What do I care if COVID began with a lab leak?
You may have heard reports in the past few days about the origins of COVID-19. Specifically, some people think it started with a leak from a biomedical research laboratory in Wuhan, China. The full picture is complicated, but it should not distract us from important truths about COVID.The story arises from a reconsideration of evidence by the U.S. Department of Energy. The DoE used to think it unlikely that COVID started in a lab. But based on undisclosed intelligence, it now says that it did, more likely than not.
You can guess from that last sentence that this is not a firm conclusion. And indeed, it’s not. The DoE says that it has “low confidence” in its theory. To my knowledge, none of the other U.S. intelligence agencies have said they have conclusive evidence one way or another.
In fact, news reports are that the intelligence community is divided on this question. Some say COVID had natural origins, some say it didn’t.
What do I need to know?
Three Four things to know about this:
- Determining the origins of COVID is difficult. Many investigators suspect that COVID made the jump from animals to humans in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. But Chinese authorities removed the animals in question and cleaned the market in a bid to stop its transmission. Local leaders also attempted to conceal the outbreak. All of this took away valuable evidence. Since then, the Chinese government has made it very difficult to research COVID origins, most likely to preserve its public image.
- While intelligence agencies may be divided, scientists are relatively certain that COVID began in the wild, not in a lab. To make a long story short, the COVID-19 virus doesn’t have features that would be expected of a virus bred in a laboratory. But it does resemble SARS-COV-1. That virus also originated in China, and we know it started with animal-to-human transmission. As well, early cases clustered around the Huanan market, not near the lab often suspected as the potential leaker.
- In the end, we will likely never be able to say with certainty where COVID came from. While evidence points to natural origins, lab leaks can and have happened in the past. There’s really not enough information to prove or disprove any one theory.
- Well, except one. We do know that COVID was not a Chinese-designed bioweapon. That’s a conspiracy theory that has been debunked.
Why Should I care?
The lab leak theory is being pushed by people with an agenda. Here, that’s mostly looking tough on China.
Indeed, “people with an agenda” in this case includes Mike Gallagher, who represents Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. Gallagher told the New York Times: “‘Where our committee can have a role is teasing out what this communicates about the DNA of the Chinese Communist Party, an organization that was willing to cover up the origins of the pandemic and thereby cost us critical days, months and weeks and millions of lives in the process.'”
And as Caitlin Rivers points out, theories like this have fueled threats against public health experts. Those threats are likely aimed at shutting expert voices out of public discussion on the pandemic.
None of this disproves the lab leak theory, of course. Nor does it mean that it’s misinformation in the way we talked about last week. In fact, Rivers recommends treating the lab leak theory as a plausible idea. But political posturing and intimidation of scientists is a terrible way to drive public health policy. That shouldn’t have to be said, but here we are.
Debating the origins of COVID is in many ways a distraction from what we should be paying attention to. We know the effect COVID has on people, especially on people who are poor, racial minorities, elderly or medically vulnerable.
We also know what it takes to protect ourselves and others. How many times have you heard this? Get your vaccines and bivalent boosters. Wear a mask in crowded settings. Stay home when you’re sick. Keep the air moving. None of this changes because of where COVID came from.
The origins debate is also a distraction from a deeper truth. COVID is not a story about them, it’s a story about us. Specifically, it’s a story about what we choose to do for ourselves and others.
We are not our own, says Paul, but we were bought with a price and now belong to God and to one another. That is a daring and difficult teaching that has often been abused. I will have to leave it to you to decide how to apply it. But I will say this much. Next to the question of what we owe to one another in our bodies, the question of where COVID came from doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
