Lab Leak Mania

Why did the New York Times publish an op-ed supporting the lab leak theory?

On June 3, 2024, the New York Times published an op-ed titled, “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points.” The article was written by Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute in Boston. Chan had also written a book titled Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, which also supported the notion that SARS-CoV-2 virus was created in a Wuhan laboratory. Chan’s book has been roundly criticized by scientists who investigated the events in Wuhan. Nonetheless, two thirds of the American public, independent of political affiliation, believe that SARS-CoV-2 virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.  

Why is it important to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2? In 2002, SARS-1 virus, the first pandemic coronavirus, caused 8,000 cases and 774 deaths. Ten years later, in 2012, MERS, the second pandemic coronavirus, caused 2,600 cases and 941 deaths. These statistics paled in comparison to SARS-CoV-2, first detected in 2019, which caused 700 million cases and more than 7 million deaths. In other words, three pandemic coronaviruses have swept across the world in the last 20 years. It is safe to assume that this won’t be the end of it. We need to understand the source of these pandemic viruses so that we can better prevent the next one.

In her op-ed, Chan wrote, “Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.” Chan was wrong to claim the existence of a “growing body of evidence.” On the contrary, her op-ed contained only conspiracies, innuendos, and blatantly false claims. Although several scientists have stepped forward to counter Chan’s claims, the best single take-down was by Dr. Vincent Racaniello, a virologist who hosts a popular podcast called This Week in Virology (TWiV).

In a one-hour video, the TWiV team addressed each of the “Five Key Points” proffered by Chan. The group consisted of Vincent Racaniello (virologist), Alan Dove (microbiologist), Rich Condit (viral geneticist), Brianne Barker (immunologist), and Jolene Ramsey (microbiologist). The video was released on June 10, 2024, one week after Chan’s publication in the New York Times. This wasn’t the first time that the TWiV team had discussed the origin of SARS-CoV-2; it was the ninth. Previous guests have included evolutionary biologists who had directly investigated the events in Wuhan; specifically, Michael Worobey, Kristian Anderson, Eddie Holmes, Marion Koopmans, and Robert Garry, who had collectively published a paper in the journal Science in 2022 titled, “The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan Was the Early Epicenter of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” This paper showed that all the early cases of SARS-CoV-2 clustered around the southwestern section of a wet market in Wuhan where animals susceptible to coronavirus were illegally sold and inadequately housed. Worobey and his team had shown that 1) the early cases had direct or indirect contact with the market and 2) none of the early cases occurred around the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This single paper was devastating to Chan’s hypothesis.

Chan’s first “Key Points”: Chan’s stated that “bat coronavirus spillover events into humans are rare.” While pandemics are relatively rare, bat coronavirus spillover events into humans are common. About 1 in 40 people in China who live in close association with bats but were unaffected by the SARS-1 pandemic have antibodies to bat coronaviruses. Less commonly, these spillover events turn into pandemics. Why are animal-to-human spillover events so common. Take civets, for example, which were at the center of the SARS-1 pandemic in 2002. A live, infected civet sold in a wet market in Wuhan would average 7 human contacts per hour. This would allow the civet to infect more than 50 people a day. Animal-human spillover events aren’t limited to coronaviruses. Influenza virus (birds), human immunodeficiency virus (chimps), Ebola virus (bats), mpox (rodents), and the coronaviruses SARS-1 (bats) and MERS (bats) were all originally animal viruses. Indeed, about 70 percent of human viruses and bacteria have their origins in animals.

Chan’s second “Key Points”: Chan wrote that the Wuhan laboratory, “took coronaviruses from bats and other animals as well as from sick people [and] pursued risky research that resulted in viruses becoming more infectious.” The Wuhan laboratory studied a coronavirus strain called WIV1: a bat coronavirus like SARS-1 that could grow in monkey cells in the laboratory but didn’t cause disease in people. The WIV1 strain bears no resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. The laboratory combined WIV1 with each of eight different bat coronaviruses that had been found in caves in and around Wuhan. None of the combination viruses that were created, however, could cause disease in people. These studies were irrelevant to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.

Chan wrote, “It remains unclear whether researchers in the Wuhan Institute of Virology possessed the precursor of the pandemic virus.” It is now quite clear that they did not possess any such precursor. The only remote evidence of a precursor to SARS-CoV-2 was a virus called RATG13, which is 1,200 base pairs different from SARS-CoV-2, far from a precursor. Further, two U.S. intelligence reports in 2020 and 2023, now declassified, showed that the Wuhan laboratory was unaware of the existence of SARS-CoV-2 until the start of the outbreak.

Chan wrote that, “Scientists on the [Wuhan] team fell ill with COVID in the fall of 2019.” While it was true that some of the scientists had a respiratory illness in the fall of 2019—it was, after all, winter respiratory virus season—none of them tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. A U.S. intelligence assessment in 2023 confirmed that there was no evidence of researchers sick with COVID prior to the outbreak.

Chan’s third “Key Points”: Chan wrote that, “The Wuhan lab pursued this work under low biosafety conditions that would not have contained an airborne virus as infectious as SARS-CoV-2.” Research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was routinely carried out under Biosafety Laboratory-2 (BSL-2) conditions. Biosafety conditions, which range from BSL-1 to BSL-4, differ in the degree of personal protective equipment and engineering measures to increase containment. First, Wuhan researchers weren’t working with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Second, even if they were working with SARS-CoV-2, BSL-2 containment is considered adequate. Indeed, for laboratories working with measles virus—which is far more contagious than SARS-CoV-2—BSL-2 containment is acceptable.

Chan wrote, “If the virus had escaped from the lab in 2019, it most likely would have gone undetected until too late.” If the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then most, if not all, the early cases should have been around the Institute, not 9 miles away on the other side of the Yangtze River in a place where an animal-to-human spillover event would most likely have occurred.

Chan’s fourth “Key Points”: Chan wrote, “The hypothesis that COVID-19 came from an animal at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market is not supported by strong evidence. [We] can’t distinguish between the market and a human superspreader.” It is at this point that Chan’s op-ed defies common sense. Two different lineages of SARS-CoV-2 virus were detected early in the outbreak. Chan would have us believe that two different SARS-CoV-2 viruses were created in the laboratory and then taken directly by human superspreaders to the southwestern section of the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market exactly where you would have expected an animal-to-human spillover event to occur. Why didn’t one or both superspreaders go to any of the 10,000 other places in Wuhan to begin a pandemic.

Chan wrote, “Not a single infected animal has ever been shown to be infected with SARS-CoV-2.” When the outbreak began, Chinese authorities shut down the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, disinfected the area, and killed the animals likely to have served as intermediates between bats and humans. In other words, no animals were available to test. This was in direct contrast to SARS-1, another animal-to-human spillover event that originated in a Foshan, China, wet market. In that case, the market continued to operate. For that reason, animals that were the likely source of SARS-1 were available for testing. This is perhaps Chan’s most disingenuous comment. You can’t go back in time and test animals that no longer exist.  

Chan’s fifth “Key Points”: Chan wrote, “Chinese authorities have not done an intense search for animals infected with SARS-CoV-2.” True. Mostly because all the animals in the southwestern section of the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market were immediately slaughtered. Researchers did, however, find genetic evidence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in carts, drains, a feather-and-hair remover, a metal cage, and machines that process animals after they’ve been slaughtered in wet market stalls that were at the epicenter of the outbreak. In the same specimens, they found mammalian DNA consistent with raccoon dogs, bamboo rats, and palm civets, all likely intermediate hosts as bat coronaviruses spilled into the human population.

Now that overwhelming evidence supports the fact that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a wet market in Wuhan, it’s time to make sure this doesn’t happen again. First, we need to hold the Chinese government accountable for failing to supervise wet markets that were selling mammals susceptible to coronaviruses illegally under non-hygienic conditions. Between May 2017 and November 2019, market vendors sold 47,000 live animals across 38 species, 31 of which were protected under Chinese law and were, therefore, being sold illegally. This is now the second time that a pandemic coronavirus has arisen in a Chinese wet market. Also, the international community should not have had to rely on a whistleblower in China (Dr. Li Wenliang, who would later succumb to the disease) to inform the world that a virus causing fatal pneumonias was circulating in Wuhan. Finally, Chinese health officials must allow international teams of scientists into their country the moment a possible pandemic virus raises its head, instead of barring entry, which only fuels conspiracy theories, like those advanced by Alina Chan.

It is time we put aside the fruitless, dead-end hypothesis of a lab leak and do the work that is necessary to prevent the next pandemic.

Link to “Tell Me When It’s Over”, which discusses the origin of COVID-19