Why is the FBI endorsing the Covid lab leak theory now?

One reason there is so much heat in the debate about the origins of Covid-19 is that there has been so little light.

The public endorsement of the lab leak theory by Christopher Wray has put the FBI out of step with others in the US intelligence community. Picture: AFP

Of all the acrimonious debates in Covid science – and there have been many – the one about laboratory leaks has been the most unpleasant.

One reason there is so much heat is that there has been so little light. Fundamentally, the debate hinges on what happened, unnoticed, in a previously unremarkable city in central China, involving a couple of particles so small that a million would fill this full stop.

There have, nevertheless, been attempts to find out what happened. In early 2021 the World Health Organisation sent a team to investigate and gather data about early cases. It argued a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” but didn’t rule it out. Its investigators also admitted this was not merely a scientific investigation, “politics was always in the room”. Its second mission this year was shelved, apparently amid lack of co-operation from the Chinese authorities.

Some things we can determine. The genetic code of the virus itself tells us if there are any unambiguous signs of manipulation – there aren’t. That does not definitively rule out that it was manipulated, though, nor that an unmanipulated virus was released from a lab.

Because of the way the virus mutates, genetics can also give us clues to the early dynamics. The first cases appear at least to cluster around part of the wet market, and there we find – in what some scientists believe is a crucial clue – two early circulating strains, one older than the other.

Interestingly, the earliest cases in humans were from the later strain of the virus, a report last year claimed. How could this be? This apparently confusing finding could be explained if the virus were previously circulating, say, at a raccoon dog farm, the authors said. If raccoon dogs were taken for sale randomly, and the ones taken first had the later form of the virus, then we would indeed expect the earliest human cases to have a later virus.

But this is a plausible story, not definitive proof – and it is possible the FBI has more information we don’t know. Lab leak advocates continue to say it is something of a coincidence that a bat coronavirus outbreak started right by a lab studying bat coronaviruses. Zoonotic origin advocates continue to say it is something of a coincidence that it started beside cages containing live animals.

The public endorsement of the lab leak theory by FBI director Christopher Wray has further muddied the waters and put his agency out of step with others in the US intelligence community. Among the US agencies investigating the origin of the virus, four still favour the theory of natural transmission from animals. Two more, including the CIA, are undecided.

While the US Energy Department’s assessment, reported on Sunday, that the virus leaked from a lab was based on new intelligence, that information was reported to be relatively weak and its conclusion was made with “low confidence”. None of the other agencies changed their view upon seeing the department’s report and the White House said there was no consensus within the US government about the origin of the virus.

Rather than shine new light on the origin of the pandemic, Wray’s comments have only fuelled political partisanship in Washington, where Republicans are preparing to launch multiple investigations into Covid-19, including targeting former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, whose agency supported virus research in Wuhan.

While the debate and investigation continue, there is one unavoidable winner: China. If the source is a lab leak, it has questions to answer about biosecurity. If the source is a wet market, it has questions to answer about animal security. Today, scientists argue with each other instead.

For the international community, there should be one immediate conclusion. In one sense answers are extremely important. In another they are a distraction. If both routes are plausible ways of starting a pandemic then, irrespective of how it actually started, the world should start co-operating on ways to minimise the risk from both.

The Times