WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2021, when studies on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic were going nowhere and the issue was embroiled in bitter partisan politics, David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University in California, made a discreet request to your US congressman.
He told Anna Eshoo, the MP, that he was organizing a letter from scientists calling for an independent investigation into the origins of Covid-19 — including whether it came from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. He hoped she would back the idea.
It worked. As soon as the letter appeared online in Science magazine, Eshoo was one of the first Democrats in Congress to call for an investigation into the origins of Covid.
It was the prelude to a sweeping political shift on the issue: Within weeks, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered an intelligence review of the origins; he has since come to mixed conclusions.
The story of the search for the origin of Covid has to do in part with the obstruction of China that has left scientists with incomplete evidence. Despite all the data to suggest that the virus may have jumped to people from wild animals in a Chinese market, conclusive evidence remains out of reach, as does the competing hypothesis that the virus leaked from a laboratory.
But the story is also about American politics and how both Democrats and Republicans have filtered available evidence through their partisan lenses.
Some Republicans became obsessed with the idea of a lab leak after former President Donald J. Trump raised it in the early months of the pandemic despite scant supporting evidence. That made the theory toxic to many Democrats.
The intense political debate, now in its fourth year, has at times turned scientists into lobbyists. Relman is just one of several researchers who have successfully toured the corridors of power in Washington to force skeptical journalists, lawmakers and Democrats to take the lab leak idea seriously.
Even as the idea of an accidental lab leak has gained traction in Washington, the findings reported this month bolstered the market theory. Extracting genetic data taken from swabs at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in early 2020, virus experts said they found samples containing genetic material from the coronavirus and illegally traded raccoon dogs (mammals related to foxes). The find pointed to an animal.
New market data suggests China is withholding clues that could reshape the debate. But for now, the idea of a lab leak has caught on with the public: Two recent polls show that two-thirds of Americans believe that Covid probably started in a lab.
In January 2020, Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s national security adviser, became suspicious of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known for its research on bat coronaviruses. Pottinger asked intelligence officials to investigate.
At around the same time, the emails later showed, some US virologists privately told health officials, including Anthony S. Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that the virus could have been created in a laboratory, but which required further study.
But when they examined the data, they concluded the opposite. In one study, they wrote that the virus “was not a laboratory construct or a purposefully engineered virus.”
Those findings bolstered the view of a February 2020 letter in The Lancet in which scientists, concerned that fears of lab leaks threatened data sharing with China, condemned “conspiracy theories” about an origin related to The laboratory.
In April 2020, Trump announced that he had seen intelligence supporting a lab leak, but was not allowed to share it. Pottinger said he did not recall briefing Trump on the origins issue.
Democrats showed little inclination to investigate the origins of the pandemic. The President’s suggestion of a lab leak smacked of xenophobia and risked fueling anti-Asian sentiment. They trusted Fauci, who had said the evidence strongly suggested the virus had not been tampered with. (He has since said that he is open to the idea of a laboratory accident.)
When Biden won the 2020 election, some pundits saw an opportunity to persuade Democrats to take a closer look at the lab leak idea.
So much was unknown, and China seemed so intent on getting in the way of answers, that more scientists began to urge a closer look.
Around August 2021, Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, set out to test the claims of a lab leak. Having once helped debunk the theory that AIDS came from contaminated polio vaccines, he believed a laboratory leak was possible and signed the Science letter.
Worobey analyzed the first known Covid patients, finding that a disproportionate number had worked at or visited the market.
Meanwhile, evidence emerged that live mammals known to transmit coronaviruses, including raccoon dogs, were being sold at the Huanan Market before the pandemic. And in September 2021, a report of coronaviruses in Laotian bats showed that natural viruses were capable of attaching to human cells.
Congressional investigations gained steam even as Worobey’s investigation leaned toward a market origin. In February 2022, he and others reported that the clustering of the first Covid cases around Huanan Market could not be explained as mere chance. A second study by the team, which looked at the genetic diversity of viruses collected early in the outbreak, also took aim at the market.
In the US Senate, an investigation into the origins of Covid, backed only by Republicans, found that security risks at the Wuhan laboratory made a leak likely. But he did not present direct evidence. Weeks after the report was published, Republicans gained control of the US House of Representatives in November 2022.
This month, the new House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic convened its first hearing to examine the origins of the pandemic. Market theory was barely touched on.
However, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, saw an opportunity. With House Republicans leading the Covid hearings and Democrats controlling the Senate by a slim majority, he hopes to mobilize the public to push for bipartisan Senate hearings on the origins of Covid.
“The political balance is on a knife edge,” he said. “A very small amount of support could have a significant impact.”
However, other scientists said the campaign by lab leak advocates had led to such vitriolic attacks that many researchers are reluctant to speak publicly on the issue.
As for Eshoo, he said he would like to see the investigation into the origins of Covid turned over to an independent panel.
“If you take partisan politics and mix it with science, you get a toxic combination,” he said.
By: Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Benjamin Mueller
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/politics/covid-origins-lab-leak-politics.html, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-03-24 16:10: 07
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