United States: Amidst the passage of four years since the sweeping emergence of COVID-19 across the globe, an enigma still shrouds its origin. Contention persists: Did the COVID-19 outbreak spring forth from interspecies transmission, or did it inadvertently escape the confines of a laboratory in Wuhan, China, engaged in the study of akin viral strains? Discord prevails among virologists and within the intelligence enclave, fueled, at least in part, by an information deficit.
Congress, grappling with this ambiguity, has initiated inquiries into the genesis of the virus, yet it appears that the American populace has already solidified its stance, according to deseret.com.
When queried regarding their favored hypothesis, a striking 69% of American voters subscribe to the notion of SARS-CoV-2 emanating from a laboratory, with only 31% attributing its emergence to natural origins, as per the latest Deseret News/HarrisX poll.
“The theory of a lab origin resonates most widely among voters spanning the political spectrum and diverse demographics,” remarked DritanNesho, CEO of HarrisX.
Conducted among 1,010 registered US voters on March 25-26, the survey boasts a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points, deseret.com reported.
How did the narrative of the wet market theory ascend to prominence?
The virus surfaced modestly in November 2019 in Wuhan, China. Initially, numerous scientists pointed to the bustling wet markets, contending that the coronavirus likely made the interspecies leap. By February, the Chinese authorities temporarily shuttered these markets, notorious for vending live exotic fauna such as bats, badgers, wolf pups, and bamboo rats.
By March 2020, a study published in Nature Medicine asserted unequivocally: “We dismiss any notion of a laboratory-based scenario.” Their rationale was not unfounded. The antecedent coronavirus outbreaks—severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)—had zoonotic underpinnings.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, erstwhile director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spearheading the US pandemic response, opined in April 2020 on “Fox & Friends” that the pandemic stemmed directly from “unhygienic commerce” in those locales.
He subsequently cited the March study by “eminently qualified evolutionary virologists” as substantiation for the genetic lineage of COVID-19 tracing back to bats.
Conversely, dissenters pointed to evidence indicative of a lab-related incident. The geographical proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the initial outbreak, its affiliations with a U.S.-based virology research entity, and allegations of genetic manipulation of the virus’s genome lent credence to this conjecture.
However, in the nascent stages of the pandemic, this narrative, albeit contentious, failed to gain traction, partly due to the dissenting voices of several scientists who denounced it as a conspiracy theory.
This paradigm began to shift in June 2021 when comedian Jon Stewart, during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” reignited the discourse, garnering attention by remarking, “‘There’s been an outbreak of chocolaty goodness near Hershey, Pa. What do you think happened?’ Like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean?’ Or it’s the chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it?” according to the reports by deseret.com.
Why was the lab leak theory maligned as conspiratorial?
Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a vocal proponent of the lab leak theory, asserted in an interview with the Deseret News that he believes public officials within the National Institutes of Health and other researchers failed to thoroughly probe the lab leak theory due to a conflict of interest. Between 2014 and 2020, the Wuhan lab received $1.4 million in funding from the NIH and the US Agency for International Development, as per the Government Accountability Office.
Ebright alleged that the NIH, in conjunction with the EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan laboratory, “knowingly and willfully (propagated) a two-part false narrative that espouses natural spillover, falsely positing it as the consensus among scientists.”
At a congressional hearing in August 2022, Ebright testified that he believes the Wuhan lab was engaged in “gain-of-function” research and was cited in a Wall Street Journal article in February of this year, bolstering the case for the virus originating from the lab.
The Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic convened a hearing on Tuesday to scrutinize the nexus between scientific publications and the government’s stance on the origins of COVID-19.
Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science Journals, was in attendance, although the heads of Nature and The Lancet declined to participate. “Science is an evolving process, and thus, with new data, our perspectives evolve,” remarked Thorp.
Thorp referenced a missive published by Science in May 2021, asserting that “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both retain plausibility.” This communique, co-authored by 18 scientists, “heralded a new epoch of deliberation and discourse,” he contended in his testimony, as mentioned by deseret.com.
Thorp refuted allegations of government censorship threats concerning the publication of divergent viewpoints, asserting that neither Fauci nor any other official issued such threats.
The US intelligence community remains equivocal regarding the genesis of COVID-19.
Stephen Goldstein, a virologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, disclosed to the Deseret News in a recent interview that while the FBI and the Energy Department concur that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab, they proffer disparate rationales for their conclusions and lack “a unified theory” buttressing their stance.