Although I’ve alluded to this before, I decided not to hit it straight on until now because I realized that there’s a political powder keg hiding behind the issue of the Wuhan lab, which more and more sane people are now acknowledging as the likely source of COVID-19. In short, there’s a research lab in Wuhan that does “gain of function” work on viruses — modifying them to see what happens under the pretense of creating the opportunity to proactively come up with ways to combat new viruses. It’s exactly the kind of bad idea that would be the underpinning of a sci-fi disaster movie, and I was pretty surprised to learn that it is considered a normal line of scientific inquiry — though it is is quite controversial.
The lab, which did receive funding from the US, happens to sit right about where COVID-19 started. It’s way too big a coincidence. My assumption is that either the lab’s normal procedures were not adequate to prevent workers from catching the virus or that a worker (or workers) ignored safety procedures and caught it. It’s silly — but more importantly, it is paranoid — to imagine that China purposefully released a deadly virus in China to try to make Donald Trump look bad. If they were going to do something like that, they’d have no trouble releasing the virus in the US where it would be more likely to stick to Trump and less likely to stick to China.
I also don’t think this was a Twelve Monkeys Scenario — where a single worker decides they want to end the world, and releases a virus to accomplish that goal. It’s an extremely destructive virus, but not a world-ender.
Anyone saying that it is “unlikely” that the virus came from the Wuhan lab is — from what I can tell — basing that on an optimistic evaluation of whether human beings were following the standard safety precautions for a Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) lab without error. (Here is a Quick Learn Lesson from the CDC about Biosafety Levels.) In contrast, I make absolutely no assumptions about people succeeding in following those worldwide standards for laboratory safety procedures based on both anecdotes (that I can’t share) and public records of previous mistakes in those kinds of labs — including labs in the US.
I’ve been pretty taken aback by all the experts claiming that the lab had nothing to do with it without any evidence to back it up. To be fair, their obvious concern is that there are fascists and that they would use the pandemic as a convenient excuse to start a racist war against China that would quickly blossom into an even bigger economic catastrophe and a world war. With the mere idea that the Wuhan lab might be the source being an existential threat to both capital and human life, elites decided that they had to quash it.
I respect that those trying to deny that COVID-19 might have come from the Wuhan lab have the best intentions.
In the long term, though, trying to hide the truth only helps the far right, and we’re going to see them use the Chinese coverup and western media and government participation in that coverup as powerful propaganda supporting the far right position. The situation reminds me very much of Chernobyl, an event that led to loss of faith in the Soviet project from within and significantly contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union; it wasn’t just the catastrophe itself that destroyed the people’s faith in the government, but the bumbling and callous way the government kept trying to bury the facts.
Moreover, I wish we could find a way to get our government — and government-funded scientists — to stop treating the public like children who can’t handle difficult truths. Suppressing harsh truths creates a culture of suspicion and prevents voters from making good political decisions — like whether to end funding for gain-of-function virus research or whether to finally do something about climate change. This is part of the overall anti-democratic culture of the United States (and, clearly, other countries); to truly have a democracy, you have to trust your citizens with the truth.
Related links:
The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak by Steven Quay and Richard Muller, June 6, 2021, Wall Street Journal
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis by Nicholson Baker, January 4, 2021, New York Magazine
Does this remind you of how we weren’t allowed to criticize President Obama? Thanks Obama | Why Obama is a monster who you should not celebrate.