Coronavirus week 129: ProPublica stands by latest lab leak story

About a month ago, Pro Publica, working jointly with Vanity Fair, reported on a Senate committee's minority report on the latest work on the idea that coronavirus, as in SARS-CoVID-2, originated in the human public from a lab leak at Wuhan Institute of Virology. I blogged about that at the time it came out.

Well, per updates to that post, it got LOTS of pushback. Not all of it was from St. Anthony of Fauci fellating BlueAnon tribalists, but a fair amount certainly was.

I don't know if Vanity Fair has said anything in response, but, ProPublica now has.

ProPublica 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.

Minor corrections relate to the timing and details of China's Zhou Yousen filing a patent for a vaccine. ProPublica notes others filed earlier claims, but these were all provisional, indicating they wanted patents for planned future research. 

The complete addendum follows up on the second and third pull quotes. It stresses it, including via medical experts it has interviewed in the past and for this addendum, that it does not believe it has a lab-leak theory smoking gun. But it stresses that its experts see the lab-leak idea as plausible enough to indeed warrant further, ongoing investigation.

And, there's the tribalism issue. See this:

(A)s interviews with other scientists before and after publication have made clear, the question is far from resolved. In their view, there is not enough evidence to establish how the virus first reached the now-infamous Wuhan market or to assert that zoonotic spillover is the sole possible explanation for the pandemic’s origin.'

(Jesse) Bloom, the virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, is among those scientists. “I’ve never seen anything as controversial as this in my field,” he said. “The amount of toxicity is out of control. Each side feels uniquely wronged. To me, it remains an open question.”

Agreed. And, it does cut both ways, especially outside the professional science world, and into the Twitterati of #MAGA vs #BlueMAGA.

Part of that, often from #MAGA but not always so, is the move from a lab-leak hypothesis to claims about weaponization. I noted that this has not always been "MAGA," and blogged specifically about leftist Sam Husseini making empirically unsubstantiated AND logically unlikely claims to this end. My refutation of him applies to both MAGAts and to horseshoe-theory leftists. There's no way China would have done weapons work at a lab built with large French assistance. As with the old USSR, there's no way they would have mixed medical research with weaponization. That's true of the old US, as well.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Hotez is a tribalist and twosider on the lab leak. Bigly, starting with attacking non-wingnut Richard Burr over the Senate minority committee report, coming off as a kinder, gentler Orac:

Bottom line: the lab leak GOF is all political theater, designed to cripple our national biomedical infrastructure. All so a few uneducated chuckleheads in the US Congress can flex their muscles, exercise authoritarian control. It will make us more vulnerable to future pandemics

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) November 1, 2022

And this isn't new from Hotez, as his Twitter feed and stories will show.

Not at all. As I said in quote-Tweeting that first tweet, he's lost some serious credibility in my book. I noted that Alina Chan, Scott Gottlieb and Jaime Metzl, among others, are not members of Congress (and by extension, not chuckleheads or uneducated). May blog just about that.