The NPR Politics Podcast - Pandemic Likely Began With Animals, But US Intel Agencies Will Investigate

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

The U.S. government and scientists remain uncertain about the exact origins of the coronavirus outbreak: transmission from animals or research lab escape? Either option has lessons for how society can contain future pandemics.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey NPR Politics crew, this is Travis and I just finished the last session of the tabletop roleplaying game I've been virtually running for my friends since June of last year. This podcast was recorded at 2.06pm on Thursday, May 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. One thing that won't change, the amount of fun you can have with your friends by pretending to be space aliens. It's a lot. Okay, roll for initiative! Sorry. Here's the show. I have to admit that I only partially understand what he's talking about right there. A tabletop role-playing game? Like Dungeons and Dragons? I think it's like Dungeons and Dragons, but for

space. Okay. But I don't know which game it is, and now I kind of wish I did. But I think it's a sign that the pandemic is fading, that this game has ended, right? Sure. I'll take anything as a sign these days. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And Jeff Brumfield from NPR's Science Desk is with us today. Hey, Jeff. Hi there. I'm also a former dungeon master, if you want to set up a game. So you're an expert on many things. So we're talking about the renewed focus in Washington this week over the origins of the coronavirus outbreak.

And, Tam, this has been dominating over at the White House in the briefing room. So catch us up to speed as to why now. Yeah, the why now is that President Biden put out a statement yesterday saying that he had gotten back results. He had asked in March for the intelligence community to look into further the origins of the coronavirus, the COVID-19. They came back with inconclusive results saying it was two likely scenarios, either a lab leak or natural transmission from animals to humans, and that they didn't know which it was. So President Biden is asking for a 90-day review, asking them to redouble their efforts. Apparently, the reason

we're only just now learning about this, the White House says, is because they had to get it declassified in order to talk about it. Also, because they've kind of given up on the idea that China will actually cooperate and help with an investigation into what happened. Jeff, this idea that the coronavirus could have come from a lab had been, I think, sort of swatted down over the past year. And it seemed more sort of widely accepted, if not definitive, but accepted that the coronavirus had spread from an animal to a human, was naturally occurring the way a lot of viruses start. But it sounds like we just have absolutely no definitive scientific answer here. Well, I mean, we never had a definitive scientific answer. I mean, I think that that may have been sort of misunderstood in the sense that there always

were a number of options on the table, and there continue to be options on the table. I think that the preponderance of evidence still points towards a natural outbreak of the sorts we've seen in the past with things like Ebola and the first SARS virus. But, you know, scientists never claimed they knew where it came from. If they knew where it came from, we would be able to do something about it. Politically, Tam, the idea that the virus had escaped from a lab had become really volatile. I mean, certain Republicans, I think of Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas on Capitol Hill, had said it and been sort of swatted back down.

It's been dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Do you have a sense of why this has been so divisive politically to suggest that this could be an origin of it? I think I have a one word answer. It is Trump. Yeah. Which, you know, like like so many things in our politics. But former President Trump really seized on the lab leak theory around April of last year when coronavirus got very politically inconvenient for him. And it was a it was a scapegoat. This was around the same time he was insisting on calling the, you know, the Trumpy thing. And there was there was something of a backlash to the idea. accurate to what scientists say should be investigated now. But other times he talked about it in a way like it was a bioweapon released to hurt America or, you know, like he talked about it in a bunch of different ways that conflated a bunch of different theories

and conspiracies. And so some in the scientific community and certainly a lot in the media community dismissed it out of hand, in part, I think, because it was being promoted so loudly by the former president. But Jeff, there are real scientists, credible people who have embraced this theory. I'm thinking of Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He's someone who has suggested that the lab theory could be a legitimate one. Right. I mean, I've been speaking to a lot of scientists over the past few days, and I think the vast majority still lean pretty heavily towards this natural outbreak scenario. And indeed, when Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, appeared on the Hill earlier this week, they both said that they still felt the natural origins was more likely.

I mean, I kind of agree with Tam. The thing that has changed is Trump. And, you know, Trump, when he was in office, was saying that he had evidence that it came from a lab. The intelligence community actually, I was just going back and looking at the statement that they put out last year, they said they didn't know. The statement this year is they don't know. The scientists last year said, we think it's natural, but we're not 100% sure. This year, they're kind of saying the same thing. So like the evidence, I actually don't think it's shifted all that much. I think it's sort of the tone. And as Tam was saying, the discussion, the actually don't think it's shifted all that much. I think it's sort of the tone. And as Tam was saying, the discussion, the conversation that's changed. Tam, it's notable to me that the administration has made this an intelligence operation. It's not just a scientific inquiry.

What are the pressures for the administration to do this so publicly? And do you see it as sort of part of Biden's posture towards being seen as tough on China? Yeah, certainly that's part of it. But also part of it, though, is that the U.S. and the international community more broadly are incredibly frustrated at the inability to get answers out of China. So there was this World Health Organization investigative mission to Wuhan, China, to try to get answers. But they didn't get a lot of transparency. They didn't get a lot of access. That was earlier this year. And they came away with sort of inconclusive results. And even the head of the WHO said, you know, this lab leak

theory should get more investigation. But without cooperation, I don't really know how you do that. And so what White House officials are saying is they've tried all these things. They pushed the idea of a second WHO investigation with more cooperation from China. China was making it clear that they didn't intend to cooperate with that. And it's sort of telling that you now have the Biden administration admitting that there is an intelligence investigation here. I mean, they are also working with U.S. labs and others on the investigation. That's part of how this is expanded. But like that, you've got the intelligence community community working on it means that, you know, you don't have a high expectation that you're

going to get blood samples out of people who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And can I just, I mean, can I jump in and say, I think, again, to the extent that you see a shift in tone among the scientific community, I think they too have been really, really disappointed by China's response to all this. I think they feel that there needs to be more cooperation, or certainly some scientists in the community feel there needs to be a great deal more cooperation to understand the origins of the virus. And so, you know, seeing that lack of cooperation after a year, I think that they have also gotten frustrated. And that may be one reason they're saying, hey, look, we really don't know. We can't say for sure where it came from. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back.

What happens after a police officer shoots someone who's unarmed? For decades in California, internal affairs investigations, how the police police themselves, were secret. Until now. Listen to On Our Watch, a podcast from NPR and KQED. And we're back. And Jeff, I want you to sort of pull on this theory with me here. Because what I can't figure out is the why does this matter question. So let's say for just the sake of argument that there is an inquiry done and somehow it does become revealed that

the virus escaped from a lab. What does that materially change? Why does that matter where it came from? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it actually matters quite a bit. And let's just consider the two possibilities side by side here. So if it came from a lab and there was some sort of accident, and it's telling the Biden administration use the word accident. They don't think this was a deliberate release. The intelligence community, at least at this stage, doesn't see evidence for that. But if there was an accident and the virus was released, well, that has huge implications because research on viruses is done in laboratories all over the world by scientists of all nationalities. And understanding how this happened is going to be key to making sure those other laboratories, as well as the ones in China, are safe and secure and don't have this sort of thing happen again. Now, on the flip

side, if it came from a natural reservoir somewhere out there, you know, in the Chinese countryside or anywhere else for that matter, I mean, that too has really, really big implications because we need to understand how it moved from the animals to the people and how we can put barriers to prevent these spillover events or how we can have surveillance in place, you know, to stop them before they become serious. But the point I guess I'm trying to make is like each of these scenarios requires a huge global response. We either have to stop it from getting from nature to us or we have to stop it from, you know, coming out of a lab. Either way,

all countries need to be involved, multiple governments. It's going to be a huge effort. It just has to be the right effort so we can stop this thing from happening again. And if it came from a lab and it was related to this relatively edgy, controversial form of research on these dangerous pathogens that was being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and I believe is also done at labs in America and other countries. If it was that, then maybe there would need to be, you know, a global agreement on how to regulate

that or how to protect against that type of leak. Or maybe there would be a decision that it isn't ethical to do that kind of research? Absolutely. I mean, these have been lively debates in the scientific community for years. And then on top of that, I don't know how much more we want to pile on, but the United States is in this period of great power competition. We are in an era where we are competing with China in a way that feels a little like the Cold War. If a Chinese lab was sort of secretly doing this kind of work, obviously, that would have geopolitical implications as well. So the actual source of this virus matters a lot. But that's very different from saying whether or not we can

ever figure it out. How difficult is it going to be to get at the truth? Because I think it's a fair statement to say the Chinese government isn't the most transparent institution in the world. The World Health Organization has dealt with its own questions of credibility. The US intelligence community has dealt with its own questions of credibility. How difficult do you think it's going to be, Jeff? I mean, I guess, you know, my first thought is like the intelligence community may only be able to get so far. As I mentioned earlier, you know, they put out a release last year saying they didn't know and they still don't know this year. And at the end of the day, they're only as good as the intelligence they can gather. I mean, in this brief statement, they said they had low to moderate confidence. That means

their intel isn't great right now. You know, on the flip side, the scientists would need enormous cooperation with China to get to the bottom of this. I mean, we would need hundreds of scientists fanning out across China, swabbing people and animals and taking all sorts of samples trying to understand where this thing came from. And that, too, seems like a really tall order. I mean, so both of these are huge efforts. And it's going to be really, really hard to get to the bottom of this. And just to amplify what Jeff is saying, the Chinese government responded to this statement from President Biden and the fact that the intelligence community is looking at this with a very spicy press conference and

statement essentially saying like, yeah, we're all for transparency. The U.S. needs to open up all their labs because we think it started there. And what does this say about global cooperation that the U.S. is now once again going into scapegoating and blaming? It was like, you know, it was the kind of statement that says, oh, yeah, we may never get an answer or certainly we may we may never get the level of, you know, international access and transparency where where the whole world will agree on the answer. It's so true. We shouldn't overlook the fact that the Chinese government has consistently pointed the finger at U.S. labs, which is frankly a bit absurd. And I mean, they've also said things like maybe frozen food brought the virus in from somewhere outside of China. Also seems pretty unlikely. I mean, they don't like either of these answers. The government doesn't want to hear that

it started naturally in China, and they don't want to hear that it started in a lab in China. And as long as that's the case, I think it will be very hard to get cooperation from the Chinese government. All right. I think we're going to leave it there. Jeff Brumfield from NPR Science Desk, thank you so much for coming on the pod today. Oh, it's been a pleasure. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.