The Covid Origin Debate Continues By Brian Simpson

Some elites who once did not support the lab leak hypothesis on the origin of Covid now seem to have jumped ship and come over. Others are coming out and arguing for something which was once taboo, as President Donald Trump has proposed it. A recent take on this issue has been given by Neil Harrison and economist Jeffrey Sachs, but they are at pains to say that if SARS-CoV-2 did come from a lab, it was an accident. But, that is the unargued weak point in their paper. Why believe that? It makes more sense, and explains more of China’s covering up operations to see it as a deliberate release. And, if so,  they got away with it.

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/cpgynw2j9x4lamdd2resnf3eekppyd

“Project Syndicate

May 27, 2022

Neil Harrison

Jeffrey D. Sachs

NEW YORK – When US President Joe Biden asked the United States Intelligence Community to determine the origin of COVID-19, its conclusion was remarkably understated but nonetheless shocking. In a one-page summary, the IC made clear that it could not rule out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) emerged from a laboratory. 

But even more shocking for Americans and the world is an additional point on which the IC remained mum: If the virus did indeed result from laboratory research and experimentation, it was almost certainly created with US biotechnology and know-how that had been made available to researchers in China. 

To learn the complete truth about the origins of COVID-19, we need a full, independent investigation not only into the outbreak in Wuhan, China, but also into the relevant US scientific research, international outreach, and technology licensing in the lead-up to the pandemic. 

We recently called for such an investigation in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Some might dismiss our reasons for doing so as a “conspiracy theory.” But let us be crystal clear: If the virus did emerge from a laboratory, it almost surely did so accidentally in the normal course of research, possibly going undetected via asymptomatic infection. 

It is of course also still possible that the virus had a natural origin. The bottom line is that nobody knows. That is why it is so important to investigate all the relevant information contained in databases available in the US.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the US government has pointed an accusatory finger at China. But while it is true that the first observed COVID-19 cases were in Wuhan, the full story of the outbreak could involve America’s role in researching coronaviruses and in sharing its biotechnology with others around the world, including China. 

US scientists who work with SARS-like coronaviruses regularly create and test dangerous novel variants with the aim of developing drugs and vaccines against them. Such “gain-of-function” research has been conducted for decades, but it has always been controversial, owing to concerns that it could result in an accidental outbreak, or that the techniques and technologies for creating new viruses could end up in the wrong hands. It is reasonable to ask whether SARS-CoV-2 owes its remarkable infectivity to this broader research effort. 

Unfortunately, US authorities have sought to suppress this very question. Early in the epidemic, a small group of virologists queried by the US National Institutes of Health told the NIH leadership that SARS-CoV-2 might have arisen from laboratory research, noting that the virus has unusual features that virologists in the US have been using in experiments for years – often with support from the NIH. 

How do we know what NIH officials were told, and when? Because we now have publicly available information released by the NIH in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. We know that on February 1, 2020, the NIH held a conference call with a group of top virologists to discuss the possible origin of the virus. On that call, several of the researchers pointed out that laboratory manipulation of the virus was not only possible, but according to some, even likely. At that point, the NIH should have called for an urgent independent investigation. Instead, the NIH has sought to dismiss and discredit this line of inquiry.

HEADS IN THE SAND 

Within days of the February 1 call, a group of virologists, including some who were on it, prepared the first draft of a paper on the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” The final draft was published a month later, in March 2020. Despite the initial observations on February 1 that the virus showed signs of possible laboratory manipulation, the March paper concluded that there was overwhelming evidence that it had emerged from nature. 

The authors claimed that the virus could not possibly have come from a laboratory because “the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.” Yet the single footnote (number 20) backing up that key claim refers to a paper from 2014, which means that the authors’ supposedly “irrefutable evidence” was at least five years out of date. 

Owing to their refusal to support an independent investigation of the lab-leak hypothesis, the NIH and other US federal government agencies have been subjected to a wave of FOIA requests from a range of organizations, including US Right to Know and The Intercept. These FOIA disclosures, as well as internet searches and “whistleblower” leaks, have revealed some startling information.

Consider, for example, a March 2018 grant proposal submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) and researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the University of North Carolina (UNC). On page 11, the applicants explain in detail how they intend to alter the genetic code of bat coronaviruses to insert precisely the feature that is the most unusual part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. 

Although DARPA did not approve this grant, the work may have proceeded anyway. We just don’t know. But, thanks to another FOIA request, we do know that this group carried out similar gain-of-function experiments on another coronavirus, the one that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). 

In yet other cases, FOIA disclosures have been heavily redacted, including a remarkable effort to obscure 290 pages of documents going back to February 2020, including the Strategic Plan for COVID-19 Research drafted that April by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Such extensive redactions deeply undermine public trust in science, and have only served to invite additional urgent questions from researchers and independent investigators.

THE FACTS OF THE CASE

Here are ten things that we do know. 

First, the SARS-CoV-2 genome is distinguished by a particular 12-nucleotide sequence (the genetic code) that serves to increase its infectivity. The specific amino acid sequence directed by this insertion has been much discussed and is known as a furin cleavage site (FCS).

Second, the FCS has been a target of cutting-edge research since 2006, following the original SARS outbreak of 2003-04. Scientists have long understood that the FCS holds the key to these viruses’ infectivity and pathophysiology. 

Third, SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus in the family of SARS-like viruses (sarbecoviruses) known to have an FCS. Interestingly, the specific form of the FCS that is present in SARS-CoV-2 (eight amino acids encoded by 24 nucleotides) is shared with a human sodium channel that has been studied in US labs. 

Fourth, the FCS was already so well known as a driver of transmissibility and virulence that a group of US scientists submitted a proposal to the US government in 2018 to study the effect of inserting an FCS into SARS-like viruses found in bats. Although the dangers of this kind of work have been highlighted for some time, these bat viruses were somehow considered to be in a lower-risk category. This exempted them from NIH gain-of-function guidelines, thereby enabling NIH-funded experiments to be carried out at the inadequate BSL-2 safety level.

Fifth, the NIH was a strong supporter of such gain-of-function research, much of which was performed using US-developed biotechnology and executed within an NIH-funded three-way partnership between the EHA, the WIV, and UNC.

Sixth, in 2018, a leading US scientist pursuing this research argued that laboratory manipulation was vital for drug and vaccine discovery, but that increased regulation could stymie progress. Many within the virology community continue to resist sensible calls for enhanced regulation of the most high-risk virus manipulation, including the establishment of a national regulatory body independent of the NIH.

Seventh, the virus was very likely circulating a lot earlier than the standard narrative that dates awareness of the outbreak to late December 2019. We still do not know when parts of the US government became aware of the outbreak, but some scientists were aware of the outbreak as of mid-December. 

Eighth, the NIH knew as early as February 1, 2020, that the virus could have emerged as a consequence of NIH-funded laboratory research, but it did not disclose that fundamental fact to the public or to the US Congress. 

Ninth, extensive sampling by Chinese authorities of animals in Wuhan wet markets and in the wild has found not a single wild animal harboring the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Despite this, there is no indication that the NIH has requested the laboratory records of US agencies, academic centers, and biotech companies involved in researching and manipulating SARS-like coronaviruses.

Tenth, the IC has not explained why at least some of the US intelligence agencies do in fact believe that a laboratory release was either the most likely or at least a possible origin of the virus. 

TIME FOR TRANSPARENCY

Given the questions that remain unanswered, we are calling on the US government to conduct a bipartisan investigation. We may never understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2 without opening the books of the relevant federal agencies (including the NIH and the Department of Defense), the laboratories they support, academic institutions that store and archive viral sequence data, and biotechnology companies.

A key objective of the investigation would be to shed light on a basic question: Did US researchers undertake research or help their Chinese counterparts to undertake research to insert an FCS into a SARS-like virus, thereby playing a possible role in the creation of novel pathogens like the one that led to the current pandemic? 

Investigations into COVID-19’s origins should no longer be secretive ventures led by the IC. The process must be transparent, with all relevant information being released publicly for use by independent scientific researchers. It seems clear to us that there has been a concerted effort to suppress information regarding the earliest events in the outbreak, and to hinder the search for additional evidence that is clearly available within the US. We suggest that a panel of independent researchers in relevant disciplines be created and granted access to all pertinent data in order to advise the US Congress and the public.

There is a good chance that we can learn more about the origins of this virus without waiting on China or any other country, simply by looking in the US. We believe such an inquiry is long overdue.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/26/coronavirus-origin-wuhan-market/

“The coronavirus pandemic began in separate viral spillovers — at least two but perhaps as many as two dozen — from live animals sold and butchered in late 2019 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, according to two papers published Tuesday in the journal Science.

The publication of the papers, which underwent five months of peer review and revisions by the authors, is unlikely to quell the rancorous debate about how the pandemic began and whether the virus emerged from a Chinese laboratory. And the authors acknowledge there are many unknowns requiring further investigation — most notably, which animals were involved.

“Everything upstream of this — which animals, where did they come from, how it’s all connected — is completely unknown at this stage,” Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, said in a media briefing Tuesday.

“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not. Will we ever be able to? No. But there are ‘possible’ scenarios and there are ‘plausible’ scenarios. … ‘Possible’ does not mean equally likely,” Andersen said.

A natural origin of the pandemic — a “zoonosis” — has long been a favored theory among scientists for the simple reason that most pandemics, including the SARS coronavirus outbreak of 2002-2003, have started that way. Andersen and his colleagues believe multiple lines of evidence, including the clustering of early cases of covid-19 around the market, make a market origin not only a likely scenario but the only one that fits the data.

The “lab leak” conjecture was initially dismissed in most mainstream media as a conspiracy theory. There are numerous lab leak scenarios, and many have focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a major research center that studies coronaviruses.

Scientists there say they never had the virus in their laboratory. But outside experts questioned whether the laboratory adhered sufficiently to safety measures when researching viruses. Chinese authorities limited access to the laboratories by outside investigators. Amateur sleuths created online communities that steadily raised suspicions about a possible lab leak. Pressure to investigate the hypothesis came amid the struggles of the scientific community to nail down how the virus entered the human population.

In May 2021, the journal Science published a letter from 18 scientists calling for an investigation into the virus’s origin that would include exploration of the lab leak theory. Soon after that, President Biden asked his intelligence agencies to investigate all possible origins of the pandemic. The review concluded that the virus was not an engineered bioweapon, but otherwise failed to reach a conclusion about where it came from.

Among the scientists who signed the letter to Science was Michael Worobey, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Arizona who felt the lab leak thesis deserved attention even if it wasn’t the most likely origin. But Worobey soon became convinced that the virus came out of the market. Worobey is the lead author of the new paper that contends the market was the pandemic’s epicenter.

The researchers scoured data about the earliest patients, many of whom had direct links to the market or lived nearby. The geography of early community spread showed infections radiating outward from the vicinity of the market, Worobey said: “It’s an insane bull’s eye.”

Moreover, when the market was first identified as the site of a cluster of cases, Chinese investigators took environmental samples searching for traces of the virus. A disproportionate number of positive virus traces came from the section of the market where live animals had been sold, the new study reports.

“The virus started spreading in people who worked at the market, but then started spreading in the surrounding local community as vendors went to local shops, and infected people who worked in those shops,” Worobey suggested.

Worobey is not new to this issue. Last year, he wrote a “Perspective” article in Science that said the geographical clustering of cases in and around the market could not be explained away as “ascertainment bias,” meaning the clustering was not simply the result of investigators knocking on doors in that area after the market outbreak was detected.

He believes any alternative scenario — such as a lab leak — is implausible.

“It now puts us at a point where we know that the Huanan market was the epicenter of this pandemic. That much is now established. If others want to argue with that, they’re now essentially taking a pseudoscientific approach,” Worobey said in an interview Tuesday. “Even though you don’t have the smoking gun of, ‘Yes we’ve sampled the raccoon dog with the virus in December,’ when you put it all together, it’s the only theory that actually explains all the data.”

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of one of the new papers, said in an email that she agreed with Worobey: “There is no alternative explanation that fits the facts, so anyone trying to come up with one will have to become adept at willful ignorance, a logical contortionist, or simply a fabulist.”

The contention by the authors of a natural origin of the pandemic is not new: The same two papers in an earlier form were posted online in February on a “preprint” site. But at that point, they existed in peer-review limbo — something that could be reported in a news story but lacking the stature of studies that have survived scrutiny by knowledgeable outsiders and journal editors.

The second paper published Tuesday in Science reports that genetic evidence and computer modeling suggest the virus spilled into the human population not just once, but on multiple occasions in late 2019. Genomic analysis of early cases shows two distinct lineages, called A and B, that had to have come from separate spillovers. Both lineages were found in environmental samples taken in the market, according to a preprint paper from Chinese researchers in February.

Promoters of the lab leak theory counter that the market was more likely a superspreader site. The virus could have been brought there by someone infected at a laboratory, or someone exposed to an infected lab worker, for example.

The argument for a market origin also relies on Chinese data that may be unreliable, Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, said in an interview earlier this year. He said he feels the data are “inconclusive.”

“I feel the data released by the Chinese government should be treated with a healthy grain of salt,” Bloom said.

There is no proof that the virus or its immediate ancestor was in any laboratory before the outbreak in Wuhan. But the ongoing mystery of the pandemic’s origin has called attention to the kind of research on viruses — including “gain of function” experiments — that some critics say is too risky. The U.S. National Institutes of Health, immersed in the controversy because it helped fund some research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, this year said it was reviewing its policies for ensuring laboratory safety and security.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who favors a laboratory origin explanation, said at an April 30 rally in Kentucky that if Republicans take power in the Senate after the midterm elections, he will use subpoena power to “get to the bottom of where this virus came from.”

Chinese scientists have denied that the virus was present in their lab. The virus, according to Andersen and other virologists who have studied it, does not appear to be manipulated or engineered, and its genetic features could have been produced through evolution.

Still, the controversy about coronavirus research is not likely to fade.

Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, heads a commission sponsored by the Lancet journal expected to produce a report this fall on the pandemic, including the origin of the virus. He recently co-authored an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for a probe of the pandemic origin through a “bipartisan congressional inquiry with full investigative powers.”

On Tuesday, after Science published the two papers, Sachs said in an email that he still favors the lab leak theory: “The two competing hypotheses, natural spillover and laboratory creation, are both viable. They should be compared directly against each other. In my view, the laboratory creation hypothesis is the more straightforward and more credible.”

The new papers do not declare “case closed” but are useful, noted David Relman, a professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford University who was among the signers of the 2021 letter to Science calling for a probe of all possible pandemic origins. He said he would like to see a similarly thorough forensic study of the lab leak hypothesis.

“I don’t think we can say that we now know that it started here. I think we can say that something interesting happened in this part of the city,” Relman said. “We don’t have any [coronavirus] positive animals at the market.”

Andersen, the Scripps Research scientist, has been entangled in the virus origin controversy for more than two years. He was lead author of an early paper, published in Nature Medicine, saying the virus was clearly not engineered. But his first impression of the virus had been that it looked unnatural, and only after doing more research did he conclude that its features could have been produced through evolution.

On Tuesday, Andersen reiterated that he initially thought the novel coronavirus probably came from a laboratory. But all signs now point to the market, he said.

“It’s not a formal proof, again, but it is so strong in my opinion that any other version, a lab leak for example, would have to be able to explain all this evidence,” he said. “It’s just not plausible.”