Chapter 5
Why has there been so little interest in China to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2?
Alice Hughes has a pretty good theory. The associate professor and bat ecologist is the closest you can get to a present-time Indiana Jones-style figure. Since 17, she has explored remote places around the world, from the Peruvian rainforest to caves all over southeast Asia and China. Equipped with her bat shazam, catching and studying bats and their environment, she had finally found a place that would not get boring, a second home even, in Xishuangbanna – a large botanical garden and national park in the tropical Yunnan region in Southern China. A biodiversity paradise embedded between green mountains cut out over the ages from the Karst by now turquoise river beds. A place of life and Chinese folk legends, and a hotbed for scientific collaborations. She was leading a team of 18 scientists there, half of them bat researchers. She was a stable pillar of the small research community, her students loved her and came to her for advice, as one of the few female professors, she would also be a trailblazer and confidant for talented women in the male-dominated environment. Her publications often drew the jealousy of male peers, but her success and work ethic made her untouchable; many students from all over the world wanted to learn from her. And yet one day, she had to leave it all behind.
By the end of 2021, she left as quietly as she could, crossing the border by foot to Hong Kong, because it was less controlled than the airports. With just a single piece of luggage, and a backpack full of 34 hard drives with her research data, she would not have made it out otherwise. She held her breath when she passed the last checkpoint – in China, moving has been severely limited – and finally crossed the border to a still-free Hong Kong. Her only crime? She had been at the right place at the right time, discovering the closest bat cousins of SARS-CoV-2 in China, a sin not easily forgiven by an authoritarian regime.
Between 2020 and 2021, Alice Hughes witnessed her life slowly dismantled, her movement inhibited, her speech censored, her students questioned, her research blocked and criminalized. Leaving Yunnan was personally painful and terrible for her career. “Starting fresh at this stage of my career was incredibly difficult” She had to learn the hard way that there are staggering personal costs for trying to create knowledge for society that governments oppose.
Image credit: Prof Alice C. Hughes, University of Hong Kong
References:
Note: I met Alice Hughes in person a few times, but I really enjoyed interviewing her on our way through a sunny Zurich. The bat researcher and cave adventurer was on her way to Geneva to network with the GEO community – a non-profit partnership including more than 100 national governments and even more academic institutions and related organizations – at their annual conference. The group on earth observations aims to create systems and infrastructures to catalog the observable world, from climate to geography, from agriculture to biodiversity, from forest coverage and water management to disaster risk. The GEO group provides these crucial data for humanity for free to help researchers, policy makers and communities make decisions for a sustainable world.
RmYN02 significance for assessing recombination and furin cleavage site evolution
The Sarbecovirus origin of SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site. (2020, August 8). Virological. https://virological.org/t/the-sarbecovirus-origin-of-sars-cov-2-s-furin-cleavage-site/536
Government restricted access to Mojiang country and mine, investigating researcher, blocking journalists
Arbuthnott, G., Calvert, J., & Sherwell, P. (2020, July 4). Revealed: Seven year coronavirus trail from mine deaths to a Wuhan lab. The Sunday Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/seven-year-covid-trail-revealed-l5vxt7jqp
Press, A. . (2020, December 30). China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins. Tampa Bay Times. https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/12/30/china-clamps-down-in-hidden-hunt-for-coronavirus-origins/
Standway D. (2021, June 9) Explainer: China’s Mojiang mine and its role in the origins of COVID-19 https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/chinas-mojiang-mine-its-role-origins-covid-19-2021-06-09/
BBC reporter John Sudworth roadblocked
Bats, roadblocks and the origins of coronavirus. (n.d.). [Video]. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-55404485
The Wandering Elephants from Kunming ravaged the XTBG institute on their way north
The Associated Press. (2021, June 12). China’s wandering elephants are on the move again. Are they headed home? NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/1005885975/china-elephants-kunming-yunnan-chinese-wandering-moving (Note: Alice was not allowed to leave the buildings at night because there was a curfew installed to avoid the elephants. Yet they were not allowed to even mention there were elephants because Yunnan has become so controversial.)
The White Coat Waste Project:
An activists group founded by Republican strategist; the goal was to target scientific funding for animal experimentation. Deep ties to Republican powerholders, including Matt Gaetz, Marco Rubio. David Asher sits on the Board of WCW as well.
Greenwood, A., (2020, April 17). WCW’s Blockbuster Wuhan Lab Investigation Goes Viral. White Coat Waste Project. https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/2020/04/17/wcws-blockbuster-wuhan-lab-investigation-goes-viral/
Aldhous, P. (2022, May 13). This activist group tapped into partisan COVID politics to make big trouble for Anthony Fauci and the NIH. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/white-coat-waste-anthony-fauci-nih-ecohealth-alliance-lab “On April 11, the group succeeded in getting DailyMail.com, the website of a British tabloid newspaper with a large online readership in the US, to run the story: “REVEALED: U.S. Government Gave $3.7 Million Grant to Wuhan Lab at Center of Coronavirus Leak Scrutiny.” ($3.7 million was actually the total sum paid over six years to EcoHealth, gleaned by Goodman from the NIH’s grants database; in fact, less than $600,000 went to the Wuhan institute.) The White Coat Waste Project started reaching out to Republicans in Congress — and the NIH was soon reeling. By April 13, NIH officials were scrambling to respond to a request for information from the office of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio”
Hussey, M., & Hussey, M. (2022, March 13). How WCW 1st exposed & cut the Wuhan lab funding. White Coat Waste Project. https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/2022/05/13/buzzfeed-how-wcw-cut-the-nih-wuhan-lab-grant/
The WCW original influence campaign was focused on the wet markets and was later changed to put a focus on the lab; because the market is just not that interesting.
Washington Examiner. (2020, April 12). Taxpayer-funded animal experiments tied to Chinese “wet markets” and Wuhan laboratory. http://web.archive.org/web/20200413155348/https:/www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/taxpayer-funded-animal-experiments-tied-to-chinese-wet-markets-and-wuhan-laboratory
77 Novel Laureates denounce the (unlawful) cancellation of EHA grant at Trump’s behest
Group of 77 Nobel laureates, 31 scientific societies send letters to NIH, HHS denouncing funding cut for EcoHealth Alliance Research, call for review | KFF. (2020, May 22). KFF. https://www.kff.org/news-summary/group-of-77-nobel-laureates-31-scientific-societies-send-letters-to-nih-hhs-denouncing-funding-cut-for-ecohealth-alliance-research-call-for-review/
The “diplomatic cables” story
Josh Rogin J (2020, April 14). The Washington Post. “State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses
The state department cables from 2018 were released 3 months later, clarifying that Josh Rogin had cherry-picked them for his story
The Washington Post (2020, July 17) https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-department-cable-that-launched-claims-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-chinese-lab/2b80aef2-f728-4c36-8875-3bf6aae1d272/
O’Donnell & Associates publish GOP talking points “Corona Big Book”
Including details of Wuhan Institute of Virology lab work, suggesting their involvement in COVID origins and by proxy implicating EcoHealth Alliance (e.g. p. 8/9 listing of EHA published papers along with lab-release conspiracy)
(2020). Corona big book. In Main Messages. https://static.politico.com/80/54/2f3219384e01833b0a0ddf95181c/corona-virus-big-book-4.17.20.pdf (Note: they are political fixers that take up any tasks, from lobbying to procurement to public affairs, crisis management, strategic media relations to political strategy consulting.)
Some in depth reporting about Epoch Times as pro-Trump outlet and vehicle for the Falun Gong cult
Van Zuylen-Wood, S. (2021, January 13). Inside ‘The Epoch Times,’ a mysterious Pro-Trump newspaper. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/inside-the-epoch-times-a-mysterious-pro-trump-newspaper/617645/ “Beginning in 2020, The Epoch Times gained new resonance. For years, its anti-communism had seemed oddly beside the point. Then a deadly pandemic emerged in China, where the government muzzled whistleblowers and covered up the virus’s early spread. “They’ve been waiting for so long to find some large-scale evidence of the abject villainy of China,” one former NTD employee, another Falun-Gong founded propaganda outlet broadcasting in 70 countries, told a reporter at the Atlantic. “Now COVID comes along and checks off all the boxes.” Suddenly, The Epoch Times’ wall-to-wall coverage of the “CCP virus” was being amplified across the American right. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who recently sat for an interview with the paper, pushed the hatched-in-a-lab theory. Trump called the virus “a real bad present” from China.”
Wilson, J. (2021, April 30). Falun Gong-aligned media push fake news about Democrats and Chinese communists. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/30/falun-gong-media-epoch-times-democrats-chinese-communists ( “It is a mistake to view the Falung Gong-aligned outlets as normal media companies. The principal goal of Epoch Times – now publishing in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profits – is not to generate profit, he says, but to mount a long and broad “influence operation”. And the goal of that influence operation, in turn, is “to foment anti-CCP sentiment”. [... The Epoch Times followed that April with a documentary that repeated the bioweapon claims, and have taken further opportunities to allege, without basis, that China’s government started the pandemic deliberately.
According to Carusone, such opportunistic retreading of existing conspiracy narratives is characteristic of these outlets. “They’re not drivers, they’re not weaving new conspiracy theories, they’re amplifying what’s already out there,” he said. “There’s an incredible demand for a version of the world centered on one big villain.” he said. “Epoch Times provides that very simple narrative.”)
On April 7, Epoch times together with Steve Bannon released the first bioweapon documentary movie on YouTube, a well-produced pseudo-investigative sensationalist piece that would garner millions of views.
NTD. (2020, April 8). The first documentary movie on CCP virus, Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bXWGxhd7ic
Epoch Times getting rich as well on conspiratorial content, MAGA politics and money laundering
Anti-China group hired GOP strategist in pro-Trump shift. (2023, October 13). [Video]. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/epoch-times-falun-gong-growth-rcna111373 “The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax records. [...] More and more, especially for the right-wing populists around the world, people approach truth and reality from the demand side,” Rosen said. “When there is the demand for something to be true, these media properties go out and meet it.”
Honderich, H. (2024, June 4). The Epoch Times CFO charged with $67m money laundering scheme. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg66xe59zyeo
Conspiracy myth are cash cows, and independent creators wanted in on the story:
The birth of the Mojiang miner conspiracy theory
The Mojiang mine conspiracy theories started apparently with the confusions around BtCoV4991 (which was another name before RaTG13 was re-christened) Is Bat coronavirus 4991 a smoking gun in China’s COVID-19 cover-up? (2020b, April 27). WION. https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/is-bat-coronavirus-4991-a-smoking-gun-in-chinas-covid-19-cover-up-294760
Qiu, J. (2022b, July 29). Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/09/1044985/shi-zhengli-COVID-lab-leak-wuhan/
(About the seeker: “May 2020, when the anonymous owner of the Twitter handle @TheSeeker268—who claimed to me in Twitter texts that he is a 30-year-old man trained in architecture and filmmaking and lives in the Indian city of Bhubaneswar—dug up a 2016 PhD thesis by Huang Canping from the Chinese internet.”)
“The Seeker” sleuthed out an old master thesis and came in contact with DRASTIC types to make the 4991-RaTG13 connection, here is a Twitter summary attempt of their evolving theory
Canping Huang PhD - Novel Virus Discovery in BAT - ISN Translation. (n.d.). DocumentCloud. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20694207-canping-huang-phd-novel-virus-discovery-in-bat-isn-translation/
Luigi Warren [@Luigi_Warren]. (2020, May 10). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/luigi_warren/status/1259826618442235909 “THESIS: For unknown reasons, Shi Zhengli (famous "Bat Woman" of the Wuhan Institute of Virology) has obfuscated the connection between SARS-2’s nearest known relative, RaBtCoV/4991 aka RaTG13, and her own research and has elided that she discovered this virus in 2013 while investigating a still-unexplained outbreak of fatal pneumonias in a bat-infested disused mineshaft located in Mojiang County of Yunnan Province. SZ identified SARS-2’s nearest known relative as RaTG13 in a February 2020 paper, and uploaded its full genome sequence, which has 96% identity with SARS-2. The only info given in the paper was that the virus was recovered from bats in Yunnan province. [...] Possible motivations for soft-peddling 4991 and perhaps linkage to a mystery 2012 pneumonia outbreak could include: (1) pressure from Chinese authorities to minimize public alarm over a new SARS-like outbreak back in 2012/13 (2) professional secrecy related to an ongoing effort to put together a major scientific "story" for high-level publication around SZ’s theory of direct bat-to-human transmission of SARS-like coronaviruses; (3) desire to deflect suspicion that the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic is the result of a biocontainment failure involving SZ’s research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Zhengli interview for science magazine answered about RaTG13
Yet the dead miners would provide a trove for further myth making
Rahalkar, M. C., & Bahulikar, R. A. (2020). Lethal pneumonia cases in Mojiang Miners (2012) and the mineshaft could provide important clues to the origin of SARS-COV-2. Frontiers in Public Health, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.581569 (Note: here, two Indian researchers (a plant biologist and bioengineer) and DRASTIC members would publish an alternative diagnostic assessment of Mojiang Miner illnesses in a predatory journal to further the myth, their “paper” was reviewed and edited by DRASTIC members. This practice is unethical in science, as reviewers should be unbiased and not in cahoots with the authors.)
Alina Chan’s rise to popularity
Alina Chan publishes a pre-print about “human adaptation” that is scientifically flawed, but it gets picked up by the dailymail (UK)
Birrell, I. (2020, May 16). Landmark study: Virus didn’t come from animals in Wuhan market. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8326823/Landmark-study-Virus-didnt-come-animals-Wuhan-market.html
...and then Newsweek a few days later and that launches her influencer career.
Lemon, J. (2020, May 17). Scientists shouldn’t rule out lab as source of coronavirus, new study says. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-shouldnt-rule-out-lab-source-coronavirus-new-study-says-1504656?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1589744901
How did it happen? It appears that after some initial curiosity by a conspiracy theorist, she replies about EcoHealth funding, and that starts a megalong discussion thread because that persona was tagging everyone; and Peter Daszak starts defending:
Peter Daszak [@PeterDaszak]. (2020, May 9). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/PeterDaszak/status/1259115594475061249
"Great way to also reduce availability of vaccines & drugs to cure people.“Our work on remdesivir absolutely would not have moved forward” without [this] research, says virologist Mark Denison of Vanderbilt University https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.368.6491.561" (Note: Peter’s engagement after being tagged caused more pile on by DRASTIC; all in Alina’s thread that got now noticed. Soon, the unethical reporters at the dailymail make a big deal out of her preprint for political reasons. Later, DRASTIC fully latches onto her preprint after it appears in Newsweek, many of them engage online and push the profile of the preprint.)
Matt Ridley soon discovers the topic and writes an op-ed in WSJ based also on Alina’s preprint
Ridley, M. (2020, May 29). So Where Did the Virus Come From? The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-where-did-the-virus-come-from-11590756909 (They start a collaboration for a book soonish after)
Alina Chan soon was also featured by Boston Magazine, her star was rising
Jacobsen, R. (2020, September 9). Could COVID-19 Have Escaped from a Lab? Boston Magazine. https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-broad-institute-coronavirus/ “By late May, both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we’d overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on COVID-19. It was thrilling to see her reasoning in real time, a reminder of why I’ve always loved science, with its pursuit of patterns that sometimes leads to exciting revelations. The website CNET featured her in a story about “a league of scientists-turned-detectives” who were using genetic sequencing technologies to uncover COVID-19’s origins. After it came out, Chan added “scientist-turned-detective” to her Twitter bio.”
An incredibly charitable MIT tech review profile of Alina Chan, misleadingly presenting her as whistleblower
Regalado, A. (2021, June 25). They called it a conspiracy theory. But Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/25/1027140/lab-leak-alina-chan/