The Unconvinced Alina Chan

Being trapped inside a false binary for five years can't be easy...

Good news! Alina Chan, self-described “scientist against lab-based pandemics,” is not 100% convinced about a Lab Origin.

Here’s part of what she said on X yesterday. My reactions “to” her (posted here, not X) are in bold.¹

I am not 100% convinced Covid came from a lab.

Good!! Because unless Covid has an alternate, undisclosed meaning, it didn’t come from a lab. It came from the WHO. But I think you meant SARS-CoV-2…

COVID-19 Did Not Come From a Lab

I still think there is a small chance the virus emerged in Wuhan without the help of research activities.

I can appreciate the strategic phraseology here—I’m sure the CIA does too.

You didn’t name the virus, but I’ll assume you’re referring to SARS-CoV-2 (formerly 2019-nCoV). What does “emerged” mean, exactly? I suppose saying “the virus emerged in Wuhan” is technically accurate, at least in the sense that the first scene in a story about a virus was “set” there and a genetic sequence of something was reportedly uploaded from that location.² Unlike you, perhaps, I can’t envision any possible way that research activities of some kind weren’t involved in planting and propagating the entire event.

However, this would mean:

The Wuhan-US scientists' entire framework about the spillover risks of SARS-like viruses, building on research and data collected over more than a decade, was incorrect.

Yes! And it wouldn’t be the first time that teams of scientists embarked on misdirected enterprises, would it? Many federally-funded scientific research endeavors are rooted in faulty premises, unfounded assumptions, and hubristic goals. (The entire field of virology is on shaky ground, in fact. Vaccine development too!)

The claims made in some of these “spillover risk” studies are baseless and involve tremendous leaps and unwarranted inferences about camels, civets, bats, etc. I wrote about one of these studies last year.

Can Bats Pass (Corona)viruses to Humans?

Also, I’m not sure why the Wuhan-US collaborations are the sole focus when

Robert Kogon

has made a strong case about the Wuhan-Germany virology partnership needing a closer look.

A highly transmissible, super stealthy virus well adapted for causing uncontrollable outbreaks in multiple animal species left zero trace of its origin in the wildlife or fur farms of China/SE Asia after emerging in only Wuhan out of 1000s of other populous cities.

The “transmission” mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 was never established and, sadly, the WHO/CCP lied in January 2020 when they said there was evidence of human-to-human transmission. I understand that, given the presumed timeline and speed with which the “novel coronavirus” appeared to have traversed the globe, you sort of have to say “it” was highly transmissible.

It also seems like you have to say the virus was “super stealthy,” because it wasn’t impacting mortality until an emergency was declared and actions taken against “it”.

A super-stealthy deadly virus spreading fast but “lying in wait” or biding its time, and then striking when government officials give it permission to do so is nonsensical. The much more likely scenario is that the thing being named and “detected” was already “out there” - or inside of us/living creatures - and was selected or co-opted as a decoy.

The tension you’re expressing between Lab Origin and Natural Emergence in Wuhan is unnecessary. People don’t have to choose between two bad and scientifically ridiculous options. Gain of Function didn’t do it, and neither did zoonosis. For more on that perspective, see this article:

Virus Origins and Gain (Claim) of Function research

Now, if someone wants to say that SARS-CoV-2 was stolen from nature, adulterated in a lab, and then some kind of non-spreading infectious clone or bacteria or other agent was dispersed via direct mechanisms in specific locations, that’s different—but that’s not something I’ve heard from you or your co-author Matt Ridley.

These so-called "uncontrollable outbreaks"—whether among animals or people—weren’t preceded by unique or interrelated cases of illness. They were engendered by testing.

Out of all possible viruses to cause a pandemic and all times for a pandemic to occur, it was an unprecedented SARS-like virus with a novel furin cleavage site, matching the description of a 2018 US-Wuhan research proposal, emerging in Wuhan where scientists worked with such viruses at low biosafety, less than 2 years after said proposal was drafted.

There is no proof that the things (some) scientists call viruses have ever caused or could ever cause a ‘pandemic’ - and, as far as I can tell, pandemics involving global viral ‘spread’ have never happened. By saying “out of all possible viruses to cause a pandemic,” you seem to believe there are many, many viruses capable of doing just that. I see no basis for such a belief that doesn’t equate to a Hollywood movie or Netflix series.

It's not impossible that leading experts were completely mistaken about the exceedingly low odds of such viruses emerging in Wuhan. It's not impossible that, in 2019, nature churned out a virus matching the scientists' 2018 research plans and that virus emerged in only Wuhan of all places. But you'd have to be very motivated to believe Covid-19 emerged naturally.

This last paragraph is interesting because you say “a virus” and “that virus” when referring to “emergence” in Wuhan - and are (seemingly) making concessions to the view Sunetra Gupta has expressed - and then switch suddenly “to Covid-19.” You said “Covid” at the beginning of your post. Is there a reason to say Covid-19 here?

Do you equate the origins of “the virus” (SARS-CoV-2) with the origins of Covid/Covid-19, or could their origins be different?

I am ‘very motivated’ but I reject any false binary that continues to keep people from questioning whether something was spreading at all.

1. Chan’s entire thread is here: https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1898750100882542903 I reacted only to the first post in the thread.

2. Or Australia, via Eddie Holmes?