Sunday, September 5, 2021
Welcome to Food for Thought … for the Weekend, where I give you in-depth coverage and data analysis that keeps you glued to your screens for a good reason, for once. Published on Fridays. Except today. Labor Day weekend special!
It’s the weekend. Already. You can binge, or you can learn. Perhaps a bit of both?
And keep an eye for The Week that Was, usually published on Sundays (watch out for my special Labor Day edition, published tomorrow). The Week that Was is my curated, in the loosest sense of the word, look at what happened last week.
Today we’re going to take a look at the relative number of mutations displayed by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which causes COVID-19 in humans, as opposed to the mutations of the lab leak theory of that same virus. Which has mutated more? The virus that infects cells, or the virus that infects minds?
A few points before we get started: COVID-19 is the disease; SARS-CoV-2 is the medical term for the specific virus that causes COVID-19; Corona viruses are a family of viruses that can get human beings sick. I’m going to refer to the specific SARS-CoV-2 virus as “coronavirus” for the sake of simplicity.
The coronavirus pandemic began in late 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, home to a wild game night market, or “wet” market, and to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Photo Source: South China Morning Post, published December 31, 2019
Source: Common
It now appears certain that the human coronavirus originated in bats.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the view that this pandemic is basically like all the others in human history has contended with another view point: Human beings did it. Other human beings, that is.
Why anyone would think anything other than a natural jump from one species to another is what happened here. After all, viruses have been doing that for thousands of years. That’s their job, after all.
I’m going to call the view that other human beings did this the “lab leak theory.” Some versions assume greater malevolence on the part of these other human beings, i.e., it was deliberate.
The lab leak theory is neatly facilitated by the presence of a lab studying viruses, including coronaviruses, in the city of Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Given that the original speculations blamed the night market and lamented the lack of controls exerted by the Chinese government in the market, and the lab leak theory laments the over-control exerted by the Chinese government over the Wuhan lab, one suspects that the origins of the pandemic in the People’s Republic of China is the primary factor in theories of whatever sort, in whatever fashion, about the origins of coronavirus.
First, let’s take a look at the city of Wuhan itself.
I think it’s safe to say that, before the pandemic, many Americans had never heard of this city of almost nine million people, founded in 1500 B.C.E. At times the city has played a major role in the history of China, but nothing like this in its 3,500-year history.
I had heard of Wuhan, but only through the Chinese neo-noir, The Wild Goose Lake, filmed in 2018 and released in 2019. The movie concerns a gang war between two rival gangs of motorbike thieves trying to carve up territory. Wuhan is shown as a lively city with a significant underworld, and some great noodle shops. The Wild Goose Lake in question is a lake outside the city which attracts a lot of partiers, gangsters, and prostitutes. I recommend it (the movie, I mean), if you get a chance. Because this film can give you a human perspective on a distant city that we now know mainly through mischaracterizations. The Wild Goose Lake is currently streaming on Hoopla, IMDB TV Amazon Channel, and Amazon Video.
Wuhan is, in short, a city with a lot of vitality. Wuhan is a city that supports an underworld, a working class, and a class of educated professionals, enough to staff a world-renowned institute. It’s a real place with a history going back 3,500 years.
I mention this because the city, its location in the People’s Republic of China, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology have served as blank canvases for the projections of so many of us. But this place is real. Just like coronavirus.
Back to coronavirus. To date, there have been nine main variants, either “Variants of Interest” or “Variants of Concern,” of coronavirus, as designated by the World Health Organization. Each of these variants has mutated numerous times.
Below is a chronological list of the variants of coronavirus, based on the dates of the earliest known verified samples. (This date is different from the classification dates, which is the date on which the Greek letter designations is based.)
VOI: Variant of Interest
VOC: Variant of Concern
Source: World Health Organization
Now, for the lab leak theory.
I did a google news search for “lab leak theory” and “coronavirus” together, counting the number of appearances, duplicates eliminated, sorted by relevance, month by month, starting in January 2020, when coronavirus began to demand our attention.
The chart below is the result.
Chart © 2021 Franklin Mount
As you can see, there was a huge spike in articles mentioning “lab leak theory” and “coronavirus” in May of 2021, just after the appearance of Nicholas Wades article (linked below) on May 5, 2021. In fact, in the ten days following the publication of that article, there were 1,880 articles mentioning “lab leak theory” and “coronavirus”—almost as many mentions as in the previous four months.
I read a number of the news articles that have appeared over the past twenty-one months, including the most influential articles.
Reviewing the articles positing the lab leak theory, some points jumped out to me:
the beginnings of the pandemic in China has colored news coverage;
suspicion of China has played a major role in just about all of the coverage;
suspicion of the motives of opponents of the lab leak theory has been a prevalent theme in articles advocating for the lab leak theory;
pro lab leak articles are largely devoted to attempting to refute their opponents, with no direct evidence for the lab leak theory being presented;
pro lab leak articles rely on logical fallacies, particularly reasoning from false or uncertain premises;
pro lab leak articles typically conclude either that coronavirus “must” have come from a lab or that more investigation is needed;
proponents of the lab leak theory tend portray themselves as courageous fighters for truth;
“could be possible” and “should not be dismissed” are frequently implied as reasons for serious consideration of the lab leak theory; and
the fact that there is no actual direct evidence for the lab leak theory is taken as proof that the Wuhan Virology Lab must be investigated.
Below are a few representative articles from the first days of the pandemic and from the revival of the lab leak theory in June of this year.
The earliest appearances of the lab leak theory focused on the notion that coronavirus was a bioweapon, germ warfare directed at the USA from the PRC. Remember President Trump calling coronavirus the “China virus” or even the “Kung fu virus”?
Sometimes these views went even further afield, such as 5G technology. Or that flu shots were laden with coronavirus. Or just that the whole thing was a hoax.
By July 2020, lab leak articles were nearest their lowest level since the beginning of the pandemic. One article from this period I found exceptionally interesting, as it showed that coronavirus has a long history, possibly going back to 1948, and did not emerge suddenly, as just about every lab leak theory proponent assumes. Two key quotes:
“There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and its time of divergence from animal viruses. ... SARS-CoV-2—undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. ... its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. ... indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.”
“The unsampled diversity descended from the SARS-CoV-2/RaTG13 common ancestor forms a clade of bat sarbecoviruses with generalist properties—with respect to their ability to infect a range of mammalian cells—that facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again.”
Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic
By September 2020, lab leak articles were almost at their lowest point since the beginning of the pandemic, but there was still some life in the theory. The below-linked article suggests that coronavirus must have come from a lab, because the virus showed no mutations in its first few months by the time the subject of this article uploaded her first study on May 2, 2020. But as the above table detailing the various coronavirus mutations notes, mutations aplenty were on their way, as a nation struggling with the Delta variant can attest.
Could COVID-19 Have Escaped from a Lab?
When Donald Trump came down with COVID-19, a number of QAnon followers seemed to think that “the Chinese” were behind it.
Trump’s COVID Diagnosis Is Sending Conspiracy Theorists Into Overdrive
As 2021 dawned, the lab leak theory emerged rebranded, via New York Magazine and Nicholson Baker. By now, the conspiracy had thoroughly shifted from “the Chinese did it,” to “it was an accident that the Chinese covered up.” This very long article has all the hallmarks of a classic lab leak theory article: no actual evidence, but a lot of could be’s. And Baker does this at great length. Seriously.
Baker also notes that there have been a number of lab leaks in the past that have led to outbreaks of serious diseases, implying that this means that the coronavirus pandemic is also a lab accident.
But all of these leaks were quickly contained, as Baker notes. Which brings up one of the biggest logical fallacies in the lab leak theories: If the origin of the pandemic were a lab leak, wouldn’t it have been easily contained?
The below-linked article is the ur-article of the recent boomlet that the lab leak theory has enjoyed. Nicholas Wade goes on at length, although in verbosity he’s a piker compared to Nicholson Baker.
As noted, after this article appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, articles discussing the lab leak theory spiked from 517 in April 2021 to 2,770 in May.
The same maybe’s and what-if’s are employed. And Wade often assumes that
One of the more interesting points in Wade’s article is that he seemingly refutes himself by quoting David L. Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, who noted that:
“... viruses are specialists at unusual events.
“Recombination is naturally very, very frequent in these viruses, there are recombination breakpoints in the spike protein and these codons appear unusual exactly because we’ve not sampled enough.”
Wade, who had previously dismissed Robertson by casually noting that the regarded “lab escape” as a conspiracy theory, then allows that Robertson “may be on to something.” I’ll say.
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
And, like many of the lab leak articles, Wade makes many points that were refuted in the previously published (nine months previously) Nature Microbiology article (Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, linked above) which apparently Wade did not read.
Nor did Wade read the below-linked article, which shows that Wade’s “smoking gun,” the furin spike protein, is more of a child’s pop gun. Or at least not of overwhelming importance. This article, also in Nature Microbiology, was published ten months before Wade’s article.
On May 26, President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence services to investigate the origins of the pandemic.
Biden orders review of COVID origins as lab leak theory debated
There was concern that the data was closed off, due to the lack of “transparency” in China. The government of the PRC did limit outside access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
However, we hacked the Chinese data; the only problem being that we didn’t have enough Mandarin speakers at hand.
Exclusive: Intel agencies scour reams of genetic data from Wuhan lab in Covid origins hunt
However, these difficulties were overcome in relatively short order, and it appears that investigation is nearing its end. And, guess what, just about the entire US intelligence “community” doesn’t believe in the lab leak theory.
COVID-19: US intelligence rules out biological weapon origin
And David L. Robertson, mentioned above, of the University of Glasgow, along with Spyros Lytras, Wei Xie, Joseph Hughes, and Xioaowei Jiang, have now published in Science a rather definitive account of the origins of the pandemic. Guess what? Just like we heard way back when, it started with the wet market in that vital thriving city of Wuhan.
One of the most interesting aspects of this article and the findings it illuminates is the role of the false assumption underlying lab leak theories: The assumption that coronavirus had to come from the bat caves from which scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology gathered their research samples. These caves are a thousand miles distant from Wuhan.
But the particular corona virus that gave us the pandemic does not come from those bats. It comes from horseshoe bats, which are widely dispersed from East to West China. In other words, they’re all over the place.
“SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in Wuhan city, which is >1500 km from the closest known naturally occurring sarbecovirus collected from horseshoe bats in Yunnan province, leading to an apparent puzzle: How did SARS-CoV-2 arrive in Wuhan? Since its emergence, sampling has revealed that coronaviruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 are circulating in horseshoe bats, which are dispersed widely from East to West China, and in Southeast Asia and Japan (5). The wide geographic ranges of the potential reservoir hosts—for example, intermediate (R. affinis) or least (R. pusillus) horseshoe bat species, which are known to be infected with sarbecoviruses—indicate that the singular focus on Yunnan is misplaced (5). Confirming this assertion, the evolutionarily closest bat sarbecoviruses are estimated to share a common ancestor with SARS-CoV-2 at least 40 years ago (5), showing that these Yunnan-collected viruses are highly divergent from the SARS-CoV-2 progenitor.”
And this false assumption underlines the essential problem with all of the lab leak theories, namely, that the investigation of the supposed lab leak should start with the premises underlying the lab leak theory, including the false notion that the only possible source was the bats in caves a thousand miles away from Wuhan and not bat species living all over China. And I think that’s pretty batty.
Any investigation of the lab leak theory specifically will turn up nothing, because there is nothing there. Sadly, this will in all likelihood only prove to the lab leak theory believers that more investigation is needed.
You can’t prove a negative. That’s science 101.
The animal origin of SARS-CoV-2
What about viruses?
It’s worth noting that viruses by their very nature mutate frequently. And coronaviruses are no exception.
Viruses themselves are fascinating bits of creation. They are on the edge of life itself. Barely alive, they must invade their hosts’ cells and highjack the DNA in the cell nucleus to make copies of themselves, i.e., to reproduce.
How Viruses Mutate and Create New Variants
Coronavirus Epidemics began over 21,000 years ago
The two main changes in the lab leak theory that I have observed are that:
a shift from “the Chinese did it” (or Bill Gates or 5G or the Knights Templar or whatever) to “it was an accident that the Chinese covered up”; and
since the beginning of the Biden Administration, a shift to suggesting that debate was suppressed because of fear of Trump, implying that now the truth can come out.
The latter bullet point above is an important one, in that it shows another basic logical fallacy. Namely, the fallacy of reasoning from authority. The idea being that a source is reputable, or someone is an expert, or something like that, and, therefore, they’re right.
But whether or not a source is reputable or not, or someone is an expert or not, is strictly a matter of opinion. Opinions aren’t facts.
Coronavirus is not an opinion. It’s a fact. And it’s verifiable.
At the beginning of this newsletter, I said I would determine whether coronavirus or the lab leak theory had more mutations.
Concerning coronavirus, there are have been nine major variants, each of which has gone through a number of mutations. The total number of mutations cannot be known exactly, but it appears to be at least one thousand at this point. That’s factual.
As for the lab leak theory, the number of “mutations,” which I am clearly using metaphorically, is up in the air, but I’m going to stick with the two bullet points above.
So the score is:
Coronavirus: 1000+
Lab Leak Theory: 2
The thing about the Lab Leak Theory, though, is that it is satisfies several human needs. It creates and then shifts blame. It diverts attention. It wastes times. It’s a conspiracy theory. That’s what conspiracy theories do.
This conspiracy theory did have the novel adaptation from these bad people are out to get you to these bad people, some of whom are not that bad, made a big big boo boo that their government will not let them admit. The proponents of the lab leak theory even suggested the lab leak theory wasn’t the conspiracy theory. The opponents of the lab leak theory were the real conspiracy.
Given the vagaries of the human mind, and the difficulties inherent in investigating the natural origins of the coronavirus pandemic, I suspect this conspiracy theory has legs. We’re going to be hearing about it for a long time.
At least you now are armed with rebuttal material. Not that anyone who believes the lab leak theory will listen. But you will know. And you can share the news with the rational majority.
So, we’re at the end of this edition of Food for Thought.
Next week on Food for Thought: A look at the German elections coming on September 26. I will attempt to explain the intricacies of the German electoral system and give some historical background.
If you don’t have enough to think about, I hope that this issue of Food for Thought will have alleviated that need.
And look out for The Week that Was.
Have a great rest of your weekend!