“I also now disagree with the claim that we need to know how COVID-19 originated to prepare for the next pandemic: there no reason that the next one should follow the same pattern, and we should prepare for all possible threats.”
If my house caught fire, I would eventually want to know if an arsonist was after me or if I had been careless with my electronics. However my first thought would be to get out. Looking back on my escape plan, I wouldn’t judge its success or failure based on what caused the blaze, and regardless of the cause, my new house would have plenty of smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. They work exactly the same on fires caused by accidents and arson.
This is how I feel about SARS-CoV-2. It spread like wildfire without mitigations, and once it reached our shores, its origin was of no relevance for how we should have handled it. The same will be true if SARS-CoV-3 arrives. How we should prepare for and combat a new virus has nothing to do with where it came from. This shouldn’t be controversial
Obviously COVID’s origins matter. The truth is worth knowing for its own sake. All of the scientific evidence I’ve seen supports a zoonotic origin, and Philipp Markolin’s Lab Leak Fever is an excellent book on this topic. The “evidence” supporting a lab leak, in contrast, reads like a spy novel, involving hidden e-mails, coded exchanges, and now, scientists under arrest.
We also need to learn what went wrong in 2019 to lower the risk of it happening again, though as evolutionary biologist Dr. Florence Débarre pointed out, even that knowledge might not be that useful. As she put it:
I also now disagree with the claim that we need to know how COVID-19 originated to prepare for the next pandemic: there no reason that the next one should follow the same pattern, and we should prepare for all possible threats.
That sounds right to me, normal people don’t want a new pandemic coming from either a lab or an animal.
However, even if indisputable video emerged of Fauci blowing SARS-CoV-2 out the window of a Wuhan lab in 2019, what would that really change? Nothing that I care about. It wouldn’t mean zoonotic viruses suddenly stopped being a threat. It wouldn’t tell us what to do if COVID-27 arrived. It wouldn’t affect any of my pandemic writing. It wouldn’t bring back a single life or restore anyone’s health.
The exact cause of infection #1 is infinitely less important to me the enormous suffering caused by subsequent infections, the ones that killed and injured people. The human toll of COVID is what matters, especially considering much of it was preventable. Large numbers of people were killed by pro-infection disinformation, no matter where SARS-CoV-2 came from.
“I would feel terrible if it’s natural and I did all this.”
Not everyone sees it that way. There are some pandemic pundits who act as if infection #1 is the only thing that really matters about the whole tihng. COVID’s origin became their identity and brand, and it got them a lot of attention. These people shared several traits in common.
- They promoted the lab leak with near total certainty.
- They blamed people tasked with controlling SARS-CoV-2 for the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and denounced them constantly.
- They experienced the pandemic from their laptops and were entirely incurious about happened in hospitals when COVID raged. They never thought they had anything to learn from those of us who worked in them.
- They partnered with pro-infection MAHA/MAGA disinformation agents and scolded those of us who corrected their factual errors.
All of these are red flags, especially that last one. These people did not necessarily deny existence of the We Want Them Infected (WWTI) movement. They just didn’t care about it, and that deliberate indifference alone means there’s no reason to care about their musings on COVID’s origins.
Though there are many such people, one exemplar is Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist who became well-known for promoting the lab leak, writing several articles about it in the New York Times. In a moment of self-reflection, she said:
I have days where I think this could be natural. And if it’s natural, then I’ve done a terrible thing because I’ve put a lot of scientists in a very dangerous spot by saying that they could be the source of an accident that resulted in millions of people dying. I would feel terrible if it’s natural and I did all this.
It’s hard to argue with that.
“Viral’s authors have unintentionally exposed the entire farce of the lab leak discourse.”
Dr. Chan’s magnum opus was a book titled Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, and many critics panned it. In her review of this “terrible book,” Lindsay Beyerstein wrote:
Viral’s authors have unintentionally exposed the entire farce of the lab leak discourse—showing both the exceptional flimsiness of the lab leakers’ narrative and also why this very flimsiness makes the lab leak conspiracy theory so hard to eradicate. By relying on an ever-growing arsenal of seemingly suspicious facts, each pointing in a slightly different direction, lab leaker discourse renders itself completely unfalsifiable.
Michael Hiltzik made similar points in his review:
“Viral” is a laboratory-perfect example of how not to write about a scientific issue. The authors rely less on the scientists doing the painstaking work to unearth the virus’ origin than on self-described sleuths who broadcast their dubious claims, sometimes anonymously, on social media. In the end, Chan and Ridley spotlight all the shortcomings of the hypothesis they set out to defend.
In his review, Mark Honigsbaum wrote:
Chan and Ridley are clever writers and in their “search for the origin of Covid-19” they venture into the deepest recesses of cyberspace, aided by an eclectic band of internet sleuths who go by such names as the “Seeker”. The result is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives and sceptics of scientific orthodoxies. There is just one problem: nowhere do they present proof that Sars-CoV-2 was manufactured…
The tragedy is that in their desire to make a plausible case for a lab accident, Chan and Ridley neglect the far more urgent and compelling story of how the trade in wild animals, coupled with global heating and the destruction of natural habitats, makes the emergence of pandemic viruses increasingly likely. That is the more probable origin story and the scenario that should really concern us.
However, my aim here is not to join on this pile-on on, but rather to explain why no one should care about her book in the first place.
The reason not to care right there on the cover. Dr Chan co-wrote her book with an advocate of herd immunity via mass infection who drastically underestimated COVID in 2020, and that’s enough to dismiss it entirely.
“Students Who Catch COVID May Be Saving Lives.”
Dr. Chan’s co-author was Matt Ridley, a science writer with a problematic history, and it’s worth delving into his pandemic philosophy, past and present. They are very different things, though his opposition to mitigations has been constant. That’s been his guiding principle and he’s never questioned it.
In May 2020, Mr. Ridley had good news to share about COVID. He said:
Despite only moderate social-distancing measures, the epidemic stopped growing in Stockholm County by mid-April, and has since shrunk significantly, implying that the herd immunity threshold was reached at around 20% of the population being immune:
Things didn’t work out that way in Sweden, and even today, six years and billions of infections later, the headlines read CDC: COVID Infections Likely Rising in 50 States.
While that could be blown off as an early, forgettable goof, Mr. Ridley was all in on the WWTI movement in 2020 and, real people got hurt by it. This is neither an innocent nor a forgivable error. There should be no question about this.
Mr. Ridley wrote an article in October 2020, a pivotal time in the pandemic, titled Students Who Catch COVID May Be Saving Lives, which opposed smoke detectors and fire extinguishers for COVID. His “counterintuitive” plan to stop the fire was to spread the fire. He wrote:
It is counterintuitive but the current spread of Covid may on balance be the least worst thing that could happen now. In the absence of a vaccine, and with no real prospect of eradicating the disease, the virus spreading among younger people, mostly without hitting the vulnerable, is creating immunity that will eventually slow the epidemic.
Though Mr. Ridley spoke of the “absence of a vaccine,” vaccines arrived just two months later.
The second wave is real, but it is not like the first. It would be a mistake to tackle it with compulsory lockdowns (even if called ‘circuit breakers’), whether national or local. The cure would be worse than the disease.
Though Mr. Ridley spoke about a second wave that was “real, but it is not like the first“, three months later, the headlines read U.S. Reports Record Number Of COVID Deaths In January.
Mr. Ridley continued:
If you cannot extinguish an epidemic at the start, the best strategy is for the healthy to get infected first…. The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by over 20,000 doctors and medical scientists (but disgracefully censored by Google’s search engine), calls for focused protection: help the elderly and vulnerable stay at home, but let the young and invulnerable go out and achieve immunity for us all, while earning a living. The extraordinary truth is that a student catching Covid might be saving Granny’s life rather than threatening it.
This was all known to be false at the time. As early as April 2020 the headlines read Hundreds Of Young Americans Have Now Been Killed By The Coronavirus, Data Shows snd Young And Middle-Aged People, Barely Sick With Covid-19, Are Dying Of Strokes. Frontline doctors shared what they witnessed:
“Young people who are otherwise fit can tolerate this longer, but at the expense of their heart and their pulmonary functions,” said Evans, who likened some of the symptoms in younger people to prolonged carbon monoxide exposure.
He said younger patients he has seen tend to come in later, after battling the disease at home for longer. But for those who take a tragic turn, it often happens quickly.
“When they do deteriorate, they do so much more dramatically,” he said.
By January 2021 the headlines read Covid-19 Has Killed Thousands Of Young Americans. This Is Not Just A Tragedy For The Elderly. Young people were not invulnerable. Mr. Ridley experience all this from his laptop, and it all would have been much worse had we listened to him in October 2020.
Not only were some young people tragically vulnerable, infections in them could not have stayed isolated to them. A CDC report from early October unsurprisingly found:
Across the southern United States in June 2020, increases in percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 test results among adults aged 20–39 years preceded increases among those aged ≥60 years by 4–15 days.
Either Mr. Ridley didn’t know about this, or he didn’t care about it.
However, even in a fantasyland where letting unvaccinated youngsters get COVID somehow saved Granny, that does not mean it would be the right thing to do. Using infants, children, and young adults as human shields to “achieve immunity for us all” is a moral abomination under any circumstance. This is all Mr. Ridley should be known for regarding COVID. There’s no reason to care what someone thinks about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 when they aimed to spread SARS-CoV-2.
“It’s their virus.”
Predictably, Mr. Ridley does not want to revisit what he actually said in 2020. He’s left all that behind. Instead, he only wants to talk about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2, the very virus he minimized and wanted to spread widely six-years ago.
He is not alone, and it’s important to understand why. The lab leak serves a valuable function for those who wanted to spread SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 and protect Trump in 2026.
Even though they told everyone else to stop talking about COVID years ago, WWTI doctors have almost universally embraced the lab leak, and they discuss it constantly today. Not only does this bring them attention on social media, it allows them to distract from the scenes of overflowing hospitals and morgues in 2020, as well as their pro-infection disinformation throughout the pandemic.
It also allows them to absolve Trump of any wrongdoing in 2020. There’s a reason Trump made the website covid.gov all about the lab leak as soon as he could.
The lab leak further allows them shift blame for the SARS-CoV-2 onto to those whose job it was to contain SARS-CoV-2. In the propaganda video below, Dr. Bhattacharya, accusatory as always, says as Fauci’s face flashes across the screen:
They had supported the research that led to the creation of the virus, this gain of function research. It’s their virus.
Beyond this, Mr. Ridley now claims that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 dictates how we should have handled it, and wouldn’t you know it, he was right the whole time! How does he pull off this nifty intellectual trick?
According to Mr. Ridley’s latest and greatest justification for his opposition to mitigations in 2020, because SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab, that alone automatically means we should have done virtually nothing to contain it. He had the following exchange with journalist James Surowiecki, who asked a very reasonable question:
Surowiecki: How would knowing that Covid came from a lab – assuming for the sake of argument that it did, and that we could know that with certainty – have saved lives? What would have been different about our response?
Ridley: This is a common view – that knowing where Covid came from would not have helped. I disagree. Knowing it was pre-trained on human cells would have told us that lockdowns were futile.
That’s quite the leap, and sane people would argue opposite. If we imagine that if SARS-CoV-2 was “pre-trained on human cells” in a Chinese lab, then it’s probably not a good idea to let kids get infected with it over and over again.
Yet, even after it was clear it could kill and injure some of them, Mr. Ridley felt the mass infection of unvaccinated young people with SARS-CoV-2- the one he claims was “pre-trained on human cells” in a Chinese lab- was the key to ending the pandemic. That’s the wisdom and sophistication he brought to the table.
Today, Mr. Ridley uses the lab leak to retroactively justify his 2020 approach to COVID. Though truthfully, he wanted them infected that year, he now claims the lab leak is the reason he was against mitigations. He’s spun a COVID origin myth that proves he was right about mitigations all along. That’s certainly convenient for him, especially when combined with his refusal even acknowledge his plan to “let the young and invulnerable go out and achieve immunity for us all.”
This isn’t just about 2020, of course. Mr. Ridley’s revisionist history has implications for future pandemics. In his telling, if there is a new lab leak virus, then we should all throw up our hands and recognize the futility of even try to stop it. However, if there is a new zoonotic virus, then mitigation measures will presumably be appropriate. That is obvious nonsense, like planning your escape from a burning building based on the fire’s cause. However, if COVID-27 arrives, then people like Mr. Ridley, who were primarily concerned about people “earning a living” regarding COVID-19, would once again have a powerful incentive invoke a lab leak, wouldn’t they? After all, knowing it was pre-trained on human cells would have told us that lockdowns were futile.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Ridley dedication to promoting the lab leak earns him accolades from leaders of the MAHA/MAGA movement today. Dr. Bhattacharya honored him by allowing him lecture about the lab leak fo the inaugural NIH Scientific Freedom Lecture. I suggest you read this review by Zach Hensel and this review by Dr. Débarre.
Fundamentally, as I discussed previously regarding the Biosafety Now bros, by using the lab leak to legitimize the MAHA/MAGA agenda, Mr. Ridley helped ensure we are all much more vulnerable to dangerous pathogens, both old and new, from labs and from nature. Again, this is not theoretical. As Mr. Ridley speculates about what really happened in Wuhan 7 years ago, real diseases are already spreading today thanks to the efforts of many prominent lab leakers.
“I have a rare ability to work well with people on shared challenges even when I may not agree with their other positions.”
You might think that someone who purports to be sincerely concerned about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 would also be unwilling to collaborate with someone who sought to spread SARS-CoV-2. You’d be wrong though. The only thing that bothered Dr. Chan about Mr. Ridley’s pro-infection misinformation was that anyone would criticize it. I had a revealing social media exchange with her about her about this:
Me: Given that you collaborate with people who wanted to infect unvaccinated kids with Covid, why do you care about where it came from? Was infection #1 a tragedy and after that the lack of infections was the problem? Can you explain? I’m lost.
I also included a screenshot of Mr. Ridley’s article Students Who Catch COVID May Be Saving Lives. Dr. Chan replied:
Chan: I have a rare ability to work well with people on shared challenges even when I may not agree with their other positions. imo if more people had this ability, society would be much kinder, less polarized, and more progressive.
Me: So the fact that he wanted to mass infect millions of unvaccinated young people wasn’t a deal breaker for you, and you view this as a sign of how superior you are to those who might decide otherwise.
It’s true. I lack Dr. Chan’s “rare ability.” I would never write about COVID with someone who sought to spread it.
In contrast, Dr. Chan feels it’s virtuous not to remember or care about advocates of herd immunity via natural immunity. She boasts of her utter indifference to the WWTI movement and therefore to the real people hurt by it. Her “rare ability” turns out to be noxious apathy. She feels if more people were like her, willing to legitimize MAHA/MAGA royalty like Mr. Ridley, then “society would be much kinder, less polarized, and more progressive.” Incredible stuff.
Dr. Chan further had the gall to ask me if had read Mr. Ridley’s article after I posted it. Yes, Alina, I read his article. She even defended the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), writing:
The Great Barrington declaration called for focused protection of the vulnerable while others attain natural immunity.
SBM readers will know not to be impressed that the GBD merely “called for” things, while simultaneously promoting “natural immunity.” However, Dr. Chan was totally ignorant about this topic. To defend the honor of GBD, she asked:
Which GDB (sic) signatory/signatories spread anti-vaccine disinformation? I would appreciate knowing this as well. Thank you.
Myself and many others have answered that question countless time in books, articles, YouTube videos, social media posts, and podcasts. Though there’s no shortage of material about pandemic disinformation, Dr. Chan was, apparently, ignorant of it all. She been too busy blaming scientists for infection #1 to learn or care about anything that happened after that, including the pro-infection writing of Mr. Ridley.
I concluded my exchange with Dr. Chan by saying:
You can overlook advocates of herd immunity by mass immunity.
You argue with people who communicated accurate information and worked in hospitals.
Not much more to gain.
Take care.
Indeed, toxic apathy is disqualifying.
Dr. Chan should read my books, however. She obviously has a lot to learn, and it’s all more important than the precise cause of infection #1. I can teach her all about the WWTI movement. I can teach her about the people hurt by their disinformation, what happened in hospitals when their pro-infection philosophy was embraced, and how it birthed MAHA/MAGA.
I can’t make her care about any of it though.