Why are calls being made to investigate Wuhan’s laboratory escape theory? | Coronavirus pandemic News

There is growing support among the world’s scientific community fully exploring the possibility the coronavirus may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, creating a global outbreak that has killed more than 3.7 million people worldwide.

The theory of laboratory leakage was largely sidelined in public scientific discourse in the early days of the outbreak, after the first cases of COVID-19, a disease caused by the virus, were confirmed in December 2019 in the Chinese city.

In the coming months, observers say the hypothesis was severely linked to the administration of China’s anti-pandemic and anti-xenophobia framework against former US President Donald Trump’s pandemic, and caused an apparent chilling effect on the scientific community.

“It was stuck in this hyperpolitized context where the question of whether a laboratory accident originated was stuck,” said Al Jazeera J Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Global Health Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Research.

“When Trump was doing the instrument as part of his campaign against China and Asia, people didn’t want to be associated with it. And that’s how they kept their distance.”

A significant increase in public support for fully researching the theory comes after a global health study commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Wuhan. make fun of which are highly inadequate by Western powers and famous scientists and based on data collected by Chinese officials.

The February report said it was “very likely” that the virus would create natural zoonotic transmission or human-to-human transmission when it concluded that the theory that accidentally spilled out of the lab was “very difficult”. China has repeatedly denied that the lab was responsible for filtering the virus.

Virologists and scientists in important fields who recognize the possibility that the virus could escape from a laboratory in Wuhan are very different in how they consider both scenarios.

Many argue that the outbreak began to be transferred from animals to humans for sure. Others say there is no direct evidence to say that one scenario is more likely than the other. Further discussion will be examined as to whether the sequence of the virus genome prevents human manipulation in the laboratory.

However, the change in the latest approach includes Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s leading expert on infectious diseases, largely from last year released the idea that science “strongly expresses” that the virus originated naturally.

He recently said he was “convinced” that the virus had not come out of the Wuhan lab and conducted further research.

Last week, in a weird way public statement Defining the thinking of the U.S. intelligence community and calling for more research, President Joe Biden said the agencies had created “probably about two scenarios” – a zoonotic transfer and an unwanted escape from the Wuhan lab.

“(In the intelligence community) while two elements lean towards the former (zoonotic) scenario and one at the second (laboratory escape) more – those with low or medium confidence – most elements do not think there is enough information to value each other,” he said. has the document, which mentions parts of the intelligence report that have not been published publicly.

On May 30, the Sunday Times reported that UK intelligence officials had changed their view of the Wuhan lab’s unexpected escape, saying it was “feasible”.

‘Both are viable’

Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, said little has changed in terms of scientific evidence since the virus genome sequence was released in January 2020.

According to him, “there is no safe basis for assigning relative probabilities to the natural accident (animal-human) hypothesis and the laboratory accident hypothesis.”

“In particular, all scientific data related to the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence and the epidemiology of COVID-19 are identical to the origin of a natural accident or the origin of laboratory accidents,” he told Al Jazeera in an email. . “That was already clear in January 2020, and it’s been clear at every moment from January 2020 to the present.”

Ebright, one of 21 international scientists, described what Wuhan’s research should be like. open letter in March, he said the origin of the coronavirus “can only be answered through a forensic investigation, not through scientific speculation.”

Meanwhile, several scientists have said they still believe it was unlikely humans could have manipulated the virus before it exploded. Robert Garry, a microbiologist at Tulane University who said he was involved in a March 2020 study, said the virus must have originated from nature, telling National Public Radio (NPR) in late May that evidence still supports those findings.

“I am more convinced than ever that it is a natural virus,” he told the news organization.

On May 14, the top 18 biologists were studying the pandemic has published a letter The journal Science called for more research, saying that “both accidental release from the laboratory and zoonotic discharge remain feasible.”

Experts criticized the WHO-mandated research that while the two theories were not “considered” in balance, only four of the 313 pages of the report corrected the possibility of a laboratory accident.

Circumstantial evidence

Others have cited circumstantial evidence supported by both theories.

In the case of zoonotic theory, virologists have long warned that the Wuhan wildlife market, where many exotic animals were sold nearby, would be an ideal place to make a zoonotic release, responsible for past coronavirus outbreaks. including coronaviruses that caused previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS. Finding the species responsible for the spread of these viruses can take years.

Meanwhile, Shi Zhengli, a well-known scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, wrote in a note in the journal Science last July that it was impossible to get the virus out of his lab, saying his team had “never been in contact or learned about the virus”. also noted at the time that the laboratory did not perform genome sequencing on all collected virus samples.

In favor of the unexpected theory of laboratory accidents, observers point out An extensive study of bat viruses conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC), the former of which is known to have the most well-known virus known as coronavirus; arguing that there were valid questions about safety rules in the laboratory; and the Chinese authorities warned that the information had been removed throughout the appearance.

They also have some intelligence officials said he questioned the transparency of so-called “function gain” research in China, which could lead to a deliberate increase in virus transmissibility, to study how it develops.

May 23 As reported by the Wall Street Journal Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill enough with similar symptoms of COVID-19 to apply for hospitalization in November 2019. Skeptics have pointed to illnesses during the regular flu season.

On Thursday, Fauci asked China to publish the medical records of these researchers.

Administrative change

However, Jon Eber, CEO of the U.S. Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory firm, said the biggest change in accepting the theory of laboratory leakage has been a change in the U.S. administration, and said Trump’s lack of credibility has had a tremendous impact. they were fed by scientists and the “blind spots and biases of media gatekeepers”.

“He complained that social media, including banning multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, or people were pushing for misinformation,” he told Al Jazeera. “I think they didn’t even take this real failure of the scientific community and the media and others seriously because they didn’t like the messenger.”

Last week, a Facebook spokesperson said the company “will no longer remove the request made by COVID-19 humans from our applications.” The decision was made “in light of ongoing research into the origins of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” the spokesman said.

Still, Leiber said the change of opinion should not be seen as a claim by the Trump administration.

“Trump is a complete failure of the White House,” he said. “If they had credibility, if they had the ability to convince anyone of anything, they would explain it like this legal origin story a year ago.”

According to Biden, the decision to release the document for further investigation has an internal purpose – not to appear “weak in China” and to avoid criticism from Republicans who went to the midterm congressional elections in 2022, said Mathew Burrows, director of Atlantic Council Forecasting. Strategy and Risk Initiative.

Meanwhile, the release of the statement at the World Health Assembly once again warns Beijing and the WHO, he said.

“The U.S. is a WHO player again,” Burrows added. “So I think they want to harden the WHO against over-distorting China.”