’s the impression you’d get reading yesterday’s BBC article, which deals with two new studies on Covid origins.
The article quotes one scientist as saying, “We’re now as sure as we can be, based on the fragmentary evidence we do have, that this was a spillover event that happened in the market.” And it quotes another as saying the new studies would “correct the false record that the virus came from a lab”.
On Twitter, a third scientist claimed the studies provide “conclusive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 emerged via at least 2 zoonotic spillovers”. She went on to say that it’s now “100% clear the pandemic originated at Huanan market”, dismissing what she called “speculative bullshit about a lab leak”.
What exactly do the new studies show? The first analyses the spatial distribution of early cases, and finds that they were “geographically centred” on the Huanan Seafood Market. The second analyses the genomic diversity of early samples, and concludes the data are “best explained by at least two separate zoonotic transmissions”.
So is that case closed then? Not so fast.
According to critics, these papers don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, which is that there was a superspreader event at the Huanan Seafood Market in December of 2019. And just because many of the early cases were detected there, doesn’t mean that is where the virus originated.
As a matter of fact, the studies were published as preprints back in February, and since then their language has been watered-down considerably (notwithstanding the quotations above, which were not taken from the papers themselves).
For example, the preprint version of the first study claimed that it found “dispositive evidence for the emergence of SARS-Cov-2 via the live wildlife trade”. Yet the latest version admits there is “insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure”.
In my recent interview with Matt Ridley (co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19) I asked him about the preprint versions of the studies, which had previously been covered by the New York Times. Here’s what he said about the first:
It shows significant errors of data handling (having extracted location information from a low-resolution analogue plan with errors in it) and having ignored blatant problems with “ascertainment bias”. That is to say, the reason that many early cases were connected to the market was partly because the diagnostic criteria for covid in the early days included whether the person had been to the market: a circular argument.
And he added the following:
A preprint from the head of Beijing’s Centers for Disease Control came to the opposite conclusion: that the market was a place where the outbreak was amplified, but not where it started. Since then a new peer reviewed paper has just been published by Virginie Courtier and Francisco Ribera, which also comes to this conclusion: the pattern of positive samples in the market (from counter-tops, sewage etc) does not suggest any one stall was central to the outbreak and all samples but one are of a single strain of the virus.
Ridley’s co-author, Alina Chan, has written a short article with her own comments on the new studies. And unsurprisingly, she’s not convinced. Chan notes that even after peer review, the first study “fails to acknowledge that early Covid-19 cases had been identified with ascertainment bias”.
In short, both the lab leak and natural spillover theories are still in play. And personally, I’d sceptical of any scientist who dismissed a perfectly reasonable theory as “speculative bullshit” – it suggests she’s not treating the data dispassionately.
Stop Press: Former CDC Director at the time of COVID-19’s emergence Robert Redfield has rejected Anthony Fauci’s claims that it’s more likely COVID-19 originated naturally. He told Fox News he still suspects COVID-19 emerged “from the laboratory” and “had to be educated in the laboratory to gain the efficient human-to-human transmission capability that it has.” According to Redfield, “There’s very little evidence, if you really want to be critical” to support the natural spillover theory.
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Of course they don’t exclude the possibility of a much earlier event.
At the risk of driving Steve Kirsch nuts: To me, it’s either man-made and escaped from the lab or was set free deliberately (more likely), or, it doesn’t exist.
I think the short answer is NO. A long way back, there were stories about the identity of the allegedly novel infection in different parts of the world – e.g. Brazil, Italy and others. As to whether there was actually a single source at all, or more than one that happened to be identified in a similar timeframe, we just don’t know for sure. Maybe the (SARS) Cov-2 viruses was around for rather longer before it was identified – after all, who looks for something novel at sufficient level of detail?
Remember that most of us do not report onto the records that we have suffered from most minor respiratory infections, such as the Common Cold, many of which are thought to be caused by other coronaviruses.
I dare not read BBC articles at the risk of puking
Short of confessions from multiple participants (as there must have been) in any leak cover-up, I doubt we will ever know. The evidence, if there is any, has probably been destroyed. It’s possible that those pulling the strings don’t know either – they just suspected it was a leak. At least some of those working at the lab must know what viruses they had in the fridge – was c19 one of them? Has that question been definitively asked and answered?
So why hasn’t the animal host been found after 3 years? one of many unanswered questions on COVID.
Lab leak is at least as likely as natural origin and any scientist who thinks otherwise has a COI, like this Covid God Fauci.
What’s been proven decisively is that there was a cover up to suppress lab leak theory and only that should make one very suspicious.
Everything points to a lab leak. Occam’s Razor: there’s enough evidence from the structure of the virus, which includes proteins that could could not have got in there naturally, that it came from a lab.
Maybe someone at the lab sold some infected bats to the Wuhan market – it happens in China, apparently – who knows? Maybe the virus emerged in several places at the same time because the Chinese unleashed it from facilities in S America and Africa as well as the Wuhan lab. It doesn’t change the facts that the virus bears all the hallmarks of being created in a lab and the Wuhan lab was doing the exact research that created this virus.
The amount of panicked covering up by the likes of Daczak and Fauci is deeply suspicious. Ultimately, the scientific establishment knows that if it doesn’t cover things up or at least obfuscate, the vast amounts of money it’s acquired (without questions being asked for decades) will dry up and all public trust in scientists will be annihilated.
These are people who have gleefully destroyed the West. This is no exaggeration: our liberty and future expectation of liberty has been obliterated. The possibility of new lockdowns, of our formerly free nations turning into police states overnight for any reason a government dreams up or – should the mooted pandemic treaty happen – if the WHO decrees it, is a Sword of Damocles hanging over out lives.
Virology labs – which are really bioweapons facilities using gain-of-function research under the auspices of researching cures for viruses that aren’t even in circulation – need shutting down and burning to the ground. The WHO needs criminal investigation and all Chinese and communist influence removed. The UN needs ground-up reform.
The BBC needs to be privatised. Its authority is in tatters and its report is Chinese propaganda.
I still fail to understand why this matters. Sars-CoV2 is there. Absent a confession, it’s origin can’t be determined with certainty.
That said, so-called gain of function research is no research at all as it doesn’t contribute anything to our knowledge about the real world. It’s just otherwise unoccupied people playing with really expensive lego bricks. At best, the outcome is completely uninteresting. At worst, these genome fiddlers might end up creating something really dangerous, say, a variant of Yersinia Pestis which spreads via aerosols and is immune to all known antibiotics.
Considering that so-called research biologists have – in the past – tried to grow bacteria which are resistant enough to alcohol that they surive common antiseptic procedures, there can be no doubt that people calling themselves scientists exist who are be mad enough to try that. And they’d doubtlessly also get funding for this from same the people who already fund semi-random genome fiddling for killing the time.
All of these so-called research labs need to be razed to the ground. And everybody ever involved with channeling money to them needs to be removed from any position of influence on the grounds that he’s an irresponsible twit of the kind who’d detonate a nuclear warhead in a shopping mall just to find out what happens.
And on a related topic, did you see the latest reports that rather than originating in the Soviet Union’s chemical research lab, Novichok actually occurred spontaneously in an orchard just next door, and was found to be growing on the trees?
BBC journalism is basically advocay for establishment panicky preoccupations, leavened by woke duplicity. Today on BBC 24 supercillious “science” special correspondent Roger Harrabin used a positive story on print technology to launch a specious jeremiad about “us all using too much stuff”. He sounded mire like Neil from the Young Ones with his “we’re all doomed man” schtick than a balanced reporter.
Apparently the BBC overlooked to place both the Wuhan Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Wuhan institute of Virology on their helpful map.
They obviously didn’t realise that both labs might actually be located IN Wuhan, although their names do give a sort of clue .
In the interests of objectivity, Igor Chudov has done it for them :-
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/lie-exposed-bbc-says-covid-19-came?utm_source=email