The theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan has been gaining momentum, with top US adviser on the COVID-19 pandemic Dr Anthony Fauci coming under fire by critics who say he downplayed the possibility of a lab leak.
The theory always existed, with Australian officials and the World Health Organization (WHO) stressing it was a slim possibility with no solid conclusions on the virus’s origin drawn, calling for further investigations.
Many organisations have had to do an about-face on their coverage, with The Washington Post correcting a previous article that described the lab leak theory as a debunked conspiracy — calling it a “coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed”.
Theories swirl, are shut down
The lab leak theory emerged almost immediately, speculating that either the virus was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab, or was collected from the wild and leaked, accidentally or otherwise.
It was shut down by many almost as quickly as it started. On February 19, 2020, medical journal The Lancet published a statement signed by 27 scientists rejecting the lab-leak hypothesis and condemning “conspiracy theories” that COVID-19 didn’t have a natural origin.
While senior officials from the Trump administration, including then-president Donald Trump and then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, touted the theory, Australian intelligence officials were unable to find any evidence to support it. Liberal National MP George Christensen questioned the theory in Parliament several times.
The WHO said the virus was “natural in origin”, and Health Minister Greg Hunt pointed to the likelihood the virus was zoonotic, meaning it spread from animals to humans: “There is a very real likelihood that this disease arose from a wet market in Wuhan,” he said on April 17, though later stressed the original source of the virus hadn’t been determined.
On April 29, Hunt walked back his comments, saying it was “not the government’s position” that the virus originated in the wet market.
While many were deterred, News Corp was not: on May 2, The Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson published her article on a “leaked” Five Eyes report — later revealed to be a reference paper of background research distributed by the US state department — stating intelligence agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US were looking into the work of two Chinese scientists who studied bats in Australia. The report was three months old, though Markson noted the Australian government believed the chance the virus came from a lab was 5%.
At the time, Media Watch discredited the report, pointing to “overwhelming” evidence COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans.
“Markson should have told readers that almost every virus expert had dismissed the lab escape theory,” Media Watch host Paul Barry said.
A few days after Markson’s article, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked about the theory.
“There’s nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source,” he said. “You can’t rule anything out in these environments … The most likely scenario that has been canvassed relates to wildlife wet markets, but that’s a matter that would have to be thoroughly assessed.”
Markson also quoted a “military document” that apparently showed China discussed weaponising coronaviruses since 2015 — though it was later revealed to be sourced from a book.
Zoonotic evidence emerges
As Australia continued to push for an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — causing tension with China — the lab leak theory continued to swirl, with Markson quoting four experts who questioned the virus’s origin in June.
“This is precisely why, precisely why, we argue for an impartial independent and comprehensive international investigation,” Hunt said when asked about the article.
Following a trip to Wuhan in February, the WHO all but dismissed the lab leakage theory, which Hunt said was pleasing.
Just a month later, however, WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said further studies were needed.
“As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table. This report is a very important beginning, but it is not the end. We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do,” he said.
He later said the lab leak theory “did not receive the same depth of attention and work as the other hypotheses”.
Theory now gaining traction
On May 14 of this year, 18 prominent scientists signed an open letter published in medical journal Science calling for more investigation into the origins of the pandemic following the WHO report.
On May 26, a classified US intelligence report was leaked saying three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory were treated in hospital in November 2019. Fauci has said he’s “not convinced” the virus originated naturally, though says it’s overwhelmingly likely the SARS-COV-2 virus transferred into humans from animals.
US President Joe Biden revealed he’d ordered a review into the COVID-19 lab leak theory upon assuming office. Importantly, he did so after shutting down an investigation launched under Donald Trump’s presidency that Biden’s administration deemed poor quality.
He said the US intelligence community had “coalesced around two likely scenarios” and that a definitive conclusion would be reached by late August.
The coverage led Paul Barry to say that should the lab theory prove correct, the organisation would update its viewers and “apologise to Ms Markson for our criticism”.
The theory has made it back into Parliament, with Liberal MP Kevin Andrews saying the pandemic came “possibly from a biological laboratory”.
Hunt and Morrison have been contacted for comment.
Ah, the ins and outs of anti-China propaganda. First, if the Virus was engineered in the Wuhan lab, it would be extraordinary that the Chinese government would have taken action to contain the virus only in mid January, given that people were falling ill by mid December at the latest. The government could have acted immediately after the virus escaped, saving the immense cost of building eminency hospitals. closing down Wuhan City and the province and al the cost of subsequent outbreaks The Lunar new year holiday was a pretty compelling reason for immediate action.
Second, three people are reported to have fallen ill at the lab in mid November and much has been made of this as a suspicious occurrence. This, however, happened too early for the government to be struggling to identify the virus, releasing the details only on 12 January and mobilising containment from mid January. But why should we keep a good story down, if it allows hostile actions to be taken, while media , mostly far right media, speculate about it all being the fault of China that the world had a pandemic.
This takes attention away from all those governments that, like Trump’s government, Bolsanaro’s Brazilian government, the UK government and others around the globe, seemed to canvas the idea that keeping the economy open was worth more to a country than protecting the lives of the elderly, who had few useful years left to live, so that on a direct utilitarian morality, their lives were worth far less than those of younger people who would, with few exceptions, experience a COVID-19 infection as like a “little flue”, as Trump and Bolsanaro put it. These governments are responsible for huge death tolls in their own country and neighbouring countries. If the US is looking for people to blame, it could try the leaders of these governments.
The lab theory is US propaganda until proven otherwise – which it won’t be.
An idea is not responsible for, nor invalidated by, the people who hold it.
Selective breeding is the basis of agriculture and eugenics was entirely respectable until certain folk ran with it in the 1930s.
So was cocaine.
Heroin was available in cough medicine in this country until the 1950s in
Dr Collis Brown which is still available in the UK, though morphine has replaced the dreaded H.
And for those goofing around the Mediterranean – when last I was in the region – there is the good, old Paregoric not to mention the French Romilar, with codeine as the substitute.
Fun fact – heroin was first marketted, by Bayer if memory serves, as a cure for morphine & opium addiction. Worked a treat.
The report from the University of Barcelona that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 has been detected in a sample of Barcelona’s sewage water collected on 12th March 2019 should put an end to the Wuhan lab speculation. It doesn’t mean that the virus didn’t originate in China because Barcelona has a lot of links with China but it does indicate that the virus was out and about long before it became a pandemic. It suggests that some anomalous flu cases that occurred in 2019 in France and Spain might have been COVID-19.
Where did you find that report Rais? There were also many credible reports of instances of a strange flu like condition that defied traditional treatments in the US and Europe well before the pandemic supposedly originated, but it’s hard to find these days. This was second half 2019. David Thomson reported here in comments numerous times.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ
Cheers Lexus. Wonder why this isn’t front page on the moment?
Oh, no I don’t, doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.
Absolutely! The Western media scare the sh*t out of me how they shape what is true and what isn’t to suit whatever their bosses want.
While conservatives try to blame China, here in SA we export the virus to Victoria & our premier arrogantly says there is no need for purpose built quarantine facilities…… Another Liberal revealing himself as a sociopath. He will regret his foolishness when someone reminds him just how many young South Australians now live & work in Victoria. Hoping this Liberal gov is shown the door at the next election. Cambridge Analitica won them power. Their greed & stupidity will hopefully lose it for them…..
When will people wake up to fact that there is such an interchange of personnel from UK, USA, and Australia with the Wuhan Virology Lab that the chance of the virus having originated there and us not know about it is negligible. That interchange was a continuous process, probably halted by the virus, in the interests of research and training.
This is irrelevant. That active research to enhance the infectivity of the virus under three research grants from the USA since 2017 and that Fauci long resisted authorising these grants because of the dubious benefit to risk ratio has not been denied. That in itself proves nothing but it does mean that a closer look at the bio security arrangements and records of the Wuhan lab is fully justified.