Where to start?
It snowed in L.A. That’s as good a lede as anyone could want, but the return of the Covid-lab origin story is what’s on my mind today.
First, a digression of sorts. Recently, one of my grandchildren went on a rant about an assignment from her English teacher to analyze the meaning of a short work of fiction.
“The words just mean what they mean,” she complained. “Why search for some sort of hidden meaning in there?”
I stopped myself from trying to answer her rhetorical question in the moment, but it stuck with me, probably because long ago I too would have gotten defensive at similar assignments due to youth and inexperience.
However, the way I would address the question now, 60 years later, is that I have come to appreciate that there may be multiple interpretations of great works of fiction or other art forms — that the same words or images may evoke differing interpretations and reactions from different people, all sincerely looking for the same agreed-upon answer.
Perhaps I’ll get around to telling my granddaughter this at some point. But for now, I’m still thinking about the implications of I just wrote in another context — the news.
Few people would consider my profession — journalism — an art form, since what journalists are tasked with doing is to document the truth in one particular matter and that implies eliminating the ambiguity of multiple interpretations, if possible, much like the process of determining guilt or innocence in our legal system.
Yet there is an art to the process.
To begin with, there is an underlying premise that one distinct truth must exist, as my granddaughter’s frustration with her literature assignment also presumes.
The problem is that the facts sometimes get in the way. Facts can be messy and inconvenient. Sometimes, it appears, there are actually multiple truths simultaneously in play. That is truly confusing for the truth-seeker in all of us.
Not only do we bring our own unique mix of experience and outlook to the table, in some cases we arrive at a table so deeply divided by ideology and personal identity that an inconvenient truth doesn’t stand a chance.
The latest Covid-lab origin controversy may be a case in point. That theory was so deeply politicized by then-President Donald Trump when it was first posited that most people chose sides and didn’t wish to reconsider their position.
But time has passed and perhaps passions have cooled. The only reservation I have about this report is its timing., since it comes at a moment of rising tension between the U.S. government and China over the latter’s aid to Russia in the Ukrainian war.
Two earlier posts related to this topic:
Did Covid-19 Come From a Lab? (1.28.21)
(image from wiki commons)
Though I've been writing essays every day for a year now, every one of them dealing at least partially with the pandemic, only twice have I ventured into the controversy over whether the virus that causes Covid-19 may have been created in a Chinese lab.
The first time was last April 15th (I'll reprint a summary of that piece below), when I recounted the sordid history of the U.S. government's experimentation with biological agents against its own population. To me, that is important context for this conversation.
The second time is today.
Like everything about this pandemic, its origin a loaded issue, since Trump demonized the "China virus," implying at times that it may have been a deliberate plot by the Communist regime in Beijing.
While that still could be true, I doubt it. But an accidental lab origin scenario is more persuasive.
Nicholson Baker recently published his detailed inquiry in New York magazine assessing whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in nature or escaped from China's only BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.
A BSL-4 laboratory is a maximum-security biosafety facility that conducts research on the most dangerous known pathogens. The facility in question is called the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the U.S. government has partially funded its work for years.
First, Nicholson documents that there have been repeated accidents, exposures and deaths over the many decades that biological agents have been studied at BSL-4 labs in the U.S.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19), its specific characteristics more closely resemble an organism cultivated in a lab, Nicholson contends, than any that are known to occur in nature. But scientists are divided about this point and there remains broad controversy over his interpretation.
The Chinese government early on chose to suppress any suggestion that the virus may have been of an artificial (i.e. lab) origin, so very little useful information has emerged from the birthplace of the pandemic.
But Nicholson suggests that the RaTG13 bat virus, which is the closest known cousin to SARS-CoV-2 and has been used in experiments at the Wuhan facility for years, may have somehow escaped the lab and caused this awful pandemic.
His is the most logical theory I have seen to date. If it proves to be true, or even if it doesn't, we need to consider whether the kind of research conducted at BSL-4 labs really is in our best interests. It is much like nuclear bomb research -- the risks simply seem too high.
Human error is not the only issue here. We also have to be cognizant of the ever-present danger of corruption. In a disturbing development yesterday, a whistleblower report broke indicating that the agency of the U.S. government engaged in managing this highly sensitive work -- the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority -- has misused millions of dollars of funds.
Just imagine the national security risks inherent in that situation.
***
"The Origin of Covid-19" (4.15.20)
As I was sorting through my books earlier this year, identifying a tiny percentage to keep while recycling the great majority of them, one slender volume caught my eye:
"Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas" by Leonard A. Cole, a bioterrorism expert.and author based at Rutgers.
I reviewed Cole's book for The New York Times when it appeared in 1988. His work was based on previously classified material that documented how the U.S. government deliberately exposed our population to viruses on a mass basis to gauge how vulnerable this country could be should an enemy launch a bioterrorism attack.
At the time, it was a shocking revelation, though the context included other government-sanctioned experiments such as administering LSD to unsuspecting American citizens.
These dark chapters in our government's history remain somewhat shrouded in mystery; any conscientious person wold hope such episodes ended long ago.
But the problem is that ours is not the only government capable of this kind of abhorrent behavior. China's government certainly is. Might there be bioterrorism labs say in the Wuhan region of China? I do not know. [UPDATE: We now know that there is one such lab.--DW]
I want to be crystal clear and explicit here about what I am proposing. I am *not* suggesting that Covid-19 is the result of a rogue government experiment. I have no evidence of that and frankly I doubt it is the case.
But to ignore history is to risk repeating it -- a cliche that like many cliches has more than a germ of truth.
What I am proposing is that journalists with sources in the military and intelligence agencies should dig into the hypothesis that Covid-19 may have been tested by governments as a possible agent for germ warfare.
The cover story for such experimentation is always to help a nation to prepare its defenses against attack. But when it comes to a runaway virus that spreads throughout the human population, there is no defense.
It can't be stopped.
I've been dismissive in my essays of the 30 percent of the American population who believe that Covid-19 was created in a lab. That's because I hate conspiracy theories -- they are the opposite of what I believe journalism is -- they are preposterous fictions that feed on fear and paranoia.
We are seeing the worst of fear and paranoia swirling around this pandemic, as demagogues exploit the moment in a quest to consolidate their power and manipulate vulnerable populations.
Yet that cannot prevent us, as journalists, from checking out every lead, however tenuous, about what is actually happening here.
As far as I can tell, scientists have no concrete evidence on why this particular virus suddenly and virulently attacked us. Millions of people have become sick and many have died.
If there is any evidence that something untoward is afoot here, it remains confined to the classified realm of information.
NEWS LINKS (2/28/23):
Energy Department finds COVID-19 most likely emerged from lab leak, reports say: What we know (USA Today)
US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin (CNN)
The Scientific Error That Might Have Caused The Covid-19 Pandemic (Forbes)
Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says (NYT)
The End of the English Major — Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened? (New Yorker)
China has urged peace after a U.S. warning of serious consequences if it provided arms to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Washington and its NATO allies are scrambling to dissuade China from providing military aid for Moscow's war. (Reuters)
U.N. Human Rights Council begins session with condemnation of Russian aggression (WP)
DeSantis takes over Disney district, punishing company (AP)
Supreme Court to hear Biden’s student loan forgiveness arguments Tuesday. 3 things to know (CNBC)
Twitter reportedly laid off as many as 200 employees over the weekend, including a key figure who helped establish the site’s new system to charge for verification. The cuts impacted people on several important teams, including product managers and engineers that help keep Twitter online. [HuffPost]
Elon Musk says remaining Twitter employees will soon receive ‘very significant’ stock awards (The Verge)
'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True' (Newsweek)
AI learns to outsmart humans in video games - and real life (AP)
Just how big is this new generative AI? Think internet-level disruption (ZDNet)
A Chatbot Is Secretly Doing My Job (Atlantic)
RadioGPT: 'World’s first' AI-driven radio station is here (Interesting Engineering)
SOLA: Daring to educate Afghanistan's girls (60 Minutes/CBS)
Defense crime scene expert raises two-shooter theory in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial (CNN)
Research reveals climate crisis is driving a rise in human-wildlife conflicts (Guardian)
Memories of Wounded Knee reflect mixed legacy after 50 years (AP)
Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz admitted he "strongly" disagrees with Fox News' decision to forbid him from reporting on the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the network over its 2020 election coverage. “I believe I should be covering it," Kurtz said. "But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now." [HuffPost]
Dalai Lama Worried There’s Nothing More To Life Than Feeling Deep Connection With All Existence (The Onion)
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