It is understandable that when people are inconvenienced or hurt and especially when people die, they want explanations and answers. What they also want is to assign responsibility and culpability for the negative or undesirable thing and possibly recompense and justice.
In relation to where Covid-19 came from, this desire to know where the coronavirus came from assign is very much about assigning responsibility and culpability, and has devolved into a political issue as much as a scientific one. It has also devolved into and increasingly stupid debate as conspiracy theories are pushed and debated; almost as and antidote to science. Voices of dissent yell louder and louder; pushing for a "proper" investigation, without any clue as to what a "proper" investigation is.
What's interesting is that just like searching for the first documented patient in a disease epidemic within a population who is the so-called patient zero, you can use the evidence of what has been published to find out who the patient zero is for a conspiracy theory.
Although it is certainly possible that Covid-19 came from a laboratory and found its way into the community at large, is that sensible? While we would like more transparency from China, it does change the fact that we don't know the actual source and we might never actually know. It is probably more likely that the coronavirus came from an animal. The SARS outbreak of 2002-04 probably started in Guangdong and also spread through wet market vendors, farmers, chefs, and other people in the food industry.
The proponents of the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory, don't really want to look at the SARS outbreak of 2002-04 or perhaps the influenza pandemic of 1918-20 because that would then mean that they'd have to admit that we might never actually know the actual source of the virus. That would be terribly undermining to waging the political war to assign responsibility and culpability. Remember, an admission of uncertainty isn't actually a condemnation of science. One of the fundamental principles of science is that we do not know things and need to test them.
Asking the question of where the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory came from, is a little bit easier. The internet acts rather like finding a horde of documents. If you want to find when a theory started, you keep on chasing the chain of ideas until you find the earliest date. Since conspiracy theories follow memetic rules (things go "viral" on the internet), then it is relatively easy to look for key words and phrases to find who the patient zero is.
The earliest think that I can find which supports the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory is this article in the Daily Telegraph:
Two Chinese scientists — who western intelligence agencies are looking into as part of their probe into the origins of the global coronavirus contagion — studied live bats in Australia in research jointly funded by the Australian and Chinese governments.
An exclusive investigation can reveal the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US, are understood to be looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, as they examine whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether the naturally-occurring virus may have been released from the level four laboratory in Wuhan that was studying deadly coronavirus pathogens from bats.
The Australian government’s position is the virus most likely originated from the Wuhan wet markets but it is possible it was accidentally released from a laboratory.
It can be revealed that Zhou — the head of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunity Project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — spent three years at the bio-containment facility, Australian Animal Health Laboratory between 2011 and 2014, where he was sent by China to complete his doctorate.
- Sharri Markson, The Daily Telegraph 27th Apr 2020
Not only is the claim that Covid-19 was accidentally released from a laboratory untestable but as this hides behind the masthead of The Daily Telegraph, it means that under the Evidence Amendment (Journalists' Privilege) Act 2011 neither the journalist nor their employer is compellable to answer any question or produce any document that would disclose the identity of the informant or enable that identity to be ascertained.
That being said, it means that not only can none of these "cables", or "warnings" be independently verified but as the relevant legislation protects journalists from having to produce any document that would disclose the identity of the informant, those documents don't necessarily have to exist. Never assume that someone must be right simply because they can not be proven wrong.
https://twitter.com/SharriMarkson/status/1254746436845006853
Exclusive: Two Chinese scientists, who western intelligence agencies are looking into as part of their probe into the origins of coronavirus contagion, studied live bats in Australia in research jointly funded by the Australian and Chinese governments.
- Sharri Markson, @SharriMarkson Twitter, 27th Apr 2020
There is a problem here. The current version of the article as published on The Daily Telegraph's website is dated 8th May 2020. Sharri Markson's original link to the article, which was actually when the article was first published, was 27th Apr 2020. I find it interesting that at a press conference on April 30, 2020, the then President Donald Trump said the administration had evidence showing COVID-19 came from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, although he declined to provide specifics. “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that,” Mr Trump said.
I would suggest that the reason why Mr Trump declined to provide specifics is because he never had any. When combined with the fact that the article has been edited from the original, seems to suggest that it was edited to take into account new aspects of the theory because the theory was mostly made up. Practically nobody is going to question dates of publication; which means that the article can now supply facts after bootstrapping them after the fact.
And boy, did the bootstrapping come.
China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.
The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.
...
The Western governments’ research paper confirms this.
It notes a 2013 study conducted by a team of researchers, including Dr Shi, who collected a sample of horseshoe bat faeces from a cave in Yunnan province, China, which was later found to contain a virus 96.2 per cent identical to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused COVID-19.
The research dossier also references work done by the team to synthesise SARS-like coronaviruses, to analyse whether they could be transmissible from bats to mammals. This means they were altering parts of the virus to test whether it was transmissible to different species.
Their November 2015 study, done in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, concluded that the SARS-like virus could jump directly from bats to humans and there was no treatment that could help.
- Sharri Markson, The Daily Telegraph 4th May 2020
Never mind that the material within this article never actually establishes a direct link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the COVID-19 pandemic. If the article used to cover up the suspicion doesn't reveal any specifics and the original article refuses disclose the identity of informants, then we run back into the problem that this theory is inherently impossible to falsify.
Ms Markson of course resents the fact that anyone would dare question whether or not she made up the whole thing and went out on the attack.
https://twitter.com/sharrimarkson/status/1258194834382176257?lang=en
The utter hypocrisy of Nine newspapers dedicating resources of two senior journalists over at least two days to try expose my confidential sources while going to court to protect their own.
- Sharri Markson, @SharriMarkson Twitter, 7th May 2020
By the 7th of May 2020, the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory had already leaked and been caught by The New York Times, ABC in America, CBS, Breitbart News, One America Network, FOX News, BBC, and then come back to Australia to Sky News, The Australian, and back to the Herald-Sun, Courier-Mail and the Daily Telegraph which could crow loudly that all of these other outlets were reporting this, then it must be a thing.
By the time the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory had already run around the world twice, the truth could never ever hope to get its boots on. The theory may have existed before Sharri Markson's Daily Telegraph article of 27th Apr 2020 (edited and republished 8th May 2020) but it certainly didn't have any traction by that date and it wasn't being spouted by powerful people in politics and the media. It should be noted that making unfalsifiable claims is one of the prime drivers of conspiracy theories because once you've decided to leave rational discourse and evidence behind, people are free to believe whatever they like.
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