Nicholas Wade - Where COVID Came From

Where COVID Came From

Nicholas Wade

WHERE COVID CAME FROM

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of the pandemic remains uncertain: the political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel.

In what follows I will sort through the available scientific facts, which hold many clues as to what happened, and provide readers with the evidence to make their own judgments. I will then try to assess the complex issue of blame, which starts with, but extends far beyond, the government of China.

By the end of this essay, you may have learned a lot about the molecular biology of viruses. I will try to keep this process as painless as possible. But the science cannot be avoided because for now, and probably for a long time hence, it offers the only sure thread through the maze.

The virus that caused the pandemic is known offcially as SARS-CoV-2, but it can be called SARS2 for short. As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that SARS2 jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. It matters a great deal which is the case if we hope to prevent a second such occurrence.

Ill describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. Its important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction. And having inferred that direction, Im going to delineate some of the strands in this tangled skein of disaster.

After the pandemic first broke out in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that many cases had occurred in the wet market a place selling wild animals for meat in Wuhan. This reminded experts of the SARS1 epidemic of 2002, in which a bat virus had spread first to civets, an animal sold in wet markets, and then from civets to people. A similar bat virus, known as MERS, caused a second outbreak in 2012. This time the intermediary host animal was camels.

The decoding of the SARS2 viruss genome showed it belonged to a viral family known as beta-coronaviruses, to which the SARS1 and MERS viruses also belong. The relationship supported the idea that, like them, it was a natural virus that had managed to jump from bats, via another animal host, to people. The wet market connection, the only other point of similarity with the SARS1 and MERS epidemics, was soon broken: Chinese researchers found earlier cases in Wuhan with no link to the wet market. But that seemed not to matter when so much further evidence in support of natural emergence was expected shortly.

Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses. So the possibility that the SARS2 virus had escaped from the lab could not be ruled out. Two reasonable scenarios of origin were on the table.

From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin, a group of virologists and others wrote in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, they said, calling on readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

Contrary to the letter writers assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they dont know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: they were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszaks organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially at fault. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to The Lancets readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, We declare no competing interests.

Virologists like Dr. Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For twenty years, mostly beneath the publics attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural spillovers, the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom, an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

A second statement which had enormous influence in shaping public attitudes was a letter (in other words, an opinion piece, not a scientific article) published on March 17, 2020, in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus, the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter.

Unfortunately, this was another case of poor science, in the sense defined above. Viruses can be manipulated in ways that leave no defining marks. Dr. Andersen and his colleagues were assuring their readers of something they could not know.

The discussion part of their letter begins, It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus. But wait, didnt they open by saying the virus had clearly not been manipulated? The authors degree of certainty seemed to slip several notches when it came to laying out their reasoning.

The reason for the slippage is clear: the authors offer two technical reasons why manipulation is unlikely, but neither is in any way conclusive. Their blanket assertion that the virus could not have been manipulated, even though grounded in nothing but two inconclusive speculations, convinced the worlds press that SARS2 could not have escaped from a lab. A technical critique of the Andersen letter takes it down in harsher words.

Science is supposedly a self-correcting community of experts who constantly check each others work. So why didnt other virologists point out that the Andersen letters argument was full of absurdly large holes? Perhaps because in todays universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the communitys declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.