User:Novem Linguae/Essays/There was no lab leak: Difference between revisions

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This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:NOLABLEAK

This page in a nutshell: Top quality scientific sources refer to a COVID-19 lab leak as "highly unlikely", "extremely unlikely", "massive online speculations", and "speculations, rumors, and conspiracy theories". Lesser quality sources are written by unqualified individuals and should not be used.

Top quality medical sources don't talk much about the COVID-19 lab leak idea, which is strong evidence that it is WP:FRINGE. When it is talked about in top quality sources (see list of quotes below), those sources mention the lab leak as "highly unlikely", "extremely unlikely", "massive online speculations", and "speculations, rumours, and conspiracy theories". Governments and the media have tried to politicize the issue in order to blame certain countries. Because the origin of a human disease is a biomedical topic, WP:MEDRS standards should be used whenever discussing the lab leak theory in Wikipedia articles.

Top quality, WP:MEDRS sources

Even though this topic is FRINGE, it is generating enough publicity that MEDRS sources are finally starting to mention it.

In light of social media speculation about possible laboratory manipulation and deliberate and/or accidental release of SARS-CoV-2, Andersen et al. theorize about the virus’ probable origins, emphasizing that the available data argue overwhelmingly against any scientific misconduct or negligence (Andersen et al., 2020)

Immunity, May 19, 2020^[1]

In their commentary they wrote “there are speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 is of laboratory origin” and that “some people have alleged that the human SARS-CoV-2 was leaked directly from a laboratory in Wuhan where a bat CoV (RaTG13) was recently reported”. However, authors have not cited any authenticated source or literature that has claimed the “laboratory engineering”.

Le infezioni in medicina (Italian), September 1, 2020^[2]

Another unconfirmed hypothesis that has received mixed response is the possibility of the virus originating in Wuhan’s Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, located just 300 yards away from Wuhan’s animal market or the Wuhan Institute of Virology located eight miles away from the animal market. Conspiracy theories about a possible accidental leak from either of these laboratories known to be experimenting with bats and bat CoVs that has shown some structural similarity to human SARS-CoV-2 has been suggested, but largely dismissed by most authorities.

Postgraduate Medical Journal, February 1, 2021^[3]

Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research.
Similarly and connected to this hypothesis is also the one including the possibility of transmission through the trade of frozen cold-chain products.
There we are making the difference between the introduction of the virus into the human population and the possibility of the circulation of the virus through long-distance and through different settings or the introduction of the virus into a particular setting like a market for example.
Then the hypothesis of a direct spill-over from an original animal source into the human population is also a possible pathway and is also generating recommendation for future studies.

However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population and therefore is not a hypothesis that will imply to suggest future studies into our work to support our future work into the understanding of the origin of the virus.

World Health Organization, February 9, 2021^[4]

Despite these massive online speculations, scientific evidence does not support this accusation of laboratory release theory. Yet, it is difficult and time‐consuming to rule out the laboratories as the original source completely. It is highly unlikely that SARS‐CoV‐2 was accidentally released from a laboratory since no direct ancestral virus is identified in the current database. The complete genome of SARS‐CoV‐2 is deposited in the public database shortly after the outbreaks based on advanced next generation sequencing technologies. There is also no record of laboratory accidents at the WIV, and the former SARS‐CoV accident did not occur at the WIV. Additionally, a recent study further supported the natural origin of SARS‐CoV‐2 from viruses found in Rhinolophus sp. However, an independent forensic investigation is probably the only course of action to prove or disprove this speculation.

Reviews in Medical Virology, February 14, 2021^[5]

Low quality, non-MEDRS sources

The following sources are not WP:MEDRS quality and should not be used.

Medical primary sources (studies, clinical trials)
Academic journals not related to a relevant field. (Examples of relevant fields include medicine, virology, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, and ecology.)
Journals not indexed by MEDLINE
Preprints (WP:SELFPUBLISH)
Popular press (Such as regular newspapers and WP:NEWSORGS. One reason we have MEDRS is because the mainstream media is notorious for getting medical information wrong.)
Governments (Because they engage in blatant politicking and disinformation on this topic. See below.)

My conclusions

The actual origin of COVID-19

The strongest hypothesis at the moment is that COVID originated in horseshoe bats in caves in China, and jumped naturally to humans, possibly through an intermediate species.^[6]

Horseshoe bats are a well-known reservoir of coronaviruses, hosting around 47 variants of coronavirus.^[7] Most of these variants are not harmful to humans, but every once in awhile, one of these variants will jump to intermediate hosts or to humans. Often spurred to mutate further by this jump to a new species, the coronaviruses that happen to mutate in a way that makes them harmful to humans become dangerous and trigger outbreaks.

This origin and vector are nothing surprising or new to scientists. SARS (a deadly human coronavirus) and SADS (a deadly pig coronavirus) both originated in China from horseshoe bats in the last 20 years.

In the presence of this strong, natural, and likely origin of the virus, and in the absence of any forensic evidence suggesting otherwise, it is unlikely that COVID originated from a lab leak or from imported frozen food.

As one Wikipedian put it, "Most virologists, evolutionary biologists, and ecologists working with viruses agree that the virus likely spilled over into humans under natural circumstances, as has been the case for every other novel pathogen in history."

Government misinformation

This section is my personal opinion, and will not be as factual as the other sections of this essay.

In my opinion, Trump and the US government want COVID-19's origin to be something that gives China maximum responsibility for the pandemic, and are selectively looking for evidence to support that. Also in my opinion, the Chinese government wants the origin to be something that gives China minimum responsibility for the pandemic, and is looking for evidence to support that. Therefore, the US government supports the lab leak idea, and China supports the imported frozen food idea. But both of them are likely just engaging in politics and misinformation, and are likely incorrect.

A Cornell University study found that US President Donald Trump was "likely the largest driver" of the COVID-19 misinformation infodemic in English-language media.^[8]

China very low deaths, USA very high deaths

Additionally, I find it interesting that as of February 2021...

USA has approximately 500,000 COVID deaths^[9] (the #1 country in the world in COVID deaths)^[10]
China has approximately 5,000 COVID deaths^[11]

It is deeply ironic that the Trump administration, who handled the pandemic worse than any country in the world, is trying to blame China for the pandemic, a country that only has 5,000 COVID deaths. I suspect that the Trump administration pushed the lab leak idea in order to distract from their own terrible handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MEDRS

Does MEDRS apply to this topic? Absolutely. The topic is the origin of a human disease. That's biomedical.

The goal of MEDRS is to make sure that Wikipedia biomedical articles reflect the consensus of doctors and scientists, and not the popular press, politicians, and conspiracy theorists, folks who are not qualified to opine on these topics. Further reading:

As a reminder, there are three types of sources that qualify as MEDRS:

Review articles in medical journals. (A good place to search for these is PubMed, with the following 4 filters turned on: review, systematic review, meta-analysis, MEDLINE.)
Statements by national and international health organizations (CDC, NHS, WHO)
Medical textbooks

FRINGE

In a nutshell, WP:FRINGE defines three levels of coverage:

majority viewpoint
minority viewpoint
fringe

Majority and minority viewpoint are self-explanatory, and those should always be covered in Wikipedia articles. Fringe means that reliable sources barely talk about the idea or don't talk about the idea at all, and fringe ideas should almost always be omitted from Wikipedia. Trying to discuss fringe ideas alongside majority and minority viewpoints causes WP:FALSEBALANCE problems.

Ad nauseum

This topic area has endured a coordinated off-wiki campaign (organized on Twitter) pushing for the inclusion of the lab leak idea. Multiple new users signed up and proceeded to WP:BLUDGEON the talk pages. It takes up an incredible amount of editor time to engage with these WP:MEATPUPPETS, and it is not productive. We are tired of it.

Wikipedia articles impacted

Internal

References

^ Graham, Rachel L.; Baric, Ralph S. (2020-05-19). "SARS-CoV-2: Combating Coronavirus Emergence". Immunity. 52 (5): 734–736. doi:10.1016/j.immuni.2020.04.016. ISSN 1074-7613. PMC 7207110. PMID 32392464.
^ Barh, Debmalya; Silva Andrade, Bruno; Tiwari, Sandeep; Giovanetti, Marta; Góes-Neto, Aristóteles; Alcantara, Luiz Carlos Junior; Azevedo, Vasco; Ghosh, Preetam (2020-09-01). "Natural selection versus creation: a review on the origin of SARS-COV-2". Le Infezioni in Medicina. 28 (3): 302–311. ISSN 1124-9390. PMID 32920565.
^ Adil, Md Tanveer; Rahman, Rumana; Whitelaw, Douglas; Jain, Vigyan; Al-Taan, Omer; Rashid, Farhan; Munasinghe, Aruna; Jambulingam, Periyathambi (1 February 2021). "SARS-CoV-2 and the pandemic of COVID-19". Postgraduate Medical Journal. 97 (1144): 110–116. doi:10.1136/postgradmedj-2020-138386. ISSN 0032-5473.
^ "COVID-19 Virtual Press conference transcript - 9 February 2021". www.who.int. Retrieved 2021-02-13.
^ Hakim, Mohamad S. (2021-02-14). "SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19, and the debunking of conspiracy theories". Reviews in Medical Virology: e2222. doi:10.1002/rmv.2222. ISSN 1099-1654. PMID 33586302.
^ Zoumpourlis, Vassilios; Goulielmaki, Maria; Rizos, Emmanouil; Baliou, Stella; Spandidos, Demetrios A. (2020-10-22). "The COVID-19 pandemic as a scientific and social challenge in the 21st century". Molecular Medicine Reports. 22 (4): 3035–3048. doi:10.3892/mmr.2020.11393. ISSN 1791-2997. PMC 7453598. PMID 32945405.
^ Luk, Hayes K. H.; Li, Xin; Fung, Joshua; Lau, Susanna K. P.; Woo, Patrick C. Y. (2019-07-01). "Molecular epidemiology, evolution and phylogeny of SARS coronavirus". Infection, Genetics and Evolution: Journal of Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics in Infectious Diseases. 71: 21–30. doi:10.1016/j.meegid.2019.03.001. ISSN 1567-7257. PMC 7106202. PMID 30844511.
^ Stolberg, Sheryl Gay; Weiland, Noah (22 October 2020). "Study Finds 'Single Largest Driver' of Coronavirus Misinformation: Trump" – via NYTimes.com.(Study)
^ "IHME | COVID-19 Projections". Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Retrieved 2021-02-27.
^ "Template:COVID-19 pandemic data", Wikipedia, 2021-02-27, retrieved 2021-02-27
^ "IHME | COVID-19 Projections". Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Retrieved 2021-02-27.

@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 The strongest hypothesis at the moment is that COVID originated in [[Horseshoe bat|horseshoe bats]] in caves in China, and jumped naturally to humans, possibly through an intermediate species.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Zoumpourlis|first=Vassilios|last2=Goulielmaki|first2=Maria|last3=Rizos|first3=Emmanouil|last4=Baliou|first4=Stella|last5=Spandidos|first5=Demetrios A.|date=2020-10-22|title=The COVID-19 pandemic as a scientific and social challenge in the 21st century|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7453598/|journal=Molecular Medicine Reports|volume=22|issue=4|pages=3035–3048|doi=10.3892/mmr.2020.11393|issn=1791-2997|pmc=7453598|pmid=32945405|via=}}</ref>
-Horseshoe bats are a well-known reservoir of [[Coronavirus|coronaviruses]], hosting around 47 variants of coronavirus.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Luk|first=Hayes K. H.|last2=Li|first2=Xin|last3=Fung|first3=Joshua|last4=Lau|first4=Susanna K. P.|last5=Woo|first5=Patrick C. Y.|date=2019-07-01|title=Molecular epidemiology, evolution and phylogeny of SARS coronavirus|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844511/|journal=Infection, Genetics and Evolution: Journal of Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics in Infectious Diseases|volume=71|pages=21–30|doi=10.1016/j.meegid.2019.03.001|issn=1567-7257|pmc=7106202|pmid=30844511|via=}}</ref> Most of these variants are not harmful to humans, but every once in awhile, one of these variants will jump to intermediate hosts or to humans. Often spurned to mutate further by this jump to a new species, the coronaviruses that happen to mutate in a way that makes them harmful to humans become dangerous and trigger outbreaks.
+Horseshoe bats are a well-known reservoir of [[Coronavirus|coronaviruses]], hosting around 47 variants of coronavirus.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Luk|first=Hayes K. H.|last2=Li|first2=Xin|last3=Fung|first3=Joshua|last4=Lau|first4=Susanna K. P.|last5=Woo|first5=Patrick C. Y.|date=2019-07-01|title=Molecular epidemiology, evolution and phylogeny of SARS coronavirus|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844511/|journal=Infection, Genetics and Evolution: Journal of Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics in Infectious Diseases|volume=71|pages=21–30|doi=10.1016/j.meegid.2019.03.001|issn=1567-7257|pmc=7106202|pmid=30844511|via=}}</ref> Most of these variants are not harmful to humans, but every once in awhile, one of these variants will jump to intermediate hosts or to humans. Often spurred to mutate further by this jump to a new species, the coronaviruses that happen to mutate in a way that makes them harmful to humans become dangerous and trigger outbreaks.
 This origin and vector are nothing surprising or new to scientists. [[Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2|SARS]] (a deadly human coronavirus) and [[Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus|SADS]] (a deadly pig coronavirus) both originated in China from horseshoe bats in the last 20 years.