It is well known where and when the Covid-19 pandemic began (in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019). How this is the subject of much controversy. There are two competing hypotheses, one of which hinders the clinical discovery procedure and may simply hinder the progression of vaccines and other antiviral agents in the United States.
Zoonosis speculation proposes that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was naturally transmitted from an animal to one or more humans in a so-called rainy market in Wuhan that sells new products, meat, fish and live animals. Array Lab leak speculation posits that the virus changed (perhaps through gain-of-function maneuvers), or even created, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and escaped in one form or another from the lab.
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Many politicians, pundits, and the general public now favor the concept of lab leakage. Most scientists, especially virologists, don’t do this. This schism threatens their valid and ultimately social work, as defined in a peer-reviewed publication published Aug. 1 in the Journal of Virology and authored by 41 virologists. I am one of them.
Speculation about zoonosis is based on falsified evidence. Viruses spread from animals to humans, albeit regularly in the form of dead-end events, without sustained human-to-human transmission triggering a pandemic. Wildlife coronaviruses have long been on the verge of infecting humans. An estimated 66,000 other people contract the SARS coronavirus each year due to human-bat contact, with most of them resulting in asymptomatic infections with little or no additional transmission.
That said, the zoonotic passage of three other coronaviruses (MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-1, and SARS-CoV-2) from other animals to humans has led to epidemics or pandemics over the past 25 years. The SARS-CoV-1 outbreak of 2002-2003 began in a Chinese rainy market.
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The 1918 flu pandemic, which began from a cross between an animal and a human, probably a pig in the central United States, killed about 50 million people worldwide.
The illegal industry and wet markets are a $20 billion global industry with clear zoonotic threats. The more humans and “exotic” animals combine in close proximity, the greater the threat of viral transmission. There is the threat of a devastating pandemic if the H5N1 avian influenza virus enters birds, farm animals, and, sporadically, humans in the United States.
The lab leak hypothesis, on the other hand, is necessarily devoid of evidence: it’s in a chain of unproven and highly speculative events. A recent New York Times essay written by Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. , reiterates the arguments put forward for the first time between 2020 and 2022, but does not provide any new evidence.
Clinical and scientific literature supports speculation about zoonotic movements and/or contradicts the concept of laboratory leak.
Five of seven reports from the US intelligence network on the zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV-2, discovered from declassified clinical evidence and research. These five reports found no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had SARS-CoV-2 or a severely expired virus before the end of December 2019, and concluded that it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 was manufactured.
However, speculation about a lab leak now dominates discussions in the public square. It is promoted by right-wing politicians and media celebrities, and is even adopted by major newspapers such as the New York Times. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, accepted the lab leak as fact, rejecting speculation about zoonosis for dubious reasons. This is because the report outlines long-term government policies on relations with China.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified in June 2024 before the House of Representatives subcommittee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic. He stated that people should keep an open mind on the competing hypotheses, pending definitive proof for one or the other. Despite taking a balanced position, Fauci was viciously abused, even told that he should be “prosecuted” and imprisoned for “crimes against humanity” because NIAID had sent grant funds for coronavirus research to the Wuhan Institute for Virology via an EcoHealth Alliance subcontract.
My concern, and that of many other virologists, is that evidence-based speculation about lab leaks is damaging the network of virology studies at a time when it has a critical role to play in the face of pandemic threats. The attacks on Fauci are far from unique. Coronavirus virologists have been falsely accused of engineering SARS-CoV-2, allowing it to escape from a laboratory due to insufficient protection protocols, of foreign cover-ups, and of accepting bribes from the NIAID to sell zoonosis speculation. Harassment, intimidation, threats and violence against scientists is on the rise, especially despicable in the online space.
In a survey conducted through Science magazine, among 510 researchers who published research on the coronavirus, 38% received insults, threats of violence, doxing (publicly offering personally identifiable information about an individual) and even threats in their face to face . A second survey of 1,281 scientists found that 51% had experienced at least one form of harassment, continuously for years.
As a result, scientists got rid of social media platforms, refused to speak publicly, and took action for themselves and their families. Some have even diverted their paintings towards less debatable subjects.
There is now a long-term risk that fewer experts will help fight future pandemics; and that scientists will be less willing to talk about the effects of complicated and evolving studies on topics similar to global health. Pandemic preparedness studies have already been postponed, diverted, or abandoned. What worries most is that the next generation of scientists will rightly be afraid to become scholars of emerging viruses and the science of pandemics.
All virologists recognize the desire to ensure the protection of laboratories. None of them are unaware of the implications of speculation about lab leaks: that a harmful virus could escape from a study lab. However, anxiety about lab leaks underlies policy proposals that unnecessarily limit studies of vaccines and antiviral agents in the United States. The main fear here is that the lab leak narrative is fueling distrust in science and public fitness infrastructure. The virulent and pervasive anti-science timeline is hurting individual scientists and their institutions, and hindering the development of plans to counter epidemics and pandemics in the long term.
Science is humanity’s most productive insurance policy against the threats of nature, but it is a fragile business that will have to be cared for and protected. Scientific organizations will have to expand systems to counter anti-science and protect study corporations from growing hostility.
And the rhetoric aimed at virologists needs to be softened. Viruses are the real threat to humanity, to virologists.
John P. Moore, Ph. D. , is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. This essay is adapted from a longer paper written with 40 colleagues and in the Journal of Virology.
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