Chapter 6
Following the WHO mission to Wuhan through the eyes and ears of Peter Daszak, Dominic Dwyer and Marion Koopmans was illuminating. The latter was not a fan of the simple narrative that took hold that the Chinese were not sharing data with them. “Yes, there can be more transparency, but look at all that was shared. It was remarkable.” On January 31st 2021, more than a year after the outbreak emerged from there, the WHO mission finally visited the Huanan seafood market. “You walk into a dark hall, it is smelly. It still had white patches of disinfectant powder. It was eerie, like ground zero”, Marion Koopmans lent me her eyes for this visit. She found it really impressive to be there. “There were these assumptions that oh this was a very modern market… this idea went out the window fast”, she elaborated. The international team was fighting hard to get the Chinese scientists to acknowledge that wild animals had been sold at the market. But in the end, the hands of their Chinese counterparts were bound, they were not to admit anything untoward had happened at the market. Beijing really needed a blameless alternative theory to save face and escape demands for culpability.
“Clearly, from the get-go, Beijing did not want this to happen. They did not want an investigation, international people to come”, Peter Daszak explained. Neither to the market, nor to the CDC, and also not to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “At first, they said the lab would be impossible”, Peter Daszak elaborated. “But then we got it to happen, I got it to happen” “We asked them nasty questions, about how they do their work, what protections they use, what viruses they had, what experiments they did”, Peter Daszak elaborated. They also asked them about rumors. “We asked them why they took down the database? What about these rumors of a missing person? What about the three scientists who were supposedly hospitalized?”
By most standard measures, the WHO mission was pretty successful. Yet from the start, it had been viewed with skepticism from the US. A farce, and doomed to fail, before it even was underway. The world was dissatisfied with not getting immediate answers. Everybody, citizens, journalists, politicians and even some scientists, craved for a more compelling explanation of where this virus came from. They started looking for clues elsewhere. Many were unaware that their desire for a more satisfying answer will drive them into an information ecosystem that sought to blame not only some virologists, but science itself, for the pandemic.
References:
Yuri Deigin’s viral medium blog
Deigin, Y. (2020, April 22). Lab-Made? SARS-COV-2 Genealogy through the lens of Gain-of-Function Research. Medium. https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748
Wikipedia contributors. (2024c, October 1). Jeanne Calment. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
Bad Boy of Science. (2021, July 23). Debate: The Origins of COVID-19 (w Yuri Deigin and Dr P Markolin) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWxuuw1HVh0
The anti-science pressure group USRTK
Multiple left leaning anti-biotechnology groups and anti-vaxx groups jump on the lableak myth (and finance harassment organisations such as US right to know)
Butler, K. (n.d.). Inside the anti-GMO movement’s obsession with virology research and lab leaks. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/inside-the-anti-gmo-movements-obsession-with-virology-research-and-lab-leaks/
Mercola and Cummins being two of the ringleaders funding & profiteering of the smearing of scientists
The Upside-Down Doctor. (n.d.). Office for Science and Society. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscience/upside-down-doctor
Wikipedia contributors. (2024b, September 26). Organic Consumers Association. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Consumers_Association#cite_note-mcgill-6
Organic consumer association funded USRTK to the tune over over 1 million dollars between 2014-2021, another half a million from another organic activist group, and 200.000 dollars in 2022 from effective altruists for their biosafety campaigns
U.S. Right to Know. (2024, October 10). Donors, IRS filings & governing documents. https://usrtk.org/donors/
USRTK first targeted Peter Daszak (going all the way back to 2018)
Colwell, R., Blakely Larrabee, Peter Daszak, & Joel Maizel. (2018). Email correspondence regarding EcoHealth Alliance board meetings and events [Email]. https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Biohazard_FOIA_Maryland_Emails_11.6.20.pdf
and the Lancet statement was the first media spin out from them
Suryanarayanan, S. (2023, April 5). EcoHealth Alliance orchestrated key scientists’ statement on “natural origin” of SARS-CoV-2. U.S. Right to Know. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/ecohealth-alliance-orchestrated-key-scientists-statement-on-natural-origin-of-sars-cov-2/
which was picked up by Alina Chan again, as well as other DRASTIC members.
Conspiracy theorists then claim that the lancet letter was “orchestrated” start tagging influencers to gain attention
Katewerk [@Katewerk]. (2020, November 18). X.com (Twitter). https://web.archive.org/web/20201118220229/https://twitter.com/katewerk/status/1329179284309590017 “@ydeigin @BretWeinstein @AyjchanEcoHealth Alliance orchestrated key scientists’ statement on “natural origin” of SARS-CoV-2 via @USRightToKnow”
Other USRTK FOIAs were also weaponized, e.g Ralph Barics emails
Suryanarayanan, S. (2022, April 20). New emails show scientists’ deliberations on how to discuss SARS-CoV-2 origins. U.S. Right to Know. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/scientists-deliberations-on-sars-cov-2-origin
because Baric and others advised the White House Office of Technology transfer
Nicholas Baker branded the lab-leak hypothesis for the New York Magazine:
https://nymag.com/press/2021/01/on-the-cover-of-new-york-magazine-the-lab-leak-hypothesis.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20210104140829/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html)
Book review about Nicholason Baker’s Baseless:
Nicholson Baker’s maddening search for the Truth | The Nation. (2020, October 12). The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/nicholson-baker-baseless-review/ “But in some places, he undercuts the persuasiveness of his analytical judgment by revealing that he is prone to see conspiracies all over the place, such as when he casually asserts at one point that “rabbit fever, Q fever, bird flu, Lyme disease, wheat stem rust, African swine fever, and hog cholera all look, to my nonscientist’s eye, like unnatural epidemics that owe their outbreaks to the laboratory” rather than to nature. (He speculates that these diseases generally got out of labs by accident, not that they were deliberate attacks.)”
Yet conspiracy myths sell; Nicholson Bakers story was the most read story in New York Magazin of the year 2021
Staff, I. (2021, December 30). New York’s 20 Most-Read Stories in 2021. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/new-yorks-20-most-read-stories-in-2021.html
Because of his success, Nicholson was invited to talk about his article, again and again.
“There are a lot of questions to be asked. We can start this question like the Pompeo’s of the world started it [...] we have to approach this as a problem of science in general”
The Sunday Magazine for January 24, 2021 | CBC Radio. (2015, October 9). CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-magazine-for-january-24-2021-1.5881992
Alina Chan continues to push her version of the lab leak myth to ever more influential sources
Social media presence:
defending Li Meng Yan because she needs the same audience
Alina Chan [@ayjchan]. (2020, October 11). X (Formerly Twitter).
(https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1306398565363744772) “If there is one thing that this entire saga has made clear - it is that whistleblowers (as it pertains to SARS2) have no obvious safe route of sharing their information. Seriously, who should a SARS2 origins whistleblower go to? Besides this anti-CCP billionaire + Bannon et al.?”
Because she shares the same audience as Yan, when Yan comes under pressure by experts, Alina goes on the offensive attacking virologists who criticize Yan to try to boost her own profile and gain some of Dr. Yan’s followers who will be sympathetic
Alina Chan [@ayjchan]. (2020, October 22). X (Formerly Twitter).
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1319096866328510467 “Reading about top experts bashing Li meng Yan in the media for unscientific preprints, and cornering her on political motivations and dependencies. What about the actually peer-reviewed top papers that have serious research integrity issues in them? No issues. Data "looks fine"?
She is also using the attention of the bioweapon myth to seed a different idea, that journalists should try to investigate the Mojiang mine instead
Alina Chan [@ayjchan]. (2020, October 11). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1315282146475626496 "Again the report is littered with errors, but I do wonder why there hasn't been international impetus to investigate the source of these SARS2-like viruses. Why not go to the Yunnan mine to look for more RaTG13s? Why not investigate the miners - what actually happened in 2012?"
Note: Reporters like John Sudworth from the BBC ends up doing at the end of 2020 in Yunnan, but then was blockedby the authorities. The BBC reporter used this event as an opportunity to push his own profile and make a big news story out of it, which of course increased pressure on the region and also Prof. Alice Hughes. She lamented to me how much worse it got after the BBC story.
After all the harm done, John Sudworth would later make a popular BBC radio series out of the origin search, which also very charitable featured Alina Chan and was pushing the lab leak theory.
Another example how the commentators profit while researchers on the ground suffer the consequences of their self-serving stories.
Yet Alina Chan mingling with Dr. Li Meng Yan and her audience went not unnoticed by scientists:
Dr. Angela Rasmussen [@angie_rassmussen] (2021, January 10). X (Formerly Twitter).
https://x.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1348059426389778433 “Yan Li-meng, who has cited your work as supportive, is funded by the same conspiracists that encouraged the riots. The same Steve Bannon-led cabal of fascists and racists are the same ones funding Dr. Yan and amplifying her. And she’s taking your findings and running with them. You don’t have to directly incite violence to still spread misinformation that encourages it.”
Alina Chan often positions herself as the polite, left-leaning option for believing in a lab leak, here she distances herself from Bannon while throwing dirt on scientists
Alina Chan [@ayjchan]. (2021, January 10). X (Formerly Twitter).
https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1348063306901303299 “Yan & Bannon are not going to stop me from insisting on a proper investigation into lab origins. It’s the scientists who have insisted on natural origins who need to clarify that we just don’t know and also advocate for clear steps to investigate if this virus is from a lab.”
Note: I perceive Alina Chan as a truly is a masterful opportunist. I have read thousands of her tweets, not once did she correct her mistakes or admit to error in earnest; only leveraging it for more attention and virtue signaling.
Nicholas Baker’s article and her social media fights fall on receptive ears, and soon, mainstream coverage of her ideas follows again, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times; she became a thought-after commenter during the time of the WHO mission
Chan, A. and Ridley, M. (2021, January 15) https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-needs-a-real-investigation-into-the-origins-of-covid-19-11610728316
Weeks before the final WHO mission report came out, the Wall Street Journal and NYTs uncritically published a letter from DRASTIC and Alina Chan
Various Authors. (2021). OPEN LETTER Call for a Full and Unrestricted International Forensic Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/COVID%20OPEN%20LETTER%20FINAL%20030421%20(1).pdf
Times, N. Y. (2021, March 4). Investigation into Covid Origins Sought. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/04/us/covid-origins-letter.html
Consequently, the WHO mission is treated as a failure
Rauhala, E. (2021, March 29). WHO Wuhan Report leaves question of coronavirus origin unresolved. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-wuhan-report-/2021/03/29/cb6ca64e-7778-11eb-9489-8f7dacd51e75_story.html
Then Dr. Tedros bombarded the work of the WHO mission scientists to stay in good graces with US
WHO Director-General’s remarks at the Member State Briefing on the report of the international team studying the origins of SARS-CoV-2. (2021, March 30). https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-remarks-at-the-member-state-briefing-on-the-report-of-the-international-team-studying-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2
Jesse Bloom, Alina Chan, David Relmen and others write a declarative op-ed in Science Magazine
Bloom, J. D., Chan, Y. A., Baric, R. S., Bjorkman, P. J., Cobey, S., Deverman, B. E., Fisman, D. N., Gupta, R., Iwasaki, A., Lipsitch, M., Medzhitov, R., Neher, R. A., Nielsen, R., Patterson, N., Stearns, T., Van Nimwegen, E., Worobey, M., & Relman, D. A. (2021). Investigate the origins of COVID-19. Science, 372(6543), 694. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj0016
David Relman had of course already favored the lab leak idea
Relman, D. A. (2020). To stop the next pandemic, we need to unravel the origins of COVID-19. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(47), 29246–29248. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021133117
The media environment was primed for Nicholas Wade influential Bulletin of Atomic Scientist article
Wade, N. (2021, May 5). The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
Nicholas Wade again a week later with a very similar piece for the WSJ
Wade, N. (2021, May 13). Peeking into Pandoras Box. The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peeking-into-pandoras-box-1463170629
Nicholas Wade’s article had some visible impact on mainstream media coverage
David Rozado [@DavidRozado]. (2021, August 26). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/DavidRozado/status/1430867422056091654 "The data is consistent with the hypothesis that the publication of Nicholas Wade’s essay “The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?” could have triggered the sudden increase in attention to the lab-leak hypothesis"
Note: David posted a news media analysis of media engagement for certain keywords.
His paper can be found here: Rozado D. Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins. Social Sciences. 2021; 10(9):320. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10090320
Contributing to the information cascade were the usual suspects, thanks for Peter Jabobs for highlighting it:
Peter Jacobs [@@past_is_future]. (2021, June 10). X (Formerly Twitter). https://x.com/past_is_future/status/1403107879503138826 “Pompeo et al. had been desperately trying to get this story into the press while Trump was still in office, but it never really got traction outside of the right wing/Murdoch press. The WSJ story was the 4th attempt I'm aware of, but there may be others. “Jan 15 from State itself: https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html
Mar 8 through Pompeo/Pottinger stenographer Rogin: https://politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322 Mar 19 Pompeo tries again: https://washingtonexaminer.com/news/pompeo-casts-doubt-who-china-covid-origins-inquiry
May 23 laundered via the 'aluminum tubes' guy at WSJ: https://wsj.com/articles/intel”
Soon after, the NYT promotes the idea that scientists fooled media
Stephens, B. (2021, May 31). Media Groupthink and the Lab Leak Theory. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/opinion/media-lab-leak-theory.html
Late night show host boost the lab leak theory as well
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (2021, June 15). Jon Stewart on Vaccine science and the Wuhan Lab Theory [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8t=233s
US is redoubling their efforts to get to the origins, Biden orders intelligence probe
Linskey, A. (2021, May 28). Renewed focus on Wuhan lab scrambles the politics of the pandemic. The Washington Post.
Other references:
Excellent post-mortem reporting on the vibe shift that happened in 2021 media landscape
“After the turbulent december, changed elite’s perception from the theory from a low-status belief into a high-status belief” Palmer, J. (2023, August 19). The Lab-Leak Illusion. Quillette. https://quillette.com/2023/08/19/the-lab-leak-illusion/
Moral outrage:
‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online. (2021, August 16). YaleNews. https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/13/likes-and-shares-teach-people-express-more-outrage-online
Renee diresta article and flock behavior and social media dynamics
DiResta, R. (2023, June 7). How the creator economy is incentivizing propaganda. NOEMA. https://www.noemamag.com/the-new-media-goliaths/ “The internet didn’t eliminate the human predilection for authority figures or informed interpretations of facts and narratives” - Renee DiResta