What's the state of the lab leak hypothesis?
Been debating a return to posting here, and this is really an issue worth given much more in depth treatment than I'll supply for the moment. Just wanted to paste this tweet in - the first of a longer thread and add a short amount of commentary:
COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis:
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) September 7, 2022
1) Pandemic caused by bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--city 1,000 km from nearest wild bats with SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
(I will note that Ebright definitely seems to fit this profile I'd mentioned before when it comes to the sort of people likely to act as whistleblowers - an off-putting personality though a person I think has been worthwhile reading).
Currently the Lancet's COVID-19 commission report is due very soon (tomorrow I think!) but, after it dealt with its conflict-of-interest issues we already seem to have some idea as to what this report is likely to conclude. It's kind of interesting to read an interview with the commission's chair. See for example this quote:
I chaired the commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature, just to mention. After two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover. We don’t know for sure, I should be absolutely clear. But there’s enough evidence that it should be looked into. And it’s not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere. And I think for real reasons that they don’t want to look underneath the rug, the statement.
Personally, the point as which I switched to suspecting that COVID-19 most likely originated as a product of engineering in the lab was with this leak - i.e. their proposal, which was rejected from a US funding agency due to safety concerns, to engineer coronaviruses to make them more infectious through introducing of a feature that's one found in COVID-19. I think that there is evidence to believe that research like that continued and that NIH was negligent in oversight with research there conducted under lower safety measures than should have been employed.
Will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. It's interesting how stuff like this has largely flown under the radar.