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A worker cleans at Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan, China,
on Tuesday. (AFP)
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Of all the mysteries about the novel coronavirus, its origin excites
the most fervent debate. At the outbreak’s beginning, there were
conspiracy theories that the virus was man-made; recently, questions have
focused on whether a natural virus was accidentally spread through
research.
In the United States, such speculation largely comes from politicians
hawkish against Beijing and keen to defend the Trump administration.
Scientists, meanwhile, are often the most hesitant to speak out, wanting to
focus on research that helps end the outbreak — not who, if anyone, caused
it.
But the theories have spread widely, prompting a response from U.S. officials and President
Trump himself. So, here is a skeptic’s take on three rapidly mutating
theories: one clearly false, one possible but not supported by known
evidence and one broadly true.
1. The
outbreak was linked to bioweapons research
As China placed Hubei province under
lockdown in January, the Washington Times, a conservative U.S. newspaper,
cited research by former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham
to argue that “Coronavirus
may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program” in
Wuhan, the Hubei capital.
That article suggested that the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory and
the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been working on biological warfare.
Both institutions are real — they were hardly secretive — but there is no
evidence of this. When contacted by The
Washington Post for a Jan. 29 article, Shoham refused to comment
further.
Experts suggesting that the virus was man-made relied on a shoddy
understanding of the science. “Based on the virus genome and properties
there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,” Richard
Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told The
Post.
Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, later
told Science
News in March that the virus was fundamentally unlike something that
would have been designed. “It has too many distinct features, some of which
are counterintuitive,” he said.
Despite this, a Pew poll released last week found almost 3 out of 10
Americans believed the virus could have been made in a lab; Those on the
Republican side of the spectrum were twice as likely to believe this as
Democrats.
2. The
novel coronavirus leaked from a lab accidentally
As the bioweapon theory subsided in February, it was replaced by a more
plausible alternative: That a virus from a natural source could have leaked
accidentally from one of Wuhan’s laboratories.
This idea attracted high-profile political support. “We don’t know where
it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Sen. Tom Cotton
(R-Ark.) told Fox
News in mid-February, before dismissing early suggestions that the
virus had spread at a Wuhan market. “We also know that just a few miles
away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super
laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”
Some scientists don’t dismiss this outright. In January, Ebright did not
want to talk on the record about the idea of a leak because it was too
speculative. He changed his mind and this week told The Post that he thinks
it “at least as probable” as an incident outside of a lab, a position other
scientists disagree with.
There is circumstantial evidence. Researchers at the Wuhan branch of the
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention did conduct research on bat
coronaviruses, which some viewed as risky. The State Department
expressed concern about the safety standard of the Wuhan labs in at least
two cables, The
Post’s Josh Rogin reported this week.
But that does not prove that the novel coronavirus was ever studied in
Wuhan, nor that it leaked. “There is no evidence of escape from a lab,”
Andrew Rambaut, a microbiologist at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in
an email. “The virus is just like a virus we would expect to see in wild
bat populations, similar viruses have jumped from non-human animals to
animals in the past, so I see no reason to speculate about this any
further.”
3. The
Chinese government misled the world about the coronavirus.
With no direct evidence of a leak from a laboratory, Cotton and others
have noted that China has blocked the release of information about the
early days of the outbreak. This is true: The Post reported on China’s
obfuscation of information about the outbreak as
early as Feb. 1.
Beijing was slow to share data with outsiders, including
experts from the World Health Organization. An investigation by the
Associated Press published Wednesday found that Chinese officials withheld
information for six key days, allowing the virus to spread without
restriction at a crucial moment.
Chinese journalists have published articles that suggest officials
undercounted the death
toll in Wuhan. Scientific research that suggested
China was the source of the outbreak has been withdrawn. Some Chinese
officials, such as Foreign
Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao, have floated unfounded theories that
the virus may have originated from the United States.
Academics who study Chinese propaganda say that the measures were an
attempt to distract from early coronavirus failures. This can certainly be
seen as a coverup, though Beijing is hardly the only government accused of
withholding information related to the virus.
The U.S. government
has considered these theories. The New York Times reported
this weekend that intelligence agencies investigated but did not detect
“any alarm inside the Chinese government that analysts presumed would
accompany the accidental leak of a deadly virus from a government
laboratory.”
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley confirmed that intelligence
agencies were considering the origin at a briefing on Tuesday. “At this
point it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate
natural, but we do not know for sure,” Milley said.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump was asked an unusually specific
question about the laboratory leak theory by John Roberts of Fox News, but
he declined to answer.
Understanding from whatever mistakes were made in China could mean a new
era of openness and cooperation between Washington and Beijing. Indeed, the
State Department memos showed, the U.S. government used to help fund the
laboratories in Wuhan — the Trump administration cut funding to a U.S. pandemic research program that
worked with the Chinese labs in 2019.
In the face of a pandemic, it’s understandable that many are looking for
someone to blame. But a cascade of small errors is more likely than one
grand conspiracy. Learning from that may not be satisfying, but it could go
a lot further in preventing this from happening again. |
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Talking Points
• As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the
world, institutions founded decades ago to organize and manage coherent
responses to global crises seem to be flailing on the
sidelines, my colleagues report.
As countries turn inward, the question is not only whether the world order
has stumbled but what direction it will take when the current crisis is
over. Will there be a new appreciation of its importance, and a
determination to make it work better? Or will pre-virus trends accelerate
toward tighter borders, less cooperation and a tilt toward nationalism?
• In mid-march a
National Security Council official asked Taiwan for a face masks,
concerned by the growing signs of an acute shortage of
protective gear in the United States, my colleagues report.
But this urgent appeal highlights a stark conflict: at the time, the U.S.
government was discouraging people from wearing masks in public, saying
healthy people didn’t need them and the gear should be saved for front-line
medical workers. But inside the NSC, a top deputy was convinced that face
coverings should be used more broadly to protect both his team and the
public at large.
• South Koreans,
including thousands under quarantine, voted Wednesday as
their country became the first to hold a national election in the midst of
a coronavirus pandemic.
An extensive package
of safety measures was put in place to ensure that voters could leave their
homes and join the lines at polling stations without spreading the
infection. |
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