Lack of Understanding (Updated)

IMO the editors of the Washington Post exhibit a serious lack of understanding in their remarks about the need to know the origins of SARS-CoV-2:

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION joint investigation with China into the origins of the coronavirus looked into a dark chasm and saw darkness. The report offers theories about pathways of a zoonotic spillover from animals to people, but not a single animal source among thousands has tested positive with SARS-CoV-2. The investigators did not conduct a forensic probe into the possibility of a laboratory leak. The origins of the pandemic remain obscure. Finding the answer is as important and elusive as ever.

with the remarkably tone deaf conclusion:

China has a responsibility to open its doors. This is not a blame game, but an essential investigation into the cause of this pandemic to make another one less likely.

At this point there is no way to separate “an essential investigation” from a “blame game”. The Chinese authorities have staked their collective reputation on the virus having originated anywhere but China so they will naturally leap onto any explanation which would support that supposition. Frozen food. Some as yet untested animal species. Anything regardless of lack of evidence.

I think that ultimately we’ll need just to accept that we’ll never have iron-clad evidence for how or when the virus originated but, given the very large number of animals that have been tested without finding any results, we should formulate our policy responses as though the virus was spread from an accidental leak from the WIV. What sort of policies would would that imply? I would suggest at the very least we should impose an absolute ban on U. S. government funding on virological research in China for the foreseeable future.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are more pointed in their conclusions:

The U.S. and 13 other governments released a statement Tuesday expressing “shared concerns” that the WHO study “was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.” That’s nice, but it sounds like they’re prepared to conclude that Covid’s origin story is unknowable and move on.

That shouldn’t be the end of it. The Biden Administration knows the underlying intelligence and should release it to the public. Unless it does, China’s propaganda backed by the WHO’s failure will prevail in much of world opinion. The Biden Administration says it wants to revitalize multilateral institutions, and that should start with refusing to accept the WHO’s Wuhan whitewash.

That, too, is nice but IMO we should be prepared to proceed, armed with the realization that we’ll never know the real story.