Chapter 3
Could the virus have escaped from a lab? We all share a capacity to find patterns that feel meaningful to us. It is how we make sense of our chaotic world, by bringing some structure onto it. Yet our perceptions are not always accurate. When we are confronted with partial information, limited data points, our brain automatically connects the dots, whether appropriate or not. When the pandemic emerged, few missed the ominous coincidence of a novel coronavirus outbreak and a lab that studied novel coronaviruses in the same city. Given limited data and high uncertainty in the darkness of the first months, a laboratory connection was a reasonable hypothesis.
“Eddie, can I discuss something with you? I think I have seen something… I need to talk it through… to pull me back from the edge” a worried evolutionary virologist Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Research Institute would reach out to his friend Eddie Holmes in Australia. He believed to have found some troubling patterns in the SARS-CoV-2 genome. With his colleague Eddie Holmes they contacted anybody from the intelligence services of 3 nations to the heads of NIH and British Wellcome Trust, the goal was to assemble a task force to probe the question deeper.
The content of this teleconference on the 1st of February in 2020 has subsequently become a staple in the ‘lab leak’ mythology as the ‘place where it happened’, so to speak. An international cover-up with high-ranking public officials and key virologists, if one were to believe the fictions told today.
References:
The Chiang Dao Cave:
Tham Chiang Dao is an attractive cave in Chiang Mai. It is located at the foothills of Doi Luang Chiang Dao in Chiang Dao district. The stalagmite and the stalactite, causing different shapes, inside the cave stun the tourists by their natural beauty. Tham Chiang Dao is a giant cave with beautiful stalagmites and stalactites inside that form spontaneously. Some of them hide in the nook. When the tourists flash around, there will be a lot of glitters and the tourists can imagine the glitters to be any pictures. […]
Tham Luang Chiand Dao is a historic site that a lot of people admire. This may be because of the astonishing stories about the past which has been told for many generations…
Tham Chiang Dao. (n.d.). https://www.tourismthailand.org/Attraction/tham-chiang-dao
More on Ajahn Mun and Thai Forest Buddhism:
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, May 5). Ajahn Mun. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Mun
Zhengli Shi lashing out against conspiracy theories against her
Wuhan Virology Lab Deputy Director again slams coronavirus conspiracies. (2020, February 7). Caixin Global. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-07/wuhan-virology-lab-deputy-director-again-slams-coronavirus-conspiracies-101512828.html
Dr. Feigl Ding sensationalist tweets & HIV inserts preprint amplification
Eric Feigl-Ding, the epidemiologist who moves fast and breaks things. (n.d.). Office for Science and Society. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-medical-critical-thinking/eric-feigl-ding-epidemiologist-who-moves-fast-and-breaks-things
Dr. Eric Feigl Ding [@DrEricDing]. (2020, February 2). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/DrEricDing/status/1223838494465888261 Note: Dr. Feigl Ding soon after corrected his outburst: "Same way I also made mistake with my off the cuff “holy mother of God” one night last week, among other things like misreading a paper detail about a SARS’s R0 (that was too low). It’s a valuable lesson learned as someone who once only had a modest Twitter of 2k friends."
Prashant, P. et al. (2020, January 30) Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
bioRxiv 2020.01.30.927871; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871
Dr. Eric Feigl Ding [@DrEricDing]. (2020, February 2). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/DrEricDing/status/1221990534643929089 (this thread included the amplification of the “uncanny” preprint, later Dr. Ding deleted his messages about it writing: “Dear friends, after learning that the original authors have formally retracted yesterday’s “uncanny” titled pre-print article, I believe it is prudent to delete the earlier posts 16-24 pertaining to it.”)
Samorodnitsky, D. (2020, January 31). Don’t believe the conspiracy theories you hear about coronavirus and HIV. Massive Science. https://massivesci.com/notes/wuhan-coronavirus-ncov-sars-mers-hiv-human-immunodeficiency-virus/
By Febuary 6th, internet sleuths had reportedly already harassed Shi Zhengli
Li, O. (2020, May 19). Chinese netizens question source of the coronavirus outbreak. The Epoch Times. https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/involvement-of-wuhan-p4-lab-questioned-3230182
Senator Tom Cotton hints at bioweapon
Bostock, B. (2020, February 17). A GOP senator keeps pushing a thoroughly debunked theory that the Wuhan coronavirus is a leaked Chinese biological weapon gone wrong. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-bioweapon-tom-cotton-conspiracy-theory-china-warfare-leak-2020-2
CCP deputy director of the Information Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs mocks CDC and blames US army for virus
Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 [@zlj517]. (2020, March 12). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823 “CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
Flawed PCR tests from the CDC
Temple-Raston, D. (2020, November 6). CDC report: Officials knew coronavirus test was flawed but released it anyway. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/929078678/cdc-report-officials-knew-coronavirus-test-was-flawed-but-released-it-anyway
Study looking at sentiments in “#chinesevirus” tweets finds the hashtag associated with anti-asian sentiments
Hswen Y, Xu X, Hing A, Hawkins JB, Brownstein JS, Gee GC. Association of "#covid19" Versus "#chinesevirus" With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter: March 9-23, 2020. Am J Public Health. 2021 May;111(5):956-964. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2021.306154. Epub 2021 Mar 18. PMID: 33734838; PMCID: PMC8034032.
Anti-asian hate incidences on the rise because of political blame games
The Associated Press. (2021, August 12). More than 9,000 Anti-Asian incidents have been reported since the pandemic began. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate-crimes-assaults-pandemic-incidents-aapi
Lock down in New York City
New York City to close all school buildings and transition to remote learning. (2020, March 15). The Official Website of the City of New York. https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/151-20/new-york-city-close-all-school-buildings-transition-remote-learning
ABC News using proximal origins as a tease
Holland, K. (2020, April 1). Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study concludes COVID-19 “is not a laboratory construct.” ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/conspiracy-theorists-study-concludes-covid-19-laboratory-construct/story?id=69827832
Note:
More on what happened to the proximal origin authors later in the book.
I think with hindsight, it is a bit clearer to see that political and media cage fights over science usually end badly for academic scientists as well as society. In the summer of 2020, when the failures of the Trump administration became undeniable, the fragile-ego president threw his own advisor Anthony Fauci under the bus.
Rajghatta, C. (2020, July 13). White House throws Fauci under the bus as pandemic punishes areas that reopened early. The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/white-house-throws-fauci-under-the-bus-as-pandemic-punishes-areas-that-reopened-early/articleshow/76945253.cms
Marked as public enemy number one, Fauci, not Trump, would unjustly face the ire for actions taken by Trump; and hate mobs, ideologues and political actors were out for him.
When Fauci’s emails got FOIA’ed at the end of 2020, conspiracy theorists made much out of Kristian’s initial lab leak suspicions that ‘suddenly disappeared’ after a teleconference with Tony Fauci. Wasn’t it true that researchers like Kristian Andersen get rewarded millions in grants from institutions like the NIH? Who is to say that one hand did not wash the other? While this is not what happened in any shape or form, it was an effective way to discredit scientists and their unwelcome science with them. Changing one’s mind with emerging data, while the essence of science, is easily portrayed as flip-flopping by political actors.
Politics however rewards sticking to one’s guns, creating the appearance of authenticity and confidence in one’s own belief. Scientists changing their minds were a soft target to attack publicly. The teleconference preceding the proximal origin paper was the spurious connection conspiracy theorists needed to explain away unwelcome scientific evidence. Targeting Kristian Andersen was also the shortest way to get to the alleged mastermind, Anthony Fauci.