I’ve been very wary of giving credence to conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. The main two being that it was US military athletes at the World Military Games in Wuhan in October last. Or that it was China releasing a lab-made version on the world.
The idea that it’s man-made seems pretty clearly debunked.
But could it have been accidentally released by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)? Again, I didn’t have enough to judge.
Now, we have an article by Jim Geraghty titled “The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs”.
When I saw that headline, I assumed it was going to be yet another hit piece on China. There are plenty about these days.
But no... it’s carefully balanced, unhysterical, with numerous links to scholars and researchers, many Chinese, many from Wuhan, to suggest -- and just to suggest, not claim for sure -- that perhaps the coronavirus was an accidental release, from research going on at the WIV.
As I was reading the article, I was wondering: just what does the Chinese government, Beijing in particular, gain from hiding the truth or from preventing people from researching and publishing the whole story of when and where it arose? They gain nothing. And they lose even more international credibility from their pathetic cover stories. It is, after all, a multi-Trillion dollar question.
Jim Geraghty is deadpan in his concluding paras:
I believe she believes that. But it might have, as the careful research linked in the article shows.
That’s why an open and independent investigation ought be allowed by Beijing.
Remember: the Hua’nan Wet Market, the alleged culprit, doesn’t even sell bats....
Summary: I’m going to give this theory a great big “MAYBE”.
ADDED: 23 April 2020: From Caixin article, 14 April:
The idea that it’s man-made seems pretty clearly debunked.
But could it have been accidentally released by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)? Again, I didn’t have enough to judge.
Now, we have an article by Jim Geraghty titled “The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs”.
When I saw that headline, I assumed it was going to be yet another hit piece on China. There are plenty about these days.
But no... it’s carefully balanced, unhysterical, with numerous links to scholars and researchers, many Chinese, many from Wuhan, to suggest -- and just to suggest, not claim for sure -- that perhaps the coronavirus was an accidental release, from research going on at the WIV.
As I was reading the article, I was wondering: just what does the Chinese government, Beijing in particular, gain from hiding the truth or from preventing people from researching and publishing the whole story of when and where it arose? They gain nothing. And they lose even more international credibility from their pathetic cover stories. It is, after all, a multi-Trillion dollar question.
Jim Geraghty is deadpan in his concluding paras:
Virologists have been vehemently skeptical of the theory that COVID-19 was engineered or deliberately constructed in a laboratory; the director of the National Institutes of Health has written that recent genomic research “debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.” And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definivtive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city.“Batwoman” of my subject line is Shi Zhengli, (石正麗). She is known as China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions to bat-caves over the past 16 years. It was she that found SARS of 2002 originated in bats, and that today’s SARS CoV-2 also probably originated in bats. About the claims the virus may have escaped from research being done at the WIV, she is quoted as saying: “The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits. I, Shi Zhingli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory”.
But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that “a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.” And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification.
I believe she believes that. But it might have, as the careful research linked in the article shows.
That’s why an open and independent investigation ought be allowed by Beijing.
Remember: the Hua’nan Wet Market, the alleged culprit, doesn’t even sell bats....
Summary: I’m going to give this theory a great big “MAYBE”.
ADDED: 23 April 2020: From Caixin article, 14 April:
Richard E. Ebright, a molecular biologist and laboratory director of Rutgers University’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology, echoed Bedford’s comments, saying there was “no basis to suspect the virus was engineered.”However, the possibility that the virus entered the human population through a laboratory accident “cannot be excluded at this time,” Ebright told Caixin. The available data indicates either that the virus began infecting people naturally or that it entered the population due to a laboratory mishap, he added. [My emphasis]ADDED (28 April): "We shouldn’t want the trail to lead back to a Wuhan laboratory. But that doesn’t mean we can avert our eyes from anything suggesting it does.” Jim Geraghty on the swirling concerns. His bottom line: we’ll never know for sure. NPR’s Spotty Report on the Wuhan Labs
