Lab Leak

The White House recently revised the covid.gov website into propaganda supporting the “lab leak” hypothesis for the source of Covid-19. I addressed this topic in my review of David Quammen’s wonderful book Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus:

“One of the most interesting questions addressed in Breathless is the source of covid. Was it a lab accident, a spillover from an animal host (called a zoonotic event), or a malevolent attempt at biological warfare? Quammen doesn’t provide a definitive answer, but he favors the conclusions reached in a review article written by a group of prominent virologists led by Eddie Holmes.

Yes, Holmes and his coauthors agreed, the possibility of a lab accident can’t be entirely dismissed. Furthermore, that hypothesis may be nearly impossible to disprove. But it’s “highly unlikely,” they judged, “relative to the numerous and repeated human-animal contacts that occur routinely in the wildlife trade.” Failure to investigate that zoonotic dimension, with collaborative studies, crossing borders between countries and boundaries between species, would leave this pandemic festering and the world still very vulnerable to the next one.”

Science is at a disadvantage when addressing implausible conspiracy theories, because it is difficult to prove something is impossible. All science can do is examine the evidence and determine which hypothesis is most likely. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that covid resulted from a spillover event, not a lab leak.