Could the COVID-19 Pandemic Have Originated in a Laboratory?

[Un article de The Conversation écrit par Florence Débarre – Directrice de recherche CNRS, chercheuse en biologie évolutive, Sorbonne Université]

On Friday, January 24, the new director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, announced to the far -right media Breitbart News that one of his priorities was to detail the information known by the agency on a laboratory leak in Wuhan. The next day, the New York Times revealed that the agency, initially undecided on the subject, now leaned towards a laboratory leak, with a “low level of confidence” – the lowest on a scale of three (weak, medium, strong), which means that information used do not allow you to have solid conclusions.

The CIA thus joins the FBI and the DOE (Department of Energy, which has a scientific competence) among the members of the Intelligence Community of the United States leaning towards a laboratory origin.

Following the count published in 2023, in the rest of the American intelligence community having looked at the origin of the pandemic of Covid-19, there would remain an undecided agency, while four, as well as the National Intelligence Council (The Council of US Intelligence Agencies) would lean towards a natural origin.

What really means “laboratory origin”?

According to the New York Timesthe change in evaluation of the CIA is however not due to the discovery of new elements; It just translates a new interpretation of the existing facts. Neither the reasoning nor even the data used is public. It is therefore impossible to judge their validity and solidity.

Above all, the term “laboratory origin” brings together a set of scenarios sometimes incompatible with each other. For example, according to information from New York Times (Confirming information shared by CNN in 2023, at the time of the change of opinion from the energy department), the energy department would promote an origin related to the activities of the Wuhan Disease Control Center (WCDC), while That the FBI promoted the idea of ​​an origin at the Wuhan Virology Institute (WIV). The scenario favored by the CIA is not known to date.

WCDC is not a research laboratory proper, but some of its members participated in wildlife samples. The WCDC had moved near the Huanan market at the end of 2019. A scenario involving the WCDC confirms the fact that the first detected cases are epidemiologically or geographically linked to the market, and implies a natural virus.

WIV is a research institute present on two campuses. One is 12 km as the crow flies on the market and the other, including the P4 laboratory, 27 km as the crow flies. The scenarios involving WIV generally propose that experiences, called a function gain (during which viruses can become more transmissible or more virulent), carried out on coronaviruses held secret, would have been carried out on insufficient biosecurity conditions (level 2, far from level P4).

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In the interactive map, above, locating Wuhan laboratories (the two WIV in purple campuses, WCDC in yellow) and the Huanan market (in red), you can display the legend by clicking on the symbol in the corner in high left. The WCDC is close to the market, you have to zoom in to see it.

The virus has only one origin: if it has actually left a laboratory, it cannot come from both two distinct laboratories and different activities. Two mutually incompatible hypotheses are not two points for a laboratory leak. This is also without counting on the other scenarios of a virus designed in a US laboratory, then sent to Wuhan.

Beyond the place, the nature of the virus is also a source of differences among the research accident scenarios. A natural virus contracted during a sampling campaign? A virus cultivated in the laboratory, transferred to cells or animals, or even a directly changed virus? Again, SARS-COV-2 cannot be both a natural virus or the product of experiences. Accumulating arguments on divergent points does not give more weight to the hypothesis of an origin linked to research work.

No evidence of a laboratory accident

If there was proof that a Wuhan laboratory held in late December 2019 a SARS-COV-2 offspring-that is to say an identical or almost the same virus as SARS-COV-2, then the 'Hypothesis of a laboratory accident would have much more weight.

In 2007, for example, during an epidemic of aphteuse fever in southern England, the sequencing of the virus very quickly led the research of the origin towards the surrounding high security laboratories which worked on a virus Similar – The survey will question defective pipes. For the Pandemic of COVID-19, there is no known virus that could have played the role of SARS-COV-2 offspring in a laboratory.

Thus, if Sars-Cov-2 comes from a research accident, it is a natural virus that had not been characterized and the researchers themselves know nothing about it, the virus had been Characterized, but not published (because the characterization was recent, or because it was a secret program), and the researchers of Wuhan still silence its existence.

In particular, if the virus was directly genetically modified in the laboratory, then its genetic sequence was known before the pandemic, and there are people who had access to it. In 2021, the American intelligence community had however determined that the information available indicated that the WIV researchers did not have knowledge of Sars-Cov-2 before the epidemic in Wuhan. Lack of evidence is not proof of absence, but the fact remains that there is, at this stage, no concrete data supporting the hypothesis of a modification in the laboratory.

Depending on the scenarios are added speculation on the complicities outside the laboratory, in China or abroad. A report by a US Senate committee had proposed a completely Chinese scenario, around the development of a vaccine with a Beijing researcher whose death in 2020 is seen as suspicious.

Other scenarios involve an NGO, Ecohealth Alliance, which collaborated with the WIV to collect coronavirus in the wild and study them in the laboratory, before its funding is brutally cut at the request of Donald Trump in the spring of 2020. , the president of Ecohealth Alliance has since been prohibited from federal funding for five years. He was criticized, among other things, for not having quickly pointed out the result of an experience on a chimerical coronavirus, of having made a late report, and of not having been able to provide the laboratory notebooks of the WIV.

The ultimate target of these American complicity scenarios is Anthony Fauci. Former COVID advisor to the White House, he also directed the finance body for the collaboration between Ecohealth Alliance and the WIV, and he is accused of having signed the funding of this research. The accusations go even further: according to a narrative, Anthony Fauci would also have sought to end any discussion on the origin of the pandemic of Covid-19, and forced researchers asking questions to change their mind by rewarding them of generous funding – it is not.

Anticipating the revenge of his successor and the Republicans, Joe Biden preventively granted presidential forgiveness to Anthony Fauci, but Donald Trump has since abolished his personal protection service, and the Republican Senator Rand Paul has sworn to continue his prosecution.

Natural origin also complex to prove

The multiplicity of laboratory leakage scenarios is due to an absence of data: everything is therefore possible. The available data are in fact in the direction of a natural origin linked to the sale of animals at the Huanan market, in Wuhan. These data are multiple and come from several Chinese sources: the residences of early cases are around the market, whether cases have been epidemiologically linked to the market or not; The two early lines of SARS-COV-2 were detected on the market; Finally, using data generated by the Chinese Disease Control Center (China CDC), we were able to show that the animal market as viverrin dogs and civettes, species already involved in Sras epidemics At the beginning of the century, and we confirmed that these animals were present in the southwest corner of the market, where Sars-Cov-2 was also frequently detected.

However, the Viverrins and Civetes dogs present on the market had already been evacuated when the China CDC team arrived to take samples, just a few hours after closing the market. There is no trace of infected animal, because the animals have not been taken. The definitive proof that some expect can never be obtained. Would it end the discussion? It is permissible to doubt it: it would then be necessary to prove that animals were the source of contaminations, and not secondarily infected with humans; And it could still be argued as animals came from the laboratory. In short, the story is endless.

In the meantime, the question of the origin of the pandemic will remain in public space under Trump. Senator Rand Paul, now at the head of the Commission on internal security and government affairs (HSGAC), has made it its workhorse. The declassification of information from the American intelligence community would be welcome, to finally be able to assess the merits of the various assessments. But in parallel, several researchers are in the viewfinder of the new administration, and it is to be feared that the research at all costs of culprits for the pandemic of Covid-19 makes innocent victims.