In hunt for Covid’s origin, new studies point away from lab leak theory
theguardian.comAfter reading the whole article, I didn't see anything that "points away" from the lab leak theory, unless it's supposed to be this:
> “The connection between RaTG13, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Sars-CoV-2 isn’t required any more,” says Robertson.
But it was never required, just possible (and perhaps plausible, according to many people).
I did, however, find lots of transparent attempts to throw mud at the lab leak hypothesis, like this little gem of spontaneous irrelevance:
> The resurgence of the lab leak theory – promulgated early last year by Donald Trump and his supporters, before being dismissed – has been fuelled by the...
The gist of the article seems not to be related to any "new studies", but rather this:
> This leaves the lab leak theory resting principally, for now, on unverified reports of three cases of respiratory illness among the WIV’s nearly 600 staff in November 2019, a winter month in Wuhan, and the fact that the institute took a database of viral genome sequences offline two months earlier – to protect it from hackers, they told WHO investigators.
Fine. But what does the alternative hypothesis rest on? The only claim they make on behalf of the natural origin is that it has happened before. Well guess what: this[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
The lab leak hypothesis can arise after pandemics because humans need an explanation to feel safe from the chaos of "nature (as) the biggest bio-terrorist". Coupled with the general poor science education, people soothe themselves with conspiracies. It's fine, so long as it doesn't get leveraged by empire for war against economic enemies.
Given gain of function research it's a reasonable hypothesis, but it's only a hypothesis in the absence of significant evidence or a credible whistleblower.
I dislike the use of "conspiracy theory" as a thought stopper to block discussion of anything potentially politically problematic. It doesn't take a conspiracy for a virus to leak from a lab, just an accident. Was Chernobyl a conspiracy where the Soviets somehow wanted to melt down a reactor?
Some people can be asymptomatic carriers, so it could even have leaked without anyone noticing until the pandemic had started.
If there is any conspiracy it would have come later when people tried to cover their asses. That's almost always how real conspiracies unfold. For example, when financial collapses occur usually the most egregious financial fraud is found to have happened as the crash happened and in the aftermath.
BTW given that the research was being done in China but funded by the USA and involved collaboration with US researchers, you can't only blame China. Both the US and China could take the blame if a lab leak turns out to be true. My guess is that both nations would point a finger at the other and say "they did it" while the rest of the world would say "you both did it."
Yes! And also, the urge for a rapid answer is ideological. Never has the origin of a virus happened in a year. Or two. The Spanish flu was from Kansas. Ten years after the fact SARS is mostly proven to be from bats. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27551349&goto=threads%.... MERS, similarly the origin is from African Bats but the actual precise location is still being investigated. The impulse to answer now, in 90 days or even to answer in the next decade is cultural and being leveraged and weaponized in every direction. The answer is: We cannot know and do not know and won't know for a long time. Any kind of accusation or speculation, especially against America or China has the chilling effect of destroying any possible evidence. Perhaps that is in effect the point. How can China or America or X prove the negative? This is a weaponized geo-political conversation precisely because the politics is forbidden into the framework of the conversation that is, at its outset, profoundly political and ideological.