COVID-19 Pandemic Origins

I have previously written about the issues surrounding and the evidence-to-date in the public realm as to the origins of SARS-CoV-2. There has been much mystery, intrigue and debate as to the origins of the virus, and while there are relatively minor variations as to specifics, most who have an opinion on this fall into one of two categories –

• those that support a “lab leak,” meaning that laboratory workers, most often alleged to be at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab world-renown for its work on bat coronaviruses, were infected by the virus they were secretly working on and subsequently introduced the virus into the population to begin the pandemic; or
• those that support a zoonotic transmission (animal à human) that most often is alleged to have taken place at the Wuhan Seafood Market that then led to human à human spread and sparked the pandemic.

Personally, having listened intently to both sides of the argument, if I were to make a decision based on the preponderance of the evidence, I would fall into the second group – a zoonotic transmission. You can read my prior blog post for more in-depth analysis, but to briefly sum up the reasons for my belief, they would be:

• Zoonotic transmission, or so called “spill-over” events have been come increasingly more frequent over the recent decades. On the other hand, a lab leak has never sparked a pandemic, let alone, a lesser outbreak.
• I don’t know of any reputable scientist, public health expert or public health agency that does not accept the evidence that zoonotic transmission from palm civets (and/or raccoon dogs) at a “wet” market in China sparked the SARS-CoV outbreak in 2003.
• While I am not convinced that the first case of COVID was in Wuhan, it is clear that the first recognized outbreak was in Wuhan, and cases clearly clustered around the Wuhan Seafood Market from an epidemiological viewpoint.
• The Chinese wet markets were prohibited from having civet cats or raccoon dogs in their markets following the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet we have photographic and DNA evidence that these animals and many others who we know can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus were in the market.
• The original wild-type virus developed mutations that led to the identification of two different lineages within 1 – 2 weeks – lineage A and lineage B. This would not be expected if a lab worker had been accidentally infected and transmitted the virus. Rather, this suggests the unsurprising scenario of multiple spill-over events. Keep in mind that the markets source these animals from the southern part of the country (where there are many bat caves) where they are farmed, transported in very close contact with each other and their secretions, and sold to the markets, sometimes illegally and certainly with little, if any, regulatory oversight. Transmission from animal à animal would offer the opportunity for these mutations to develop (especially if that transmission were cross-species) and then the animals arrive in the markets infected, and under the right circumstances (and I describe those circumstances at the markets that would promote transmission in my prior blog post), the animals may transmit the virus to humans.
• While there is much conjecture, there is no evidence made publicly available to support a lab leak (e.g., evidence that the laboratory was using the virus in experiments, evidence of illness of a lab-worker that was subsequently shown to be SARS-CoV-2 (remember, that at the time of this initial outbreak, China was having its influenza season), or evidence of seroconversion of lab-workers prior to the onset of the pandemic (it is customary for labs of this biosecurity level to maintain specimens of blood from each lab worker monthly so that one can go back and check for antibodies to determine if and when someone was infected with a virus they were working with).

Nevertheless, I ended my blog post by stating that given that we knew our government had classified information that was not publicly available and the fact that some of our intelligence agencies had assessed a lab leak to be possible, or even probable, I commented that my own personal assessment was made solely based upon publicly available information and sources. Obviously, knowing that government intelligence agencies had classified information that was not public, meant that my assessment might change if that information ever did become public. Although, even that eventuality was somewhat unlikely given that with the exception of the FBI’s assessment that the origin was a lab leak with moderate confidence, all the other agencies that had determined a lab leak to be more likely than a zoonotic event or alternatively, that a zoonotic spillover event was more likely than a lab leak, all these agencies only offered their assessment with low confidence. If these government agencies had a smoking gun, I would not expect their assessments to be of such low confidence.

Since I wrote that blog piece, the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 was passed and called for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to declassify information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Note that the law did not call for any of these agencies to review the evidence or potential links between the Wuhan Seafood Market and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Note that the IC is made up of 18 different organizations, but not all, or even most, of these agencies has conducted their own intelligence assessment as to the origin of the pandemic. Members include the:

• Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) 
• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
• National Security Agency (NSA)
• National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA)
• National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
• intelligence elements of the five DoD services: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force
• Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence
• Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis
• U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of National Security Intelligence
• Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research
• Department of the Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has now released a redacted report meeting the obligations under the COVID-19 Origin Act prepared by the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.

The report indicates that the first question assessed by agencies was whether the first known human infection was the result of natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident. The agencies that assessed this question came to different conclusions based upon how they weighed intelligence reporting and scientific reporting, as well as the gaps contained in both. While some agencies:

• have determined they can make no assessment due to insufficient information (this group includes the CIA and an unnamed other agency),
• others have made the determination that a lab leak was more likely than zoonotic spread (this includes the FBI and the Department of Energy, though they make their assessments for different reasons); and
• others have made the determination that a zoonotic spillover event was more likely than a lab leak (this group includes the National Intelligence Council and four IC agencies),

no agency was able to conclude that they could rule out a lab leak or rule out a zoonotic spillover event.

One point of consensus among these agencies is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not genetically engineered. The majority of the agencies concluded that the virus was not laboratory-adapted. The agencies were unanimous in concluding that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a bioweapon.

The report makes a number of findings:

1. “Some of the research conducted (at WIV) included work with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.” This was not a secret. WIV and its lead scientist are world-renown for their coronavirus research, many publications in the scientific literature come from this lab, and the researcher is a frequent lecturer at international meetings.
2. WIV was involved in the development of vaccines and therapeutics for coronavirus infections (this is good). “The IC assesses that this work was intended for public health needs and that the coronaviruses known to be used were too distantly related to have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.”
3. “We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.”
4. “Information available to the IC indicates that the WIV first possessed SARS-CoV-2 in late December 2019, when WIV researchers isolated and identified the virus from samples from patients diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown causes.”
5. “Before the pandemic, the WIV had been working to improve at least some biosafety conditions and training. We do not know of a specific biosafety incident at the WIV that spurred the pandemic and the WIV’s biosafety training appears routine, rather than an emergency response by China’s leadership.”
6. “An inspection of the WIV’s high-containment laboratories in 2020 – only months after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak’s emergence – identified a need to update aging equipment, a need for additional disinfectant equipment, and improvements to ventilation systems.”
7. “Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with, but not diagnostic of COVID-19. The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of those symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19.”
8. “The IC assesses that the WIV maintains blood samples and health records of all laboratory personnel – which are standard procedures in high-containment laboratories.”
9. “We have no indications that any of these researchers were hospitalized because of the symptoms consistent with COVID-19. One researcher may have been hospitalized in this timeframe for treatment of a non-respiratory medical condition.”

To me, all of this is underwhelming. In fact, I now am mystified by how the FBI would assess the likelihood of a lab leak as having moderate confidence. I suspect that this must be related to the approach of law enforcement that when a suspect is not forthcoming or lies, they must be guilty. Certainly, the FBI would have reason to be suspicious, but China had reasons to be covering up a wet market spillover event. This would be the second time a SARS coronavirus would emerge from China. It would be a huge embarrassment, as well as reflect poorly on the government for not controlling the wildlife trade at the markets.

Frankly, the fact that any of the agencies leaned towards the lab leak theory appears to be based on the fact that none, or at best few, of them evaluated the evidence for a zoonotic spillover event. I know that we have some of the best intelligence-gathering capabilities in the world, but the approach to this investigation has really shaken my confidence in these intelligence assessments. Frankly, we likely need an intelligence agency that has the expertise to investigate outbreaks. We already have this expertise in USAMRIID and the CDC. It seems to me that an intelligence agency with these kinds of experts in infectious diseases, epidemiology, evolutionary biologists and disease outbreak investigation experts might be better able to evaluate the merits of lab leak vs. zoonotic spillover event, rather than merely focusing on the feasibility of a lab leak.