{"id":612550,"date":"2023-02-27T18:58:40","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T00:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/27\/what-actually-just-happened-with-the-lab-leak-theory\/"},"modified":"2023-02-27T18:58:40","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T00:58:40","slug":"what-actually-just-happened-with-the-lab-leak-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/27\/what-actually-just-happened-with-the-lab-leak-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"What Actually Just Happened With the Lab Leak Theory?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Science<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Not Case Closed on the Lab Leak Theory<\/h2>\n

Yes, the Department of Energy says the virus most likely came from a lab. No, they aren\u2019t very sure at all\u2014and other agencies disagree.<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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\"A<\/p>\n

\nSecurity personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2021. <\/span>
\nHECTOR RETAMAL\/Getty Images<\/span>
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On February 26, the Wall Street Journal ran a story<\/a> that looked, at first glance, like a bombshell: \u201cLab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, did something big just happen? Do we finally have a smoking gun to settle the mysterious origins of COVID-19 once and for all?<\/p>\n

Since early in the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis has posited that the novel coronavirus emerged from a lab\u2014from a well-intentioned SARS study gone wrong, or as a nefarious bioweapon. In contrast, the natural spread hypothesis assumes that SARS-CoV-2 came to us the way most new viruses do: from interactions with infected animals. The debate has gotten extraordinarily heated, with proponents of each accusing<\/a> the other side of motivated reasoning.<\/p>\n

The Journal reported that the Department of Energy now has an official stance on the origin of COVID, based on new information. The New York Times matched<\/a> the WSJ story with its own story, and the New York Post ran paparazzi photos<\/a> of Anthony Fauci outside his home refusing to comment on the news. But it\u2019s not clear if the DOE\u2019s assessment changes all that much.<\/p>\n

The DOE\u2019s information is classified, so it\u2019s hard to evaluate what it contains. But we do know that the DOE has \u201clow confidence\u201d in their assessment that the virus came from a lab, as the WSJ reported, so it seems like whatever they know now isn\u2019t thoroughly convincing.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the fact that the DOE is not the final arbiter of truth on where COVID came from. In fact, a National Security Council spokesperson said today<\/a> that there is not a consensus within the government.<\/p>\n

Many agencies have been looking into it: Back in 2021, the Biden administration asked the Intelligence Community to investigate the origins of the pandemic. The Department of Energy\u2019s intelligence arm was one of eight\u00a0 agencies that looked into the matter.<\/p>\n

After 90 days, the agencies came back with a group report. They all agreed that there was insufficient evidence to settle the debate. Even so, each agency shared their best guess. Four of the eight agencies (along with the National Intelligence Council, which also participated), leaned towards natural spread, with low confidence. The FBI leaned lab leak, with moderate confidence. Three agencies, including the CIA and the DOE, couldn\u2019t make up their minds.<\/p>\n

So, the news is really about one agency in this process finally making a choice. On February 26th, the Journal reported that in an updated version of the report that is currently classified, the DOE finally picked a position: lab leak, low confidence. The Journal also reported that the DOE was the only agency that changed it\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

From the 2021 report<\/a>, it does not appear that one <\/em>undecided agency picking a lane would have much impact on the intelligence community\u2019s overall assessment. That\u2019s because, different conclusions aside, the agencies actually agreed on a lot.<\/p>\n

Lab leak or not, they agreed with full confidence that COVID was not a biological weapon and were confident that China did not see the pandemic coming. Most agencies also agreed that COVID wasn\u2019t genetically engineered, leaving less nefarious lab-leak options like mis-handling animals or viruses.<\/p>\n

The agencies also agreed on what shape a smoking gun would take. To prove a lab-leak theory, they would need evidence, \u201cthat a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged.\u201d To prove the natural spread hypothesis, they would need evidence that \u201callows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal,\u201d states the report.<\/p>\n

If there were now evidence to firmly support either chain of events, presumably the DOE would have higher confidence in their assessment\u2014and, other agencies would be joining them in their conclusion. The Journal article explains that the other agencies had the same information and did not <\/em>switch their positions.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, since the original intelligence agency report, there has been new evidence for natural spread. Two related<\/a> papers<\/a> published in Science in July 2022 combined epidemiologic methods and genomics to map the earliest known COVID cases. They found that cases centered on one particular live-animal market in Wuhan, China, and that two slightly different variants emerged there within a few weeks. This implies that the virus was mutating in infected animals being sold on-site, rather than originating in research labs across the river. Still, it\u2019s not clear where the first infected animal came from. As an author on one of the papers pointed out, a lab leak is still technically plausible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] was doing experiments with a virus that could have evolved into SARS-CoV-2, that would dramatically change the likelihood that this virus would coincidentally emerge somewhere in Wuhan naturally, especially if it was collected years earlier in a far-off location,\u201d\u00a0Angela Rasmussen wrote in a tweet<\/a>, basically agreeing with the Intelligence Community on what a smoking gun would look like.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that these labs had such a virus. Researchers also haven\u2019t yet found a good suspect in the wild for a precursor virus that could have jumped to humans in each scenario.<\/p>\n

This is complicated, painstaking work, and we\u2019re not likely to have a firm answer soon. As Jon Ehrenreich pointed out<\/a> in January in Slate, it took decades to pinpoint where diseases like Ebola and HIV originated.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, while sleuthing is fun\u2014and it\u2019s good that someone\u2019s doing it\u2014it is also a distraction for most of us. The intelligence community\u2019s 2022 threat assessment<\/a> still flags other pandemics from animals as a big risk. Maybe we should worry more about what virology twitter has been talking about<\/a> this week: the potential for bird flu to spread among humans.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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