Oops…

Nicholas Wade has written a long analysis of the question: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?

As he writes:

I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction.

What I find worrying in his analysis is the early strenuous denial by researchers that the COVID-19 pandemic could possibly have been the result of a laboratory accident because of a conflict of interests.

The conflict of interest point about Peter Daszak seems pretty damning to me. And what is also worrying is that the WHO team visiting the Wuhan lab had others who could potentially fall prey to this. e.g. Marion Koopmans from the Netherlands who heads (with Ron Fouchier) the Dutch lab that has been doing gain-of-function research for many years. She’s been on Dutch TV talkshows regularly over the past year.

Until now, I had never thought about whether GOF studies had any real benefit in combatting pandemics. Now I’m more inclined to view them as playing with fire, because we can…