Front Burner - COVID lab leak theory moves into the mainstream

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Last week a US congressional committee began what could be a months-long probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Was it the result of a lab leak in Wuhan? And did Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team of experts carry out a cover-up in the early days of the outbreak? These are the questions the Republican-led committee are trying to answer. Today on Front Burner, The Atlantic’s Daniel Enger on the shifting narratives around the origins of COVID-19 -- and how it went from the fringes to the mainstream. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Three years ago, if you thought it came from a lab, if you raised that, you were called a nut job. You got censored on Twitter. You were blacklisted on Twitter. You were even called a crackpot by the very scientist who in late January sent emails to Dr. Fauci and said it came from a lab. Last week, a U.S. congressional committee began what could be a months-long probe

into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Just a few years ago, seriously entertaining the idea that the virus came from a nearby lab in Wuhan doing coronavirus research and not an animal-to-human transmission at a market had real conspiracy theory vibes. If there's evidence, I'd love to hear it. There's a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China. What do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask?

The Wuhan Novel Respiratory Coronavirus Lab. The disease is the same name as the lab. Something you probably have heard from a certain corner of the right is this theory that the coronavirus, quote, escaped from the lab. It looks like there is evidence that this virus escaped from the lab. And it could have been stopped at the point. It could have been stopped right at the source. Something happened.

Either they made a terrible mistake. Probably it was incompetent, somebody was stupid, and they didn't do the job that they should have done. These days, it was the preferred explanation from at least a handful of experts the Republican-led committee has called upon so far. Also, unsurprisingly, the hearings have been rife with politics, most notably allegations by Republicans of a cover-up. Today, my guest is Daniel Engberg. He's a senior editor on the science desk at The Atlantic, and he's been real deep on the origins of COVID for some time now. We're going to talk about the hearings, but also about the shifting narratives and beliefs

around the cause of the pandemic. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on to the show. It's a pleasure. Very glad to be here. I want to start by talking about the politics that are really, I think, fair to say, looming over these hearings. And you've been watching them. Take me through what's been going on there so far. Yeah. So there's been one hearing so far last week. separation between the Republicans and the Democrats in terms of being interested in the

possibility of a lab leak, and taking it very seriously and wanting to investigate further. So that's a bipartisan position right now. A rare. Yes, exactly. But where there's a wide gap between the two sets of lawmakers on the committee is how aggressively to go after United States officials and point the finger at them as having covered this up. Yeah, I saw the top Republican on this committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, tell CNN's Jake Tapper the origins of the coronavirus pandemic are the worst cover up in human history.

And just talk to me a little bit about why he's saying that is and where he's pointing, he and others are pointing fingers. From my perspective, there certainly is a cover up. The question is, who is doing the covering up? As for whether it's the worst in human history, I mean, we are talking about millions of people dead around the world. So the tenor of this language sort of makes sense when you consider the scope of what has gone on. The Republicans in the committee are quite interested in the first few weeks that why detention was being paid to the coronavirus. So we're talking about end of January into February of 2020. And that's when these questions first started being asked by scientists

and politicians, among others, of how did this happen? Where did this come from? And is it just a coincidence that this pandemic began in a city that had a biosafety level four facility doing research on bat coronaviruses? So scientists were discussing this behind the scenes. And pretty soon in February of 2020, a couple of papers were published in academic journals saying, no, this is not really something we should consider. There's no reason to believe that at all. A group of 27 prominent public health scientists published this letter saying, we stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. The conspiracy theory they're referring to is one that the virus

was man-made or was engineered in this Wuhan lab. And from there, there just wasn't much discussion of the possibility that this began in a laboratory. It took about almost a year for that discussion to kind of bubble out into mainstream media. So that is the quote unquote cover up, at least in Western media and in the US government, if you believe it. What would hypothetically, according to people who allege a cover-up, be the motivation for kind of shutting down a lab leak theory so quickly? Yeah, that's interesting.

So Republican James Comer on the committee described it as Anthony Fauci being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I think Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They got caught supercharging viruses in an unsecure Chinese lab. They wanted to push the envelope. And so they got together to cover themselves. He's referring to, you know, these very high up officials at the National Institutes of Health. And what he means by that is the NIH was involved in some research going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The NIH had given grant money to a group called the EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn was

collaborating with scientists in Wuhan. The theory of the case is that Fauci and Collins realized maybe the virus had emerged from this lab in Wuhan, that the research responsible for this lab escape was tied to the US government through this grant. And therefore, they had to hide this fact lest they be blamed for the pandemic. I mean, that's the idea. I know one of the first witnesses that they called was former Center for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield. And what did he have to say about all of this? He said that from the beginning, it had seemed to him unlikely that this was a sort of natural

spillover event in the conventional way of, you know, a human gets infected from an animal, you know, and perhaps in a market selling wildlife. This conclusion is based primarily on the biology of the virus itself, including the rapid high infectivity for human to human transmission, which would then predict rapid evolution of new variants, as well as a number of other important factors. So that was his view that it seemed like, well, maybe a laboratory accident or laboratory origin of some kind was possible. But he said that he was excluded from high-level conversations

in February of 2020. And he used one particular phrase that has been repeated often since. He said, it was told to me that they wanted a single narrative. And so thus, his opinion wasn't welcome. I didn't know I was excluded. I didn't know there was a February 1st conference call until the Freedom of Information came out with the emails. And I was quite upset as the CDC director that I was excluded from those discussions. Why would they do this? Because I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative, which I will argue is

antithetical to science. That was Redfield's take. You know, it was a curiously passive phrasing. He didn't say it was told to him by whom. Fauci later flatly contradicted this, said, you know, Redfield was not deliberately excluded from any conversation because he had a different opinion. whatsoever in reality. Half the people on the call were of the opinion that it might be a lab leak. So his rationale of why he thought he was excluded is an invalid rationale. So it's really unfortunate. Right. And of course, Fauci and others like Dr. Collins, they're just saying this whole idea that they would have shut this down is also completely false and misleading. I think he was saying, you know, he has said repeatedly that he needs to keep an open mind and follow scientific evidence here. And he has not been called to testify at this hearing yet, right? That's correct. That's correct.

So in addition to the NIH angle of this and the allegations of the cover-up, this lab leak theory, it has been getting a bit of a boost lately, I think would be a fair way to put it. The majority of the witnesses called so far have been leaning towards this lab leak theory. They include people like Redfield, but also Nicholas Wade, former health and science editor at The New York Times and Nature, Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. And they're not alone, right? in February, the US Department of Energy changed their assessment and said the virus most likely came from a lab and they joined the FBI, who has been saying this for a while. So I want to dig into some of the other reasons why people are saying this with you today. And I know you think about this in kind of two buckets, the first being stuff that's easier for normal people like me to understand, and the second being like really technical science stuff. So maybe let's start with the first because it's a bit easier. And

what evidence do people testifying at this committee hearing so far and others point to when they say they think this came from a lab that is like easier for people to grasp? from a lab that is easier for people to grasp? I mean, they start with the point that everyone starts with, which is, what a coincidence. There is this lab in Wuhan that was studying the SARS-like viruses found in bats, a very simple thing that anyone can understand. Hey, isn't that suspicious? At the very least, shouldn't this have been on the table from the very start? So that's kind of point one of the argument for taking the lab leak theory seriously. But you can go on from that to other sort of facts that anyone can grasp. There's some US intelligence that a few workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sick with flu-like

symptoms or COVID-like symptoms, depending on how you want to frame what you're saying, in November of 2019. That information has been reported different ways in different outlets that may be soon declassified. There's just a bipartisan bill to declassify some of this intelligence, and it's both going to happen within the next 90 days. So we'll get a little more on that. But some workers got sick in the lab we're talking about. That's circumstantial evidence that anyone can understand. And we also know that the NIH was indirectly funding this research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was in fact taking SARS-like viruses, making adjustments to them, and seeing if, among other things,

they might be more infectious in mice that had been engineered to be more human-like. Records show that the National Institutes of Health allowed EcoHealth to conduct risky research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute without going through the potential pandemic pathogen department level review board. So, you know, you don't need to have a PhD to think, okay, I kind of get the narrative that's being constructed here, the plausible explanation for how this virus might have arrived in Wuhan. And then once it's there, there are any number of ways in which it might have made its way out into the community. And what about the stuff that you probably do need a PhD for? Do you want to give it a shot on me?

Well, I don't have a PhD, so I can only do my best. But there's this other kind of set of arguments that the Republicans on the committee brought up. I don't think these arguments were discussed in a particularly useful way. But that look at kind of the molecular biology, they look at the genetics of the virus and say, okay, look, there's this something called a furin cleavage site that's in this SARS-like virus that we have never seen before in viruses like it. And that furin cleavage site is what allowed it to spark a pandemic that made it so transmissible among humans. So questions have been raised for years now about, you know, is this furin cleavage site something that could have popped up naturally? Or is this a sign that this was something that would be inserted in a lab? That stuff has gone back and forth. I mean, I can tell you, based on my reporting, it seems as though virologists who really understand this stuff don't believe that that is a smoking gun piece of evidence in

favor of, you know, this is a lab engineered or lab altered virus, although some people have made that argument. So that's where, you know, this goes out of the realm of common sense, you know, facts that people can understand. Their workers were sick there. What does that mean? Maybe nothing, maybe something into this stuff of, well, how likely is it that this particular sequence of nucleotides in a viral genome would occur naturally? I mean, you can see how that would require deep expertise in order to make any judgment whatsoever. Right, right. And that expertise is also obviously happening on the other side of the argument, right?

The people who say that this was an animal origin, why do they think that? I mean, the people who say that it's an animal origin, again, you can start with the most basic facts that anyone can understand. Almost every pandemic we know of began the same way, with a virus circulating in animals and then making the jump to humans. the same way with a virus circulating in animals and then making the jump to humans. There's one possible exception that maybe had to do with a kind of a vaccine challenge trial gone wrong. But truly, I mean, there's uncertainty around that. If you look at the history of these things, it's always the same. The first SARS pandemic, SARS-1, that is believed to have emerged in just this way from wildlife. So you just look at history, and it always goes in this one direction. Then you also look at what happened in Wuhan in 2019 and 2020. Everyone agrees that a very early and a key event in the spread of the disease was centered around this market, the Huanan seafood

market. The people who I think should, for this reason, be kind of the default position until proved otherwise, that it began that way, will say, well, what are the chances, you know, if this was some bizarre lab leak scenario that you'd get this major outbreak at this particular market? What are the chances that it would look in other ways so much like every other pandemic? So that's a simple common sense assessment of the evidence that I think is really quite compelling. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. And then, of course, there are these experts that have been making these more technical arguments, right? I was reading a piece by Michael Worby, who's a pretty famous scientist who tracked the origins of HIV. And I know he believes, and my apologies if I'm not understanding this right, but he believes this all started with an animal. He talks about these lineages found at the market as the reason why. And so tell me about that. Yeah, so Michael Warby has looked closely at the evolution of the viral genome, how the virus passes from person to person, or from animal to animal changes accumulate. And so

you can kind of trace out the lineage from the original virus affecting people in Wuhan in 2019, to, you know, the various versions of the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 that are around the world now. So based on his and colleagues' analysis of the known sequences from these early cases, he says there are two lineages present in early cases associated with that market. And that suggests, in his mind, I think, can only be explained by there being two spillover events. Now we're into the very technical assessment of scientific evidence. I should also say that in 2020, when meetings were held allegedly at Fauci and Francis Collins direction, a paper was written and published in Nature, saying that it didn't come from a lab. That was all on the basis of

this kind of highly technical assessment of the viral genome as well. That was not based on circumstantial evidence and where it was and who was sick when at which lab. Right, this the second buckets that we're talking about. Dan, I guess one question I have is just for people listening that probably are trying to figure out what to make of that, right? That you have experts on both sides of the argument using sort of highly technical evidence. If you were to kind of round up the foremost experts in the world on this from a variety of different places, and threw them in like a giant room, and you said lab leak guys stand on this side, animal origin guys stand on that side, what would that room look like

right now, you think? I mean, I would love to do that, because that's what science journalists try to do, right? I don't understand the technical stuff at any depth, and neither do the Republicans on this committee, right? So you just try to I've done and scientists I've talked to, pretty much everyone agrees that the animal origin is more likely. Maybe I've talked to a few people who think the lab leak is equally likely or more likely, but I have gotten the feeling of a general consensus that the lab leak cannot be ruled out at this point, but the animal origin is probably what happened. That's just the people I've talked to and a function of how I define expertise in this area. As you pointed out, the Republicans on the committee in this hearing last week invited witnesses who are all lab leak curious, to say the least. And those are people with credentials,

right? So it's this question of what does science believe on this question? I don't think it's possible to answer that easily. And in fact, if you go back to early 2020, and this goes back to the stuff that everyone's shouting about of a cover-up, these two papers that came out, this letter to the Lancet in February of 2020, and then this paper in Nature in 2020, by design, those were intended to give the sense of scientists know that this is not from a lab. That was the explicit or just barely implicit message of those papers. I remember as, I mean, I remember as a science journalist covering this back then, that carried a lot of weight. Oh, it looks like the scientific

community has just totally discounted the idea that this could have been from a lab. And we can talk about maybe what exactly was going on then and why there was so much certainty when there ought not to have been so much certainty. Yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. And I guess also, whether anybody who put their name on that might regret the certainty now, even if they're still animal origin proponents today, are they like, oh, maybe I should have left a little bit more room for the lab leak? Yes. I mean, I think I have talked to scientists whose opinions have changed, whose degree of certainty has drifted over the months since then. Drifted makes it sound aimless, has shifted

over the months and years since then. I think it's important to remember the context and how confusing it was and how many things were going on at once. All of this was so new that there wasn't a general understanding that non-nefarious accidental leaks of biological materials from laboratories happen all the time, which is true. Again, at that time, that wasn't really on the table. So to suggest that it came from a lab, everyone jumped to the idea that that must mean or must imply that this was a bioweapon that had been released on purpose or was planning to be used for military purposes. But that elision between this could have come from a lab and it must have been a bioweapon. It's not that the people who

were pointing the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were all saying that. It's just that that's how the mere suggestion was understood. So immediately, this suggestion, it reminded people of conspiracy theories that have been spread about other diseases like Lyme disease, HIV even. So once that idea is out there and is immediately interpreted in the most extreme possible way, the discussion gets derailed. Then these two papers come out from, you know, the scientists giving this sense or illusion of consensus that no, there's no way it could have come from a lab. Then no one really wants to talk about it for a while outside of, you know of specific niche media circles,

mostly right-wing media circles. Right, right. For probably fear of being accused of irresponsibly stoking fear during this time. And being accused of racism also. It was quickly folded, this whole thing about President Trump blaming China and calling it that, you know, the Wuhan flu, the China virus, and it all got folded into this discussion of the US government's pandemic response, and or its failures too. If we do not get to the bottom of what went wrong with the COVID-19 pandemic, if we fail in our efforts to fearlessly understand all shortcomings and shore up the vulnerabilities this crisis has so clearly exposed, the victims of the next pandemic, our children and grandchildren,

will ask us why we failed to protect them when we knew what was at stake and had the chance. Dan, just before we go today, one question I do have, listening to some of the members on this committee, getting to the bottom of this is like this completely essential responsibility. I'm thinking of comments made by Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup and others. What do you think of that? Do you think it matters at this point, practically, if we get to the bottom of this or not? Is it even possible?

I love that question because every time this comes up, every time there's an official discussion of it, a formal investigation, these committee hearings, everyone falls all over themselves to talk about how urgent it is. The most important thing is we prevent the next pandemic, and we can't prevent the next pandemic unless we know how this one started. And it really does start to sound like protesting too much because if you think about it for a second, you start to wonder, does it matter at all whether it's from a market or a lab just in terms of what happened? Same outcome either way. I don't personally believe it matters that much in terms of pandemic preparedness. I mean, before any of this happened, we knew that lab accidents were fairly common. We knew that the number of facilities that are doing research on dangerous pathogens was increasing. That was a problem, a known problem, maybe not known outside of a particularly tight circle of people who are interested in such issues, but that was a known

problem. We've also known, as I said, that pandemics almost always start the same way. We also know that a pandemic started in China with a SARS coronavirus through wildlife and a market origin, almost certainly. So we have the facts in front of us on what we need to do to protect ourselves from future pandemics. We need to maybe do surveillance of circulating viruses in the wild that could, with a viral evolution here and there, turn into deadly viruses for humans. And we know that we need to be careful about these biosafety level four labs. And we need to be careful about the kind of research that's done there. And we need to think carefully about risks and benefits of whatever research projects we set out to do. research projects we set out to do. So what does this matter really? I think it's important because the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a world historical event that has led to the deaths

of millions of people. And I think we just, as a matter of history, we should know what happened. Yeah, for ourselves. And do you think we ever will? I don't know. I actually think it's possible. If you'd asked me a month ago, I would have said, oh, no, it's not really going anywhere. The Chinese government has refused to participate in further investigations. A lot of the key evidence that one would need to look at is based in China. But now, you know, things are moving all of a sudden, you know, we're going to find out more about this classified intelligence soon, more scientific findings may come out.

So I actually am feeling more optimistic today than I have been in quite some time. Okay. Dan, thank you so much for this. This was, I could listen to you talk about this all day, frankly. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.