Will the Newly Declassified CIA “Assessment” of Covid Origins in Wuhan Include the Possibility of Early Spread in Italy?

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

The question of Covid’s origin has generated a vast literature and a polemic[1] even vaster, neither of which I can pretend to have mastered[2],[3]. Nevertheless, with the change in administrations, the Origin Question has exploded into the news again, and I think I can at least make a small contribution, limited in scope and questioning the conventional wisdom, summarized in the title. On January 24, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA )director John Ratcliffe] gave an interview to Brietbart (bless their hearts) that included the following passage:

[RADCLIFFE:] One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID. That’s a day-one thing for me. I’ve been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”

On the following day, the CIA released “a new analysis that began under the Biden administration.” From the New York Times, “C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins“:

[T]he agency issued a new assessment[4] this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.

There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.

Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time.

The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.

That is, there is no casus belli. More:

Senior intelligence officials in the Biden administration defend their process and methodology. They have said that no intelligence was suppressed and insist that politics did not play into their analysis.

These officials say that there are powerful logical arguments for both the lab leak and the natural causes theories, but that there simply is no decisive piece of intelligence on either side of the issue.

To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.

Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.

Neither piece of evidence has been found.

At this point, I had expected to transition into quoting directly from the new assessment. Unfortunately, in their coverage of the story, neither The Times, nor AP, Axios, Breitbart, CNBC, CNN, Daily Caller, Financial Times, FOX, NBC, Politico, nor the Wall Street Journal include a link to the new assessment, or even quote directly from it. Nor do they at any point link to a complete copy of the CIA’s (emailed) statement on the matter. Nor is there anything relevant in the press release or reports sections of the CIA, Intelligence.gov, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. So while all the stories defer to Ratcliffe’s claim that the new assessment has been “released,” it is not entirely clear to whom, if anyone, the release has been made. Perhaps matters will clarify on Monday.

What I expected to find, in the new assessment, was no mention of early Covid cases in Italy (which Yves has been highlighting in the comments section), with the focus entirely on Wuhan. That was the case in the previous 2021 and 2023 assessments. In this post, I hope to at least persuade you that the potential cases of Covid in Italy, pre-Wuhan, aggregated, merit at least a dismissive footnote in the CIA’s assessments. After all, if SARS-CoV-2 was out in the world prior to, or contemporaneously with, its initial small scale November 2019 appearance in Wuhan, or the first major in December 2019, that might well call its origin at the Wuhan Institute of Virology into question. The absence of such a footnote is therefore curious, and in the context of an assessment of such political and strategic import, downright odd. I will simply post the studies I have found from 2020 through 2022. There are rather a lot of them for a completely unfounded hypothesis; in fact, I would so far as to say that for the Italian medical establishment, the consensus view was that the existence of early Italian cases was worth pursuing. Finally, 2022, I will present a meta-study that aggregates many more early cases, including its conclusions.

Now to the studies.

The Studies

I’ve organized studies claiming early Covid in Italy chronologically by publication date. The method used to detect Covid appears in square brackets before the study title. (I haven’t included some studies whose test methods were inferior to Nested-PCR.)

2020

[Nested-PCR, RT-PCR] “SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating in northern Italy since December 2019: Evidence from environmental monitoring” Science of the Total Environment (August 15, 2020):

The first autochthonous Italian case of COVID-19 was documented on February 21, 2020. We investigated the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Italy earlier than that date, by analysing 40 composite influent wastewater samples collected – in the framework of other wastewater-based epidemiology projects – between October 2019 and February 2020 from five wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in three cities and regions in northern Italy (Milan/Lombardy, Turin/Piedmont and Bologna/Emilia Romagna). Twenty-four additional samples collected in the same WWTPs between September 2018 and June 2019 (i.e. long before the onset of the epidemic) were included as ‘blank’ samples… A total of 15 positive samples were confirmed by [nested RT-PCR and real-rime RT-PCR]. The earliest dates back to 18 December 2019 in Milan and Turin and 29 January 2020 in Bologna…. Our results demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 was already circulating in northern Italy at the end of 2019. Moreover, it was circulating in different geographic regions simultaneously, which changes our previous understanding of the geographical circulation of the virus in Italy.

[In-house ELISA, virus neutralisation assay] “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the prepandemic period in Italy” Tumori (November 11, 2020).

We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD)–specific antibodies in blood samples of 959 asymptomatic individuals enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 to track the date of onset, frequency, and temporal and geographic variations across the Italian regions. SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific antibodies were detected in 111 of 959 (11.6%) individuals, starting from September 2019

And:

[T]he onset of the epidemic [is] likely to have preceded the identification of the first case, probably in the last part of 2019. Since November–December 2019, many general practitioners began reporting the appearance of severe respiratory symptoms in elderly and frail people with atypical bilateral bronchitis, which was attributed, in the absence of news about the new virus, to aggressive forms of seasonal influenza. One investigation on SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in healthy blood donors has been performed in one of the two initial lockdown areas in northern Italy. In a group of 300 stored plasma samples, 5 samples collected between the 12th and 17th of February exhibited evidence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 NAbs. Moreover, a phylogenetic analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 genomes isolated from 3 Lombardy patients involved in the first COVID-19 outbreak suggests that the common origin of the strains dates back several weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 pneumonia reported in China. Based on these findings, a prior unnoticed circulation of the virus among the Italian population could be hypothesized.

(This article was covered in Reuters (and News Medical Life Sciences, and the Week. Concerns were raised about it in Retraction Watch, apparently because it was fast-tracked, but nothing came of them.)

2021

[Nested-PCR, Sanger sequencing] “Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in an Oropharyngeal Swab Specimen, Milan, Italy, Early December 2019” Emerging Infectious Diseases (February 2021):

We describe the earliest evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a patient in Italy, ≈3 months before Italy’s first reported COVID-19 case. These findings, in agreement with other evidence of early COVID-19 spread in Europe, advance the beginning of the outbreak to late autumn 2019. However, earlier strains also might have been occasionally imported to Italy and other countries in Europe during this period, manifesting with sporadic cases or small self-limiting clusters…. This finding is of epidemiologic importance because it expands our knowledge on timing and mapping of the SARS-CoV-2 transmission pathways. Long-term, unrecognized spread of SARS-CoV-2 in northern Italy would help explain, at least in part, the devastating impact and rapid course of the first wave of COVID-19 in Lombardy.

[Immunohistochemistry, insitu hybridisation] “COVID‐19‐related dermatosis in November 2019: could this case be Italy’s patient zero?” British Journal of Dermatology (May 1, 2021).

In November 2019, a 25‐year‐old woman presented with urticarial plaque‐like dermatosis on the arms (Figure 1a)…. In July 2020, we realized that the histopathological features of the biopsy matched the minichilblain pattern described in our previously published paper on COVID‐19‐related dermatoses (Figure 1b, c).2 Hence, we decided to study this biopsy again…. An Italian paper demonstrated SARS‐CoV‐2 gene sequences with PCR analysis in northern Italy in wastewater samples in December 2019.6 A more recent paper reported the presence of SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor‐binding domain‐specific antibodies in blood samples of 111 asymptomatic Italian individuals enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020.7 Along the same lines, Amendola et al. reported the presence of SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA in an oropharyngeal swab specimen of a child from Milan with dermatosis suspected to be measles in early December 2019. All these facts lead us to believe that our patient could represent the earliest case in the literature of detection of the virus on tissue samples. Can we then call this case the dermatological Italian patient zero?

[ELISA, microneutralisation assay] “Timeline of SARS-CoV-2 Spread in Italy: Results from an Independent Serological Retesting” [Viruses] (December 30, 2021):

Given the importance of this evidence, an independent evaluation was recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to test a subset of samples selected on the level of positivity in ELISA assays (positive, low positive, negative) detected in our previous study of prepandemic samples collected in Italy. SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were blindly retested by two independent centers in 29 blood samples collected in the prepandemic period in Italy, 29 samples collected one year before and 11 COVID-19 control samples. The methodologies used included IgG-RBD/IgM-RBD ELISA assays, a qualitative micro-neutralization CPE-based assay, a multiplex IgG protein array, an ELISA IgM kit (Wantai), and a plaque-reduction neutralization test. The results suggest the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in some samples collected in the prepandemic period, with the oldest samples found to be positive for IgM by both laboratories collected on 10 October 2019 (Lombardy), 11 November 2019 (Lombardy) and 5 February 2020 (Lazio).

(This is a follow-up to the Tumori study.)

2022

[ELISA, RT-PCR] “Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies and RNA on Autopsy Cases in the Pre-Pandemic Period in Milan (Italy)” Frontiers in Microbiology (June 14, 2022):

To date, no studies aimed at searching for evidence of the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in the pre-pandemic period have been conducted on autopsy cases. We wanted, therefore, to address this specific topic by analyzing blood samples collected from cadavers subjected to autopsy at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Milan….. [O]ur data indicated that the first SARS-CoV-2 positive case dated December 2019, while the detection of positivity only to IgM test by rapid LFIA in October 2019, being within the lower limit of the specificity rate of the test, possibly represents nonspecific signal or cross-reaction with antibodies against other coronaviruses.

[Nested-PCR, Sanger sequencing, commercial ELISA, neutralisation assay] “Molecular evidence for SARS-CoV-2 in samples collected from patients with morbilliform eruptions since late 2019 in Lombardy, northern Italy” Environmental Research (December 2022):

As a reference laboratory for measles and rubella surveillance in Lombardy, we evaluated the association between SARS-CoV-2 infection and measles-like syndromes, providing preliminary evidence for undetected early circulation of SARS-CoV-2. Overall, 435 samples from 156 cases were investigated…. The earliest sample with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA was from September 12, 2019d.

And from News-Medical Life Sciences, “Italian study finds SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples collected before December 2019“:

“Despite the lack of a definitive timeline on when SARS-CoV-2 initially emerged, previous evolutionary studies indicate that the virus likely circulated in China for several months before the first outbreak was recorded in Wuhan, China. Soon after, an increasing number of cases were reported in several European and North American countries by mid-January 2020…. The SARS-CoV-2 strain that circulated in Lombardy, as well as much of Europe soon after its initial detection in Italy, differed from the Wuhan-Hu-1 strain, which was the reference genome originally identified in China. In fact, some of the different mutations present within this strain included A23403G (Spike D614G), C14408T (RdRp P323L), and C3037T (synonymous). This strain, which has since been named B.1 in Pangolin and 20A in NextStrain, is often referred to as the DG1111 haplotype and comprises an αβ mutational signature.

Several studies suggest that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in many nations prior to its official detection.

Finally, let me quote from this review of the literature in the British Medical Journal, “Waiting for the truth: is reluctance in accepting an early origin hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 delaying our understanding of viral emergence?” (December 2022). From the Summary:

A growing body of studies provides evidence for the global circulation of SARS-CoV-2 prior to December 2019, contradicting the currently hypothesised timeline of the original viral emergence in Hubei province of China around November 2019; however, any suggestion of an earlier SARS-CoV-2 circulation is met with scepticism.

• Several studies performed independently by different groups retrospectively demonstrated the presence of antibodies and viral RNA in clinical samples and showed SARS-CoV-2 community circulation by detecting viral RNA in wastewater at times inconsistent with November 2019 emergence.

• Despite some limitations, combining the knowledge acquired from these studies is sufficient to warrant further larger-scale investigations to determine the veracity of this hypothesis.

•  If proven true, an earlier than currently believed worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2 will provide essential clues for understanding the genesis of this pandemic and offer invaluable lessons from our successes and failures with crucial implications for future pandemic preparedness and global health.

(I did my own digging for sources, but they overlap with Table 1.) Sadly, no larger-scale studies were ever made — in fact, the studies stop entirely, rather as if a switch was thrown — but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been worth making:

Despite the increasing documentation available in support of its early circulation, current scientific literature discussing the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is almost exclusively focused on the November/December 2019 hypothesis, completely ignoring this growing body of contradictory evidence. In fact, the possibility of early circulation is only seldom mentioned or discussed in such papers. Furthermore, as this alternative hypothesis clearly contradicts the timeline that is today held as the most likely, when these studies are cited, it is done dismissively, minimising the results obtained by numerous independent research groups. This attitude, pervasive among high-ranking journals, clearly demonstrates scepticism and has the consequence of avoiding a more critical interpretation of scientific data and of discouraging a constructive scientific debate that should consider all available facts when advancing a hypothesis and re-evaluate assumptions in light of new evidence. Additionally, this bias often results in rejection of manuscripts in support of an early SARSCoV-2 circulation, reinforcing the ‘echo chamber’ effect. Science is a quest for ultimate truth, which shall not be discouraged by such mindset.

Sounds like droplet dogma all over again. And concluding:

Despite the technical limitations of available early origin studies, even a remote possibility that positive tests indicate an early SARS-CoV-2 circulation should be considered sufficient to warrant the scaling up of research to more samples from more regions and through a wider timespan. Time is running out: valuable samples that may contain the key to the understanding of SARS-CoV-2 origin might already have been destroyed as their regulatory storage time requirements lapse. Many more will meet the same fate in the coming months and years. What is there to lose in accepting this hypothesis as tenable and exploring it urgently before the chances of finding the answers to explain how this pandemic emerged are gone forever?

What was there to lose? Plenty, as with all paradigm shifts.

Conclusion

Jon Stewart framed the origin question hilariously in 2021:

Turn it around. What do you think happened when there’s an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey Pennsylvania, and also — before? — in Italy’s Chocolate City, Turin?. Investigate further, I would say.

Further investigation, however, seems unlikely. Both sides of the controversy are now dug in to an origin story centered on Wuhan, whether at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Science, it would seem, has no further role to play.

NOTES

[1] For example, this exchange on X following the quasi-release of the CIA’s new assessment isn’t only overheated:

I translated the Taz interview with Drosten cited by Metzl:

taz: In any case, they believed in a natural origin.

Drosten: I still think that’s likely, and almost all scientists who are working on the topic also assume that. But assuming doesn’t mean knowing.

taz: If you now say that this virus may have come from the laboratory after all, that will cause an uproar.

Drosten: I wouldn’t postulate that directly. But it’s not the same if we don’t have proof of a natural origin in 2020 as if we still don’t have that proof in 2025.

(Further down, Drosten gives a really good explanation of how the furin cleavage site works). I guess I can see what Ebright and Metzl are saying in Drosten’s actual words if I squint really, really hard…

[2] Personally, I take the strong form though not generally sympathized-with view that tweets like this:

are logically equivalent to saying: “Look at this watch; gears so round and intermeshed can only have been created by God (the Watchmaker analogy, beloved of Creationists). When searching for causes, at least in the US, I think we give far too much weight to malevolent human actors, and far too little to impersonal systems, evolution, sheer accident, etc.

[3] Hilariously, China’s discourse is a mirror image of our own; see Bioethical Inquiry, “In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-19 and Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency“:

Immediately after the epidemic (initially called “Wuhan pneumonia”) became public knowledge in late January, an unsettling theory started to circulate in China. Posts with certain variations—but containing exactly the same information and similar wording—spread like wildfire, particularly on Chinese social media WeChat. They tied the origins of the virus to the first China-hosted international military multi-sport event which involved the participation of nearly ten thousand athletes from over one hundred countries.

The original message is a masterpiece of conspiracy theory rhetoric. It is worthwhile citing it in full (in English translation):

Compatriots: In this time of the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic, please do not forget the Seventh World Military Games in Wuhan three months ago. Of course, some international athletes came from Africa, where infectious diseases frequently break out. Some athletes came from the United States, which has long attempted to carry out biological warfare against China. When [the authorities] investigated the source of the virus responsible for the 2003 SARS epidemic, many clues pointed to the United States and its biological warfare conspiracy against China.

So, doesn’t this coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan have something to do with the USA? This outbreak coincides with respect to the timeline, coincides with respect to the place, and coincides with respect to the gathering of people. And it also coincides in a major way with the China–US trade war, which is still raging fiercely. Shouldn’t we put all these coincidences together to analyse, synthesize, theorize, and verify so as to reach a clear conclusion? While carrying out its trade war with China, the U.S. government took advantage of the Seventh World Military Games, where many American athletes had numerous personal interactions with Chinese, hiding the novel coronavirus in their equipment with the aim of infecting the people of Wuhan. As the virus has an incubation period of two or three months, outbreaks on a massive scale would occur around the Spring Festival Holiday when vast numbers of people return home for the Chinese New Year.

See also “GOP report says October 2019 Wuhan military games were ‘one of the earliest super spreader events,” Washington Examiner.

[4] There are other early claims (France, England; Singapore; Barcelona, Spain; the Congo; the United States). I’m focusing only on Italy because the aggregate number is so large.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

81 comments

    1. divadab

      Yes – among top Theocratic leadership in the holy city of Qom. Quite suspicious – according to Ron Unz, strong evidence of a US act of bio-warfare against Iran.

      This CIA report appears to me to be a limited hangout. Designed to obfuscate. I mean, it is the CIA – “we lie, we cheat, we steal” per Pompeo.

  1. Jonhoops

    There was also the so called “vaping disease” breakout early in 2019 with symptoms that pretty much mimicked COVID including the ground glass imaging in lung X-rays.

    1. Jana

      Excellent point. I have a dear friend close to CDC who made an intentional remark to me to warn all the young people I knew, especially my son (who thank God does not vape), of the sudden, severe danger. I had forgotten about this. It is associated with a lab in Maryland if I remember correctly?

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > There was also the so called “vaping disease” breakout early in 2019

      Thanks. I ran across a “vaping disease” article in my travels, and didn’t know what to make of it. This helps.

    3. Mike

      I had the “vaping disease” and I can tell you the symptoms were mostly not the same. There was no fever, no loss of taste, no soreness and aches, etc. Just a nasty hacking productive cough.

  2. The Rev Kev

    Never took a stand on the origins of Covid simply because the evidence was so fouled up by political expediency, conspiracy theories, geopolitics and all the rest of the circus. It was claim versus counter claim with obvious evidence like the outbreak in Italy in 2019 being firmly ignored. But with the CIA making noises about blaming the Chinese for it, does that mean that Trump will try to leverage this talking point with the Chinese and try to make them international pariahs so he can get a good deal from them? Is this the CIA trying to simply get into Trump’s good books here? It was only back in 2021 that Trump said ‘China should pay USD 10 trillion to America, and the world, for the death and destruction they have caused!’ You can bet that he has not forgotten in the same way that he wants Greenland handed over to him. It would still be rattling around the back of his brain. But as I said in a comment at the time, he had better be careful making this claim lest China demand $20 trillion compensation for America being the source of the Great Flu pandemic – plus 106 years interest-

    https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/china-dismisses-donald-trumps-10-trillion-compensation-for-covid-spread-2458517

    1. Bugs

      Ya gotta love the right wing on Covid. It’s a deadly Chinese virus wreaking death and destruction that they owe us trillions for causing, and it’s just a cold, masks don’t work, end the lockdowns!

      1. Joe Well

        Listening to conservatives about anything is like this, isn’t it? Logic is for losers. And listening to liberals is like listening to someone making a painstaking logical argument with extremely selective application of that logic.

  3. Jorge

    There is a large Chinese presence in Northeast Italy, around Turin, in the clothing trade. And, so, a lot of airplane travel between Turin and various major Chinese cities.

    1. Yves Smith

      Yes, but the point is that Wuhan has been treated as the origin of case 0 and thus fingerpointing at the lab, when the cases in Italy point to earlier spread and do not specifically implicate Wuhan.

    2. PlutoniumKun

      The main Chinese population in Italy is in the north-west, mostly Milan down to the Florence area, also including Turin. The overwhelming majority of ‘legal’ Chinese in Italy are from Zhejiang Province, which is on the coast east of Hubai and south of Shanghai. I don’t think there are firm figures known, but the indications are that most ‘illegals’ (and there are many illegal Chinese in the garment trade in Italy) are likely Fujianese or from the northern provinces close to Korea. If there was some sort of Italy-China connection to the virus, I’d expect to see a Zhejiang element – from what I know this province was, after Hubai, one of the hardest hit in the initial (suppressed) wave, along with the Beijing area.

      There are many direct flights from Italy to China, mostly Beijing and Shanghai to Rome or Milan. Most likely the illegals would be very outnumbered by legal immigrants, although the figures may be skewed as China does not allow double passport holders, so the majority of those ethnic Chinese travelling to China would most likely be on Italian passports.

  4. David in Friday Harbor

    Great post. Anything coming from a Washington DC three-letter agency suffers from “striving toward the führer” and too much exposure to Hollywood fantasy — and should be dismissed out of hand.

    I had something with all the classic symptoms of Covid-19 in December 2019, not tested but confirmed by my antibody reaction to my first Moderna jab many months later. The public health authorities in Silicon Valley testified that tissue samples confirmed that Covid-19 had been ”in the wild” there since at least October of 2019.

    The political obfuscation has made evidence-based analysis impossible, so I’m going with Jon Stewart: the origin has to have been Fauci-led, U.S.-funded, research at the Wuhan lab and the “leak” was probably intentional to dirty-up the Chinese geopolitically.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > The public health authorities in Silicon Valley testified that tissue samples confirmed that Covid-19 had been ”in the wild” there since at least October of 2019.

      Got a link on that?

      1. David in Friday Harbor

        Google search only turns up Santa Clara County Executive Dr. Jeff Smith MD stating that the virus was certainly in the wild there in December 2019 — but as I recall his testimony before the Board of Supervisors in April 2020 he opined that it was “probably” in the wild there as early as October.

        I personally knew Dr. Smith and I worked for the Santa Clara County government for 34 years — and was still following the BoS meetings at the time. I can’t easily locate a transcript. Dr. Jeff Smith wasn’t prone to making stuff up. I definitely had all the classic symptoms in December 2019.

        https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-11/bay-area-coronavirus-deaths-signs-of-earlier-spread-california

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > the “leak” was probably intentional

      I don’t think the “bat lady” at WIV would wreck her own lab. I should know, but I don’t: Were all the personnel at WIV Chinese, or were there US (EcoHealth?) personnel there too?

    3. Mike

      We also had COVID-19 in December of 2019 and early January of 2020. Got it during a long trip up and down California by plane, train and automobile. Absolutely the same symptoms initially advertised and the sickest I’d been since about 2004. After that we never got COVID again, so officially I have not been infected as there is no way to prove my case. But I’m 110% certain.

  5. mrsyk

    Thank you Lambert.
    Italy sent 139 athletes (and the associated staffing) to those military games in Wuhan. Make of that what you will.

  6. Henry D

    The best Covid origin theory I’ve seen is by Jim Haslan in his book, COVID-19: “Mystery Solved: It leaked from a Wuhan lab but it’s not Chinese junk” as well as explained on his substack Reverse Engineering the Origins of SARS-CoV-2 in which he proposes that Ralph Baric took Corona virus sequences from a variety of strains that had been collected and synthesized a chimeric SARs Cov 2 like sequence in 2018. Patenting the spike sequence. They hoped to use this sequence as a vaccine to stop transmission at the origin, bats themselves. Rather than tediously capture and inject bats, it was decided to aerosolize it and have bats spread it amongst themselves, which was done in Vincent Munster’s Rocky Mtn lab. They had trouble getting it to spread via aerosol in Egyptian fruit bats, along with mink, deer, mice in his lab so they had Linfa Wang (UNC) who had access to the BL4 lab (not Shi Zhengli’s BL2 lab) in Wuhan test it on horseshoe bats, which is where it escaped in early Sept 2019. This would explain why the CIA hasn’t released its findings and it fits the timeline.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      That would mean that the Italian cases in September and October came from the posited horseshoe bat escape.

      Can somebody smarter than me do the R0 calculation on that? The timing seems tight to me.

      Also, from what I read higher up on these comments, the Chinese in Italy are mostly working class (like garments, manufacturing). I don’t see how they would intersect physically with the class of person who would bring it out of the WIV lab. At the market?

  7. David Mills

    Springfield Retirement Community.

    Current efforts seem aimed at applying liability to China via Narrative Management.

  8. debi

    The widespread covid outbreak in Northern Italy indeed needs deeper study. If the outbreak occurred in Wuhan with the accepted timeline, then mathematically the R factor would have had to have been much higher than we later learned it was.

    Similarly there are detailed and publicly available statistics on the widespread outbreak on the cruise ship docked and quarantined in Yokohama. This outbreak was supposedly caused by a solo Chinese passenger who had come from Hong. Kong. The speed of the spread on the boat again mathematically implied a much higher R value than we now know to be the case.

    Both of these events lead to assuming the disease was more contagious than it was. This caused grave policy over reactions.

    Both can be explained by an earlier undetected outbreak. In the case of the boat, it is much more likely mathematically that it was already spreading among the crew, who were very sick, well before the Hong-Kong passenger boarded, and they gave it to him.

    1. lambert strether

      > The widespread covid outbreak in Northern Italy indeed needs deeper study. If the outbreak occurred in Wuhan with the accepted timeline, then mathematically the R factor would have had to have been much higher than we later learned it was.

      Thanks for making this point so crisply.

  9. DJG, Reality Czar

    Many thanks, Lambert Strether. There have sometimes been discussions here in the comments about science and the politicization of science. What this posting is about is the scientific method. If cases were observed and measured in Italy before the full-blown outbreak in Wuhan, then we must look at these earlier data, eh?

    I am here to defend the Chocolate City! And the Undisclosed Region, Bagnacaudalandia. There was a stereotype in Italy that Lombardy was the “untore,” the region that spread Covid to others.

    In fact, the zone around Brescia and Bergamo was particularly hard hit.

    This paragraph and the underlying article caught my eye. If you go into the underlying article, you’ll see that Covid was presenting as a rash and the tests that the Italians were doing were to ascertain if it was measles.

    We describe the earliest evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a patient in Italy, ≈3 months before Italy’s first reported COVID-19 case. These findings, in agreement with other evidence of early COVID-19 spread in Europe, advance the beginning of the outbreak to late autumn 2019. However, earlier strains also might have been occasionally imported to Italy and other countries in Europe during this period, manifesting with sporadic cases or small self-limiting clusters…. This finding is of epidemiologic importance because it expands our knowledge on timing and mapping of the SARS-CoV-2 transmission pathways. Long-term, unrecognized spread of SARS-CoV-2 in northern Italy would help explain, at least in part, the devastating impact and rapid course of the first wave of COVID-19 in Lombardy.

    I am reminded from William McNeill’s great book, Plagues and Peoples, that several of the plagues in the classical era in the Mediterranean basin may have been measles. Or, going by the underlying article, something else?

    One of the reasons that Italy isn’t being incorporated into the Anglosphere discussion is that the Mediterranean world is a black hole for Anglos. Americans are still speculating on the likes of “Was Cleopatra really black (in the U.S. sense)?” Dealing with Italian realities is haaard work, as W. Bush used to say.

    The other is the natural (unnatural?) tendency to pin diseases on the other. Remember the French Pox?

    The question is where and how Covid arose in Italy. Did it jump species? Northern Italy is known for intense cultivation of rice, dairy cattle, pigs, and silk, among many other crops. Did Covid come in from the wild? Wild boars (of which there are many)?

    The question of importation is interesting: From where? Not necessarily China.

    I recall quite well the first death in Italy in February 2020, because I was trying to arrange to move to the Chocolate City. The first death was an elderly man in the small town of Vò in the Veneto. At the time, no one knew how he picked up Covid. There are some Chinese living in Vò, a small group of people, but tests of the townsfolk were inconclusive.

    Wrapping up: This is how we have to maintain our scientific reasoning / skepticism. Easy solutions like “it was the Dragon Lady of Wuhan who let loose the plague” are clownish and dangerous.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      I’m agnostic on where Covid arose. However, that Covid necessarily arose in Wuhan is, to my mind, not proven — and by a timeline all parties had access to, if they followed the literature.

      1. fjallstrom

        As far as I have followed the wet market vs lab leak debate, both sides are arguing from lack of evidence on the other side, then arguing about why this makes either theory more likely. Earlier steps in the virus evolution would be lacking if it took place somewhere else.

        I am not stating that any of the following steps are true, but it would be highly ironic if:

        * Covid started somewhere else.
        * It was detected in Wuhan because they had the skills to both understand that this was a new virus and to isolate it. In effect it was detected as a new virus because the virological institute was there.
        * The connection between the virological institute and US sponsored research into gain of function made Fauci et al fear that it was a lab leak.
        * Fearing that it was a lab leak, they pushed hard against lab leak theory, by pushing hard for wet market theory (because you have to present an alternative theory).
        * Pushing hard for the wet market theory creates suspicion and the opposite reaction.
        * Lab leak vs wet market captures the debate, but neither can be proven by earlier steps in the virus evolution because it didn’t happen there.

        If I understand it correctly the dominant theory now is that the Spanish flu started in Kansas and US soldiers spread it in Europe, and then brought back a mutated strain. It was reported in Spain, because Spain wasn’t in world war one and thus had less control over mass media then France, Germany, Belgium etc. (If military personal participating in those games brought it to Wuhan, you even have a bit of historical rhyming.)

        And if I remember correctly, the Kansas origin was established some ten years ago. 95 years from outbreak to tracking the virus. So just 90 years to go then?

        1. aleric

          Excellent hypothesis, captures the origin of the fake and confused debates about the start of the epidemic. Thanks to Lambert for collating and analyzing this information for so many years.

          Sort of hyped up at the moment about this because my job has just announced a mandate for back-to-office next week, and I’m running the numbers on early retirement instead.

        2. etudiant

          Re the Kansas origin hypothesis, iirc there was also argument that Chinese laborers were being rail transported across the USA to be deployed in Europe and that the flu was already prevalent among them. Given that train toilets then simply dumped everything on the tracks, the soldiers at nearby Ft Reily were simply the nearest pool of new hosts for the virus.

        3. Lambert Strether Post author

          > Fearing that it was a lab leak, they pushed hard against lab leak theory

          Not that I hold any brief for these guys, but this has occurred to me too. “The wicked flee when there is no one pursuing.” Proverbs 28:1. If we know one thing about Fauci, it was that he was a skilled bureaucratic operator. He would paper up his precautions even if he, in his heart, knew he was innocent.

  10. Ignacio

    So they are “intelligence agencies” the ones responsible to determine the origin of pandemics…

    1. Vodkatom

      I wondered the same thing. Can this expertise be found at the CIA or any intelligence agency? Is the CIA capable of large scale medical research and the required critical thinking? Did they go worldwide collecting stored tissue / swab samples from late 2019? Then what? Sending samples to various labs for testing? The whole idea made me laugh. I’d love to see their methodology.

      1. cfraenkel

        Of course they have the required expertise … in promulgating the desired narrative. Missile gap, Judith Miller & WMD, Guatemala, Chile, it’s what they do.

        The idea that Trump cares about the ‘truth’ implied by ‘medical research and the required critical thinking’ is what is laughable. The analysts at the lower level are likely very very good at putting together a good synthesis of the available science, but then this gets channeled by the upper levels of the organization into PowerPoints that communicate whatever the narrative requires.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > So they are “intelligence agencies” the ones responsible to determine the origin of pandemics

      Rather like the final days of the USSR, the spooks are the only functional government entity remaining….

  11. AG

    First time watching Tim Burton´s “Charlie & Chocolate Factory” adaptation. It´s so odd. Now seeing Lambert mixing Turin chocolate into this virus issue (death, blood and rockn roll so to speak – I am a big chocolate fan) might appear a bit gross at first but with Dahl it fits. Wonder what latter would have done out of this Covid business as a writer…

  12. Greg Taylor

    Apparently, all variants trace their lineage back to the earliest strain found in humans, almost immaculate conception. If the virus originated in wild animals, it would likely have mutated several times before spilling over to humans. At least a couple of those mutations would have spilled over into humans and we would have evidence of an earlier strain even if we couldn’t find it in an animal. For me, wild animals are a highly unlikely source.

    Factory farmed animals would be more likely to produce a virus that spilled into humans before mutating. But the genomic distance between the original virus and other known viruses in farm animals is large and seemingly easily bridged if farm animals were to blame. But we’ve not seen evidence of that bridge.

    Live vaccine development involving gain-of-function still seems most likely, especially with all the efforts to cover up these research activities. The EcoHealth proposals showed how researchers were planning to insert furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses. The Feb 2020 Slack chats among Proximal Origin authors were convincing. They were in the best position to know and most immediately assumed lab activities were to blame. Then published Proximal Origins, essentially a cover-up, despite their private doubts.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > The Feb 2020 Slack chats among Proximal Origin authors were convincing. They were in the best position to know and most immediately assumed lab activities were to blame. Then published Proximal Origins, essentially a cover-up, despite their private doubts.

      Or they first blamed themselves, as innocent people have been known to do, and then looked more closely at the evidence.

  13. Aurelien

    Intelligence agencies are sometimes asked to advise on questions such as this one, because by definition they typically have access to information that other bodies don’t. Here, I imagine the reasoning was that, if the origin was in a Chinese laboratory, then at some point the government must have been become aware of it, and this would leave an evidential trace. If this was true, and if the US had access to evidence (anything from human sources to email to internal CCP communications) then it might be possible to say something important about the origin of the virus, depending on the strength of the evidence. Some indirect evidence may also give pointers: sudden and unexpected meetings of CCP bodies involved with health, rumours of investigations into bio-security, speculation in closed email lists, for example.

    But it sounds as if there was no convincing evidence at all: “low confidence” in this context just means “we’re not sure,” and that the lab-leak hypothesis is now considered to be marginally more probable (or less improbable) than the hypothesis of natural origin. It’s unlikely that there was any substantive intelligence to sway the discussion, and, given the time that has elapsed, I don’t think there will be now. We can assume that whatever internal and secret CCP investigations there were into the outbreak were concluded long ago, and that if they had pointed to a laboratory leak, and if there were direct or indirect indications available, they would have been known by now. In the circumstances, intelligence agencies, although used to weighing and judging evidence from a very wide range of sources, have no special insights that other investigators have not.

    1. Ignacio

      Anything coming from intelligence agencies such as “CCP communications” and worse, indirect evidence, is too slippery to be considered evidence. I wouldn’t give that a qualification higher than “hint”. Hard evidence is what is needed and suspicions do not help. Most of these “hints” and “suspicions” will almost certainly lead to wrong assessments. One has to be very very wary about that kind of things because there might be many dozens, hundreds, thousands? of virus “jumps” that happen but are not conductive of a pandemic. You might be detecting false starts. Real cases that occurred but were not conductive of a significant outbreak. Such data (if rich on information) might help as much as to detect a hot spot for potential pandemics . Not the origin. To determine the origin hard data (sequences) is absolutely necessary.

      1. Aurelien

        Which is why, if you really want to wind up an intelligence analyst, you ask them for a definite judgement. They don’t deal in “verdicts” or “evidence,” but rather indications and probabilities: “high degree of probability” is the most you can usually extract from them and that’s often through clenched teeth. It’s barely possible, I suppose that agencies might come across a CCP Central Committee document saying that it was a lab-leak, but that kind of thing happens once in a blue moon. And even if the document could be shown to be genuine, you have the problem that it might be outdated: for example, a later document might have reversed the original finding, but you don’t have that document. I suspect all they have is weak indicators pointing in both directions, and they’ve made a subjective judgement, with low confidence, that the indicators are slightly less weak pointing to the lab-leak hypothesis. The really interesting question would be why, if it’s indeed the case, they’ve ruled out the Italian hypothesis.

        1. Ignacio

          On the Italian hypothesis I have a comment ahead about it. I think your commentary is well pointed and my reply to it is that with regard to the origin of this pandemic the only thing that intelligence services can provide and have provided is nothing but noises. They cannot even evaluate probabilities with such data.

        2. cfraenkel

          And even if there was this hypothetical CCP document one way or the other, it could just be wrong. People make mistakes all the time. It wouldn’t be evidence.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > In the circumstances, intelligence agencies, although used to weighing and judging evidence from a very wide range of sources, have no special insights that other investigators have not.

      Maybe when we go to war with China we can capture some enemy documents.

      1. SocalJimObjects

        If Fauci is still alive, it’s more likely he’ll fall into their hands, and then we’ll get the full truth. The Chinese is not going to just tickle Fauci’s feet either.

  14. johnnyme

    It will be interesting to see if the new assessment upgrades the status of what were previously considered sketchy reports of a possible shutdown of the Wuhan lab based on commercially available cellphone data:

    From NBC News Report says cellphone data suggests October shutdown at Wuhan lab, but experts are skeptical:

    WASHINGTON — A private analysis of cellphone location data purports to show that a high-security Wuhan laboratory studying coronaviruses shut down in October, three sources briefed on the matter told NBC News. U.S. spy agencies are reviewing the document, but intelligence analysts examined and couldn’t confirm a similar theory previously, two senior officials say.

    The report — obtained by the London-based NBC News Verification Unit — says there was no cellphone activity in a high-security portion of the Wuhan Institute of Virology from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019, and that there may have been a “hazardous event” sometime between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11.

    It offers no direct evidence of a shutdown, or any proof for the theory that the virus emerged accidentally from the lab.

    For that and other reasons, some officials are skeptical of the analysis, which is based on commercially available cellphone location data. One U.S. official who has seen the document said the data “looks really weak to me and some of the conclusions don’t make sense.”

    Earlier, U.S. intelligence agencies received reports based on commercially available cellphone and satellite data suggesting there was a shutdown at the lab, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter say. But after examining overhead imagery and their own data, the spy agencies were unable to confirm any shutdown, and deemed the reports “inconclusive.”

    1. Yves Smith

      Please read Auerlien’s comment. The CIA does not know anything specific and its assessment was low confidence.

      But your remark demonstrates that the spin is working.

  15. Jon Cloke

    You guys know about the South China-Turin joint lab, established in 2015, do you? https://www.scut.edu.cn/en/2024/0929/c466a54014/page.htm

    If, as UCLA puts it, “the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely circulating undetected for at most two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019” then there is no reason someone (infected but working with the China-Turin link) couldn’t have carried it over on a trip of some kind… (https://health.ucsd.edu/news/press-releases/2021-03-18-novel-coronavirus-circulated-undetected-months-before-first-covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-china/)

    Re the Wet Market, my understanding is that although this is sourced as the primary site, no source or animal link has been found there either… the possibility therefore exists that someone (or several individuals) from the WIV shouldn’t have visited the Wet Market for some fish and sparked off the infection?

    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      Jon Cloke: 2 + 2 = 7

      Did you even read up on the South China University of Technology link with the Politecnico di Torino?

      Sheesh.

      It’s a program in architecture and urban planning.
      https://www.polito.it/en/polito/communication-and-press-office/poliflash/politecnico-and-scut-the-first-architects-earning-the-double

      I hesitate to keep harping on this, but when it comes to Italy and the Mediterranean, denizens of the Anglosphere can’t even keep two facts straight.

  16. Ignacio

    Should i say that…

    Since no one of these studies in Italy, or wherever, had been shown to cause any significant disease focus resulting in noticeable local outbreaks and haven’t been shown to be conductive to the international spread of the pandemic, Wuhan continues to be the known origin of the pandemic. The only one epidemiologically relevant was Wuhan. SARS CoV 2 – like virus might have shown their ugly face here and there, and quite possibly months before the outbreak in Wuhan, but that one was the only one that could be traced and shown to be the origin of the pandemic. Serologic analyses show that something quite similar (serologically similar) to the variants that surged in Wuhan was circulating before but this, by no means, implies these were the origins of the pandemic.

    1. Ignacio

      One more thing: SARS-CoV2-like detections well before Wuhan suggest virus jumps occurred well before the Wuhan outbreak which started by the end of November or early December. I would consider that unsurprising (as far as in Italy with so frequent travelling is not that surprising). This, IMO, is very suggestive of zoonotic origin. Count those as former tries by similar viruses, very much as we now count H5N1 cases in humans which do not result in outbreaks. Accepting lab leak theory would require multiple lab leaks failing and then one succeeding for unknown reasons (the malignant researcher finally got the proper mutations after several tries?). Slippery slope there.

    2. PlutoniumKun

      Yes, I’m deeply sceptical of an Italian origin. Historical wastewater sampling can be discounted unless there is some alternative data – environmental samples are not stored and monitored in anything like the rigorous manner of medical samples (I know, I’ve worked in one of those labs). The lung cancer data is interesting and can’t be easily discounted, but lab contamination of samples is all too common so I wouldn’t consider it proof of much unless there were other clear lines of evidence.

      There was a lot of detailed work at the time on ‘ground zero’ positive tests in Europe – the majority were from Asia, either China or Singapore or other hubs. There was certainly a very early cluster around the ski resorts in Europe, but mostly these were Austrian or French resorts (certainly, that’s where Ireland got its first cases). There is a lot of travel from Italy to other European countries over Christmas and New Year – if there was an early outbreak in Italy I’m quite sure it would be clear from the early epidemiology.

      Just as a random anecdote, a Chinese contact of mine had a business running small shops in Dublin Airport and she is absolutely adamant that several of her staff (all Chinese) came down with something like Covid around Christmas time – she even had to close down the shop just before Christmas 2019. It was likely something else, but still an interesting bit of anecdata.

      The arguments around the Military Games in October in Wuhan seem to have been largely forgotten, but there are interesting correlations between early outbreaks and attendance at those games. We forget that initially Beijing was very interested in pressing the theory that covid came via the US participants in the Games.

      Whether you ascribe to the animal origin or live leak, it is still pretty clear that Wuhan was the epicentre, almost all data points to that. I do think that there is the possibility that it arose a few months earlier than thought (i.e. around November) so the possibility that there were individual cases around Europe and elsewhere in late 2019 (I believe there were possible early cases in the Middle East and Argentina) would not be impossible.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Yes, I’m deeply sceptical of an Italian origin.

        Had I wished to express that thesis, I’m entirely capable of having done so in clear language. For all I know — and for all anyone knows — a smidgeon of virus wandered out of China to Italy in September, and then wanted back to China in November (making assumptions on mutations as needed).

        What I am saying is that the canonicak timeline is not solid. If you can’t say “December 2019 in Wuhan,” it follows that you can say neither “December 2019 at WIV” nor “December 2019 at the market.”

        Sure, you can say “Wuhan in Fall 2019 with some random offshoots here and there” if you like; but that would be unsatisfying to all the parties involved (including those who want war with China).

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Since no one of these studies in Italy, or wherever, had been shown to cause any significant disease focus resulting in noticeable local outbreaks and haven’t been shown to be conductive to the international spread of the pandemic, Wuhan continues to be the known origin of the pandemic

      1) I think if you (i.e. “one”) want to say “lab leak,” and to imply that this person at this location at this time was patient zero, than all the known links in any chain of transmission need to be accounted for with a similar degree of rigor. We’re talking casus belli here, not epidemiology.

      2) “like virus might have shown their ugly face here and there, and quite possibly months before the outbreak in Wuhan.” But surely this is question begging? What’s to prevent a small outbreak from being undetected and yet to contain patient zero?

      1. Ignacio

        Not patient 0 if you cannot conclusively ascertain with phylogenetic analysis. At least, a confirmed chain of infections should be needed if only to hold a suspicion but without hard evidence. The ice is too thin for the Italian case. There might have been not one but several clusters unnoticed which might, or might not, include patient 0.

        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          > The ice is too thin for the Italian case.

          If we are in the world of subjective judgments now, “the ice is too thin” for all the theories, including lab leak and market origin. Certainly “too thin” if the conclusion is a casus belli, as in the world outside the lab and the office it is.

  17. AG

    Not being a scientific argument – I have had doubts over lab theory considering that our public think believes everything is under human control. And thus everyting can or rather must be turned into “story” aka “narrative” with a beginning, a midpoint and an ending. I thas to make sense on that level. So it can be handeled as a news item and tale. It´s a consumable and tradeable commodity.

    This domestication of nature is exemplified in mass entertainment by the absolutely irritating humanization of animals via modern CGI – see e.g. in a for me disgusting way the latest “Planet of the Apes” – or Disney in general. In such a world of total human control of course bats or some rodents cannot – beyond our reach – spread a virus that could turn into a serious problem. It must be the Chinese, it must be the CIA, it must be Mr. Fauci.

  18. Lee

    FWIW, from actual virologists: TWiV 1121: SARS-CoV2 still didn’t come from a lab. I assume some here know a great deal more than do I about the scientific evidence discussed. If so please weigh in. Since the discussion is long and complex, maybe it would warrant a posting of its own at some later date. Please note: this is a suggestion, not an assignment. Perhaps such a posting has been done here and I missed it. If so, please link.

  19. J.

    The problem with serology is that it’s not very specific when you are looking to see if a blood sample has (polyclonal) antibodies to a virus. Polyclonal antibodies tend to stick to all sorts of things that are not the target you are testing (aka nonspecific signal). Here is a reference discussing the issue:

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2605712/

    Lambert actually quoted from one of the articles above doubting the early serology results (the first 2022 article):

    > while the detection of positivity only to IgM test by rapid LFIA in October 2019, being within the lower limit of the specificity rate of the test, possibly represents nonspecific signal or cross-reaction with antibodies against other coronaviruses.

    So the results were interesting, but they would need to be confirmed and probably nobody was able to confirm by e.g. finding viral RNA. Likely that is why you don’t see any recent investigation.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      No, the confirmation was not done, in spite of the BMJ article pleading for it, in my mind justifiably. I think the issue was the unwillingness of the scientific community to entertain — or fund — the hypothesis, given that (for example) CDC relaxed mask guidelines in February 2022, and everybody wanted to return to normal.

  20. Jeremy Grimm

    Given Trump’s scatter-gun executive orders, statements, and appointments I wonder whether the target of the CIA ‘intelligence’ is China and/or the CDC, that I gas thought funded the Wuhan lab’s investigations into the Corona virus. I believe intelligence coming from the CIA has as much credibility as MSM blurbs, blog speculations, or the crazy talk I hear on the street. Perhaps this assessment of the flu’s origins is a small peace offering to Trump.

    Regardless of the origins of the Covid flu I remain concerned that the u.s. seems to be involved in viral gain of function research. I do not understand what value that research could have beyond the production of tools for biological warfare or perhaps some limited value in identifying ways viruses and other pathogens might find ways to infect humans. I believe there are other avenues of research into viruses and the human immune systems that would yield much more new knowledge.

    The origins of the Covid flu interests me far, far less than the way the flu was handled by the CDC,FDA, and u.s. government. Perhaps the GAO could discover some intelligence to clarify matters … in the extremely remote chance the GAO were tasked to pursue a few investigations.

  21. Tobias

    Good question about EcoHealth. I always forget anything I read on that level, though I remember some US money was there. It makes you wonder, even if there was the biggest cover imaginable [the virus was being made so a jab for it could be made ahead’o time…just in case the bug evolved on its own in a similar manner] what if China had an observer in the lab? And the observer was moved to some big fashion shindig in Italy? Did I read wrong, or are we talking about Italy was only a month ahead? As far as a leak goes, to me the whole world should have stopped the GoF stuff like the US was supposed to have done in 2014. Why did they want it stopped? In case there was a leak! Perhaps an observer would hear as much as s/he could, or a computer maintenance guy could just read about as many results on as many bugs as possible? Now that we look back on all this, doesn’t it look like China would have been remiss not to have had someone watching risky research it was allowing but that the US wasn’t allowing? As soon as the plant learned there was another coronavirus born that could contaminate the mice via air, wouldn’t perhaps the Third Military Medical University eg want to know about it?

    The one creature it could have evolved in is what blows my mind, or even from just five guys in a hospital. But I guess there always has to be a first…just as with minks or ferrets.

    Something glitchy looks like it’ll move this reply to the bottom instead of under Lambert’s comment.

    1. Tobias

      When EcoHealth sent their project over, wasn’t GoF still prohibited in the US? China could have OK’d some kind of joint venture and chipped in, but maybe didn’t manage to get someone in there keeping tabs on all projects? [maybe not until there was noise about a SARS that could by air infect the human/mice?] I mean it’s a tough stressful place to work. All in all it amazes me how many nations bought into the warp speed route, even if they were pretty savvy on protection in general [same deal with ITER AFAIC]. Just found this, and If I bumped into it before, I’d forgotten it; The National Health and Family Planning Commission of China had said no to WIV doing SARS research at some point prior to July ’20…it says. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/wuhan-lab-denied-bsl4-access-for-sars-work-without-clear-reasoning/

  22. Tobias

    Re a reply I put up earlier, hopefully up above this thing I left out.

    Should have said mice with human epithelial cells.

Comments are closed.