Not totally shocked by this, but he still got a two-tweet callout. I'll expand on this.
First, I noted that he ignored the in-depth Pro Publica piece. That's the Pro Publica piece whose core, and most of its periphery, withstood attacks both scientific and more often politically tribalist.
Related, I noted he hadn't at all discussed someone like former Bill Clinton National Security Agency staffer Jaime Metzl, who was on the possibility early on, and who has regularly updated his writing on this. (I've visited that link about every three months.)
Metzl lays out a VERY detailed possibility of how a lab leak could have happened. (I have never posted the full thing before.)
In 2012, six miners working in a bat-infested copper mine in southern China (Yunnan province) were infected with a bat coronavirus. All of them developed symptoms exactly like COVID-19 symptoms. Three of them died.
Viral samples taken from the Yunnan miner were taken to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the only level 4 biosecurity lab in China that was also studying bat coronaviruses.
The WIV carried out gain of function research, almost certainly on these and a range of related and other samples (which is different than genetically engineering the viruses). Chimeric viruses were likely developed in this process. There has never been a full and public accounting for what viruses are in the WIV sample set and database, and key elements of the database have been taken off line or deleted.
Given the close relationship of the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) in the development and construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is fair to assume a connection between the PLA and the WIV.
In late 2019 the SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared in Wuhan. The closest known relative of this virus is the RaTG13 virus sampled from the Yunnan mine where the miners had been infected. (NOTE: RaTG13 is almost certainly not the backbone virus for SARS-CoV-2. Also, the BANAL-52 virus, a closer match to SARS-CoV-2, was later isolated from samples taken in Laos. Viral samples from Laos and Cambodia were regularly sent to the WIV.)
The genetic similarity between the RaTG13 virus and SARS-CoV-2 suggest that SARS-CoV-2 or a closely related backbone virus could have been sampled from the Mojiang mine or elsewhere in the same region and brought to the WIV (which is why the disappeared WIV databases and lab records are so critical).
It is also plausible that SARS-CoV-2 could have been among the viruses held in or derived from a different virus in the WIV repository.
In the earliest known stage of the outbreak, the virus was already very well-adapted to human cells.
In the critical first weeks after the outbreak, Wuhan authorities worked aggressively to silence the whistleblowers and destroy evidence that could prove incriminating.
When Beijing authorities got involved a bit later, they likely faced a choice of implicating the Wuhan authorities, and, in effect, taking blame for what was quickly emerging as a major global problem, or turning into the curve and going all in for the coverup. I believe they likely chose the second option.
The Chinese government then massively lobbied the WHO to prevent the WHO from declaring COVID-19 as an international emergency and prevented WHO investigators from entering China for nearly a month.
In late January 2020, PLA Major General Chen Wei was put in charge of containment efforts in Wuhan. This role included supervision of the WIV, which had previously been considered a civilian institution. General Chen is China’s top biological weapons expert. Allegations that the PLA was conducting covert dual civilian-military research on bat coronaviruses at WIV have not been proven.
The Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to destroy evidence and silence anyone in China who might be in a position to provide evidence on the origins of COVID-19.
Although nothing can be fully conclusive in light of Chinese obfuscation, the continued absence of any meaningful evidence of a zoonotic chain of transmission and mutation in the wild and the accretion of other evidence is pointing increasingly, in my view, toward an accidental lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19. Given the extent to which China would benefit from discovering evidence of a transmission in the wild, we can assume Chinese authorities are doing all they can to find this kind of evidence without success. This failure would explain why Chinese officials have recently begun, with little credible evidence, asserting that the outbreak started outside of China.
In light of all of this, only a full and unrestricted international forensic investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with complete access to all samples, lab records, scientists, health officials, etc. will suffice.
Ensuring the most thorough and highest quality investigation exploring all possible hypothesis is and should be in all of our interest, including that of the Chinese government and people.
Preventing such an investigation should be seen significnatly [sic] as an admission of guilt by the Chinese government.
But, Simpson's piece doesn't even begin to dialogue with something like this.
I did give him a kudo for not being a sneering tribalist like Orac. (I do think he is a tribalist. If he accepts my callout to do a follow-up, we'll see how tribalist he is, and we'll see if he goes more down Orac's road on sneering, too.)
For someone who claims to be "skeptical," he isn't, and we'll also see, if he does a follow-up, if he gets any more skeptical. And, per Metzl's last point, if he doesn't do such a follow-up, his silence will be seen here as like Beijing's prevention.
That said, Simpson's personal-professional story is interesting. IIRC, he moved to the West Coast for a position that fell through and he's now blogging for tip jar money and doing other things on the side.
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Ten days later, no response on Twitter, no update to the original post, and no new follow-up post.
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