Coronavirus Week 125: The lab-leak theory gets validation

People like pseudoskeptic and tribalist deluxe Dr. David Gorski have LONG laughed and sneered at people like me who have said, citing people like Bill Clinton National Security Agency advisor Jaime Metzl and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, that the idea of COVID 19 originating from a lab leak in Wuhan, was a realistic possibility. Or well known public health and data analyst Zeynep Tufekci, who called out the Lancet letter saying it couldn't have been a lab leak.

Instead, Gorski et al called it a conspiracy theory, and conflated it, presumably deliberately, with the idea that COVID-19 was actually created in such a lab, and did so as an apparent smear.

The likes of him were abetted, albeit without smears, by the likes of David Dayen. (Unfortunately, the usually grounded leftist Sam Husseini DID conflate "lab leak" and "bioweaponizing.")

Well, they can now officially shut the fuck up, per Pro Publica. In conjunction with Vanity Fair (an interesting editorial partner for a story like this, but I digress), it has a story on a report by the minority membership of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. That report:

concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”

There's your nut graf.

I'm sure the likes of Orac will, "more likely than not," respond with something like "minority report = Republicans."

My whole set of responses?

Toy Reid is clearly not a GOP operative;

Richard Burr isn't a total wingnut;

Pro Publica is reporting.

Pro Publica begins by establishing Reid's knowledge of, nay, fluency in, Mandarin, coupled with his knowledge of and appreciation for East Asian culture. It then notes his skill in translating "Party speak" by the Communist Party of China.

Reid says he was able to look at a variety of information already online from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and "translate" the "party speak" for new insights.

Party speak in a science lab? Yes:

Like many scientific institutes in China, the WIV is state-run and funded. The research carried out there must advance the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As one way to ensure compliance, the CCP operates 16 party branches inside of the WIV, where members including scientists meet regularly and demonstrate their loyalty.

PP offers more details in the next graf of its story. Well, there's that. This also kneecaps the Rainier Sheas and Margaret Flowers of the more loony precincts of the left.

Reid says that WIV staff were scrambling to prove their scientific bona fides and value to party hacks and apparatchiks. This rings true per a site like Retraction Watch, where a large percentage of people with scientific research studies that don't pan out (or are fraudulent in some cases) are Chinese nationals.

AND, an apparent biosecurity breach Nov. 12, 2019.

Now, back up to refuting Orac and loony leftists:

Given advance access to hundreds of pages of the Senate researchers’ findings and analysis, Vanity Fair, in partnership with ProPublica, spent five months investigating their underlying evidence

So, they're not taking anybody's word on credit.

And, they're going beyond it, in fact:

Taken together, our reporting provides critical context that is not included in the pared-down 35-page interim report. It offers the most detailed picture to date of the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, including new details on the intense pressure the lab faced to produce breakthrough research, its struggles to grapple with mounting safety issues and a previously unreported series of references to a mysterious incident shortly before the virus began infecting its first victims.

That's that.

That additional reporting includes getting other China experts to separately look at documents that Reid did. And, they signed off on his interpretation.

That includes that China apparently already started work on a vaccine in November 2019.

Read that again.

That includes that China apparently already started work on a vaccine in November 2019.

In other words, Xi Jinping has blood on his hands. (Some lab-leak denialists will point to Moderna working on a coronavirus vaccine even earlier. Yes, but it wasn't specific to COVID-19. And, it didn't work. And, AFAIK, China wasn't even working on a generic coronavirus vax before this time.)

Further confirming that this reporting is legit? Burr got the help of Dr. Robert Kadlec, an HHS careerist who, per what I've read on COVID, knew his shit on a variety of emergency preparedness issues. Kadlec also played a role in debunking the claim that trailers in Iraq in 2003 were mobile bioweapons labs, this story notes.

OK, back to the narrative.

Next tick in the timeline.

Nov. 19, 2019, seven days after the possible biosecurity breach, Dr. Ji Changzheng, tech safety and security director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences (parallel to the US NAS) came to WIV. He said he was bringing words of Xi Jinping about "a complex and grave situation."

From there, we get more on sloppy research and security practices, not just at WIV but elsewhere in China.

The story also reminds us that WIV had TWO labs. One is biosecurity level 4; the other is only BSL-2, but nonetheless had research being done there way above its biosecurity pay level.

The story then moves to discussing the tribalism over the lab-leak theory I talk about at top. 

And, the interim report's conclusion?

(T)he interim Senate report concludes that “the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

I agree.

And, speaking of tribalism, I don't like Michael Worobey's claim that he had been given insufficient time to respond. As in, I don't think Pro Publica shortchanged him re any followup to his piece this summer.

Anyway, that's just the iceberg. READ THE FULL THING. "Familiar names" like Ralph Baric, Peter Daszak and Shi Zhengli all appear. As for odds? Even before this new Pro Publica piece, Metzl put the lab leak origin odds at 85 percent.

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An addendum: Contra some wingnuts, this should not be used as a crude tool to kick China (though the re-election of Xi to a third term has left China under his leadership fully open to that) but as a warning about security and safety levels at biological research labs around the world, including here in the US.

It should also lead to new clampdowns on gain-of-function research, including getting Fauci, Collins and others to stop misdefining (or lying by redefining) about just what constitutes that. 

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Update, Nov. 1: There's a big push-back on Twitter, claiming that Reid got some tenses wrong on some of his translation and other things, and now, some push-back against the push-back, with me contributing my part. Part of the original push-back (not saying all) appears to be #BlueAnon. Part may be  (not saying is) Chinese agents. As far as journalism, a leader in the push-back is Semafor, which has multiple good-for-it reasons to be leading the push-back.

I'll see how Pro Publica updates the piece. Until then, not writing further. (As of Nov. 3, nothing on its website.)

Update to Update 1, Nov. 26: One month on, neither Pro Publica nor Vanity Fair has seen any reason to update, append an editor's note, or anything else.

Update 2, Nov. 29: Pro Publica HAS COMPLETED a review of its initial reporting, and generally stands by it, and specifically totally stands by it on anything of consequence, including Toy Reid's translation work.

Since that was the No. 1 criticism from the tribalists (and others), this:

We commissioned three Chinese language experts with impeccable credentials who were not involved in the original story to review Reid’s translation. They all agreed that his version was a plausible way to represent the passage, though two also said they would have translated the words to refer to the dangers of day-to-day lab operations. The third produced a translation that was in line with Reid’s. All agreed the passage was ambiguous. We have updated the story to underscore the complexity of interpreting that dispatch.

Sounds pretty straightforward.

Bigger issue No. 2:

We continue to see our story as a measured exploration of the array of questions raised about the WIV’s laboratories. The possibility that a biosecurity breach at the WIV occurred, and sparked the pandemic, remains plausible.

Indeed it is. And, with St. Anthony of Fauci's retirement and the air-kisses he's getting, this is important.

And sorry, tribalists, Pro Publica's not going away on the issue, either:

We plan to keep reporting on this issue and expect new evidence to emerge. It is our view that both the natural-spillover and laboratory-accident hypotheses for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic merit continued investigation. Given the human toll, which continues to mount, it is imperative that we continue this work.

Deal with it.