I wanted to call attention to this piece by Paul D. Thacker at RealClearInvestigations. In the piece Mr. Thacker explores researcher Paul Baric’s loss of NIH grants, suspension, and an alleged cover-up surrounding his role in the development of SARS-CoV-2. Here’s a snippet:
Since the pandemic’s outbreak six years ago, a slew of emails and documents released by Congress and through public records requests cast a dark shadow on the NIH and the virologists it funded, with nearly two-thirds of Americans now believing the virus came from a laboratory in China. Although the question of whether the virus that causes COVID-19 originated in a lab or in the wild is still a subject of debate, there is no doubt that scientists at the highest level worked to dismiss the lab-leak theory and shut down their connections to the work in Wuhan. Efforts by Collins and Fauci to delegitimize dissenting voices have been reported, but the central role played by Baric has been obscured. The UNC researcher’s work on coronaviruses and his connection to the Wuhan lab are now receiving renewed attention after RealClearInvestigations learned that the federal government has quietly removed Baric from all his NIH grants. RCI has also learned that UNC placed Baric on leave. UNC has also refused to cooperate with NIH officials as they have attempted to gather more facts and emails about Baric’s coronavirus research, which evidence leads them to believe led to the coronavirus pandemic.
I don’t see that this reveals as much as its author seems to think it does. There is a sizeable gap between being interested in gain-of-function and novel coronaviruses and actually developing them. The article relies heavily on stacking implications: each individually ambiguous fact is presented in a way that encourages the reader to infer a conclusion that none of the facts independently establish.
As I see it the case Mr. Thacker builds would be dismissed in criminal court since it doesn’t meet the standard of “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” and, while it might survive early dismissal in a civil case where the standard is “preponderance of the evidence”, whether that case would be decided in favor of the plaintiffs remains to be seen. While the article strengthens the case that a lab origin was prematurely and self-interestedly stigmatized and that U.S.-funded coronavirus research deserves much more scrutiny, it does not prove that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered or that Dr. Baric, UNC, EcoHealth, or WIV created the pandemic virus.
I continue to believe as I have for some time that we do not know the origins of the virus and the sole prospective way of identifying it for sure is in the discovery phase of a civil suit if such a thing were allowed to go through, a very long shot.
At present, the majority of evidence favors zoonotic origins. We are unlikely to resolve this soon as China will not allow anyone into their lab and it took us over a decade to find the origins of the AIDS virus. As a point of clarification, everything I have read on the efforts of people trying to actively discredit the lab leak theory was actually people trying to discredit the idea that it was deliberately developed as a bioweapon against the US. There was a lot of disagreement about the lab leak theory and people wrote about why they disagreed but that’s different from trying to suppress the idea.
Steve
There are three possible sources of the COVID-19 virus:
1) Man-made virus from gain of function research.
2) Natural virus escaped from Wuhan Lab from COVID research of bat samples.
3) Natural spillover.
From my perspective, the man-made version is most likely due to the presence of the furin cleavage site. I would put the likelihood over 70%. The second most likely is that a natural virus being studied in the lab escaped. I would put these odds around 25%. The least likely is natural spillover. I would put the odds less than 5%.
From a legal perspective, that is not enough to convict someone of creating a deadly virus. Unless there is clear evidence of a cover-up, it will be hard to convict.
Charlie Musick: From my perspective, the man-made version is most likely due to the presence of the furin cleavage site.
Furin cleavage sites are common in naturally-occurring coronaviruses, as well as other viruses such as HIV. They can be acquired through horizontal gene transfer. The particular furin cleavage is not particularly optimized as one would expect in an engineered virus. That doesn’t rule out artifice, but doesn’t rule it in either.
Keep in mind that these sorts of viral outbreaks regularly evolve.
The Asian rice paddies are the usual source of novel viruses, because their complex ecology facilitates interspecies transfers. So Steve is probably right.
But there are other theories that are more fun. Ron Unz over at his blog posted a theory that the virus was developed at USAMRIID’S germ warfare lab at Ft Detrick, MD, and planted by US military athletes during the international military games held in Wuhan in 2019.
The second is that the research at Wuhan was conducted at the request of and with the financial support of Fauci’s CDC in order to evade legal prohibitions on such research in the US.
Whatever. The stories about covid will never go away. Conspiracy theories are too much fun.
And, of course, we are still living with the side effects. The supply chains are still not fully back.
Is there any actual evidence for SARS-CoV-2 having emerged via zoonotic transmission other than the Persistence Theory? The problem with the Persistence Theory in this case is that the H1N1 pandemic of the 1970s is thought to have arisen from a lab leak. In other words, it actually cuts the other way.
Agree that we’ll never know the origin of the Covid virus, however, lets try to learn from the many mistakes made and plan for whatever is next.
Dave Schuler: The problem with the Persistence Theory in this case is that the H1N1 pandemic of the 1970s is thought to have arisen from a lab leak.
Persistence Theory predicts genetic drift. It’s the *lack* of genetic drift that supports an accidental release leading to the 1977 outbreak. While the outbreak may have been from a lab, the virus itself was natural. However, it does indirectly support the plausibility of an accidental release of COVID-19, but it is not direct evidence of design (to which we responded above).
Zachriel, while furin cleavage sites are common in coronaviruses, they are not common on the spikes. This is what made COVID-19 more readily transmissible to humans. The furin cleavage site at this location is unique to COVID-19 among other coronaviruses. If it occurred naturally, then a researcher exposed to 1000 natural coronaviruses would be most likely to catch and spread that one. This is why I put the lab leak of a natural variant as high as I did.
While that would explain a natural coronavirus starting the pandemic, I would still place my bet on man-made through gain of function research. There a a couple of reason. First, there was the active research going on in the lab. The fact that a proposal was written to do this type of work a year before the outbreak is pretty convincing for me. I’ve done enough R&D work to know that a lot of bootleg experiments take place in labs even when funding is not approved.
Second, if it were natural spillover, I would have expected to have seen COVID-19 and variants in other wildlife. Earlier outbreaks like MERS showed this.
At the end of the day, we end up with guesses around probabilities. I can’t conclusively say it was a engineered. You can’t conclusively say it came from a natural spillover.
Charlie Musick: The furin cleavage site at this location is unique to COVID-19 among other coronaviruses.
Furin cleavage sites on spikes are not unique among coronaviruses, including human coronaviruses. They are biologically routine, and coronaviruses recombine frequently.
Zachriel, Thanks for pointing out my error in the post. My statement should have been:
“The furin cleavage site at this location is unique to COVID-19 among other BAT coronaviruses.” While common among human coronaviruses (which is part of the reason they are contagious), they are not common on bat coronaviruses:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8216856/#:~:text=SARS%2DCoV%2D2%2C%20which,lineage%202b%20coronaviruses%20(Sarbecoviruses).
From the abstract: “SARS-CoV-2, which is considered to be of bat origin, contains a cleavage site for the protease furin at S1/S2, absent from the rest of the currently known betacoronavirus lineage 2b coronaviruses (Sarbecoviruses).”