The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. Throughout that year scientists showed a very high degree of "follow the herd" behavior and groupthink and conformism when talking about the origins of the virus. "Singing from the same hymn book," scientists almost uniformly claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 had a purely natural origin.
In February 2020 a letter had appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." It stated the following:
"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."
The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture."
The authors very inaccurately claimed to have no conflict of interests, stating "We declare no competing interests." In reality, several of the authors had major conflicts of interest. The scientist who had orchestrated the Lancet letter (Peter Daszak) was very entangled with a Chinese lab (the Wuhan Institute of Virology) that was very close physically to the place where the COVID-19 virus outbreak first occurred. Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance organization had given lots of money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for it to engage in dicey research on viruses.
Later in The Lancet we read this reference to the letter mentioned above, one that embarrasses that letter's authors by calling on them to "re-evaluate their competing interests":
"In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak....The Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests."
There then follows a statement by Daszak in which he seems to confess quite a bit of what sounds like conflict of interest, but still fails to mention the name of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that he was closely involved with, using instead three times the vague phrase "work in China."
The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:
"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "
Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic. Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19."
When I wrote my January 21, 2021 post "Gene Engineers Keep Up Their Risky Tinkering, Unfazed by Pandemic Suspicions," such a taboo was very much in effect; and I was "going out on a limb" by giving equal treatment to natural origins ideas and the hypothesis of a lab leak as being the cause of COVID-19, stating the following:
"Because of such explanatory difficulties, there does not currently exist any plausible detailed theory of a purely natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19...We do not yet know exactly how COVID-19 originated, and we do not know whether its origin was purely natural."
But then in the next few months the taboo started to break its stranglehold on the thinking of scientists, as you see in the postscripts I added to my January 21, 2021 post, mentioning discussion of the lab leak hypothesis starting to occur in mainstream publications in February and March 2021. By spring 2021 many a scientist was saying that we do not know whether COVID-19 originated by purely natural effects or because of a leak from some lab doing research on viruses.
Mainstream sources began to point out that it was not at all a conspiracy theory to merely doubt that COVID-19 had purely natural origins. There were three main hypotheses:
(1) That COVID-19 had originated because of purely natural evolution.
(2) That COVID-19 had accidentally escaped from a laboratory (the lab leak hypothesis), presumably when well-meaning scientists were working to try to prevent future pandemics.
(3) That COVID-19 had been deliberately designed as a biological weapon.
Mainstream sources began to point out that the second of these two hypotheses (the lab leak hypothesis) is not at all a conspiracy theory, as it involves merely a hypothesis of an accident.
By March 25, 2021 there appeared a letter in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters which was titled "Should we discount the laboratory origin of COVID-19?" and stated the following:
"Several characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 taken together are not easily explained by a natural zoonotic origin hypothesis. These include a low rate of evolution in the early phase of transmission; the lack of evidence for recombination events; a high pre-existing binding to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2); a novel furin cleavage site (FCS) insert; a fat ganglioside-binding domain (GBD) of the spike protein which conficts with host evasion survival patterns exhibited by other coronaviruses; and high human and mouse peptide mimicry. Initial assumptions against a laboratory origin by contrast have remained unsubstantiated. Furthermore, over a year after the initial outbreak in Wuhan, there is still no clear evidence of zoonotic transfer from a bat or intermediate species."
US President Joe Biden ordered an intelligence review on the topic. CNN describes the resulting report like this:
"Four intelligence community agencies and the National Intelligence Council assessed, with low confidence, that Covid was likely caused by natural exposure to an animal, the summary says. One agency assessed with moderate confidence, however, that the first human infection most likely was the result of a lab-associated incident that 'probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute.' And three agencies said they were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information."
An article in the journal Science very inaccurately describes this intelligence review as favoring a purely natural origin for COVID-19, which makes no sense because having one agency conclusion with "moderate" confidence in favor of the lab leak hypothesis is stronger than having several agency conclusions against that hypothesis (all of merely "low" confidence).
A sign of the new respectability of the lab leak hypothesis is a recent (September 17, 2021) letter in The Lancet, one entitled, "An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2." The letter strongly criticizes the Daszak letter that had appeared in the same journal in February, 2020. The September 17 letter states the following:
"As will be shown below, there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible. There is so far no scientifically validated evidence that directly supports a natural origin...After 19 months of investigations, the proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 is still lacking. Neither the host pathway from bats to humans, nor the geographical route from Yunnan (where the viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been sampled) to Wuhan (where the pandemic emerged) have been identified. More than 80 000 samples collected from Chinese wildlife sites and animal farms all proved negative....A research-related origin is plausible...Overwhelming evidence for either a zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury is still out... As shown above, research-related hypotheses are not misinformation and conjecture. More importantly, science embraces alternative hypotheses, contradictory arguments, verification, refutability, and controversy. Departing from this principle risks establishing dogmas, abandoning the essence of science, and, even worse, paving the way for conspiracy theories. Instead, the scientific community should bring this debate to a place where it belongs: the columns of scientific journals."
The claim that COVID-19 had a purely natural origin was a questionable dogma that was kept in place through almost all of 2020 because of sociological conformity effects such as groupthink. While the stranglehold of that dogma has weakened, there continues to exist many other dubious dogmas in the world of science academia that keep sitting on thrones largely because of sociological effects and peer pressure. One such dogma is the dogma that humans had a purely natural origin. The way in which such a dogma has continued to reign is very similar to the way that the dogma of purely natural COVID-19 origins kept in power throughout the year 2020. Below is a table comparing the two cases:
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Purely natural COVID-19 origins versus design involvement in COVID-19 origins (possibly well-intentioned design) |
Purely natural human origins versus design involvement in human origins |
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The main issue was a conflict between a “purely natural” origins explanation and an explanation involving intelligent agency. |
Yes. |
Yes. |
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“Purely natural” theory became an orthodoxy that it was “heresy” to question |
Yes, during the year 2020. |
Yes, through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. |
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“Purely natural” theory was never well-established by observations |
Yes (see the previous quote in The Lancet). |
Yes. |
|
The “heretical” design hypothesis was always reasonable and not very far-fetched |
Yes.
Given Wuhan virus labs in the same city where COVID-19 arose, and many cases of “gain of function” research by scientists, a “lab leak” hypothesis was always reasonable. |
Yes.
Given enormous levels of hierarchical organization in the human body, tons of functional information in DNA, very many uniquely human mental traits and mental abilities not credibly explained by brain activity, and seemingly fine-tuned fundamental constants in nature, the hypothesis of design involvement in human origins was always reasonable, and never was far-fetched. |
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Lack of any credible detailed theory to explain “purely natural” origins |
Yes (see recent letter in The Lancet). There was never any credible explanation of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 could have so quickly become so well-adapted to transmission in humans. An intermediate organism serving as a bridge between bats and humans was never found. |
Yes. The misleading term "natural selection" (which does not actually involve selection, a choice by a conscious agent) was never a credible explanation for the origin of so many unique human capabilities, as the co-creator of evolutionary theory (Alfred Russel Wallace) explained at length in an essay "The Limits of Natural Selection As Applied to Man." |
|
Proponents of reasonable “design” hypothesis unfairly described with a misleading epithet. |
Yes.
Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis were called “conspiracy theorists,” even though they did not actually believe in a conspiracy, but merely some possible overconfidence and carelessness. |
Yes.
Theorists of intelligent design were frequently called “creationists,” a word implying biblical fundamentalism, even though the Bible is rarely mentioned in the literature of such theorists, who argue not by appealing to scripture, but by describing the fine-tuned functional complexity and enormous level of hierarchical organization in human beings, and the inadequacy of Darwinist explanations for such biological wonders and the human mind. |
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The prevailing orthodoxy was established partially to serve the vested interests of biologists |
Yes.
If a pandemic arose from a lab-leak in a scientist lab, the prestige of scientists would be lessened, and they might get less funding and more restrictive regulations. |
Yes.
The claim that scientists understood the origin of humans and other species led to a huge boost in the prestige of scientists, who could then paint themselves as “grand lords of explanation.” |
The table above mentions only one of the forms of bullying that has been used against theorists of design involvement in human origins, who are sometimes defamed as "zealots" or "fanatics" by their Darwinist opponents, even though there is no sign of any difference in the levels of passion in the two camps.
An excellent article by journalist by Paul D. Thacker discusses the groupthink, dysfunctional journalism, intellectual bullying and herd-following cowardice of the year 2020. The article is entitled "The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?" The misinformation campaign referred to is one coming from the mainstream science news sources.
Referring to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), the article begins by stating a little of what I mentioned above:
"For most of 2020, the notion that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was treated as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory....But that all changed in the early months of 2021, and today most outlets across the political spectrum agree: the 'lab leak' scenario deserves serious investigation."
The article mentions quite a few mainstream sources that were to blame for the supression of one of the two leading hypotheses about COVID-19 origins, mentioning censorship by Facebook. It mentions the failure of science journalists, quoting science journalist Nicholas Wade:
"Wade explains, 'Science journalists differ a lot from other journalists in that they are far less sceptical of their sources and they see their main role as simply to explain science to the public.' This, he says, is why they began marching in unison behind Daszak."
We see such a failure constantly on science news sites: science journalists meekly acting like North Korean journalists, repeating trustingly any claims that come from professor authorities, no matter how groundless, dubious or speculative such claims may be.
What we saw in the year 2020 in regard to COVID-19 origins (the premature claim that scientists knew about about how a mysterious biological innovation had appeared) was no fluke. It was just another example of a malfunction that repeatedly occurs in modern academia: overconfident scientists dogmatically proclaiming they understand things that they don't actually understand. It was the opinion reversal of 2021 that was the real fluke, because once scientists start claiming in great numbers to understand something they don't understand, they typically continue for very many years to repeat such boastful claims of understanding, rather than realizing within a year or two that they claimed to understand things they don't understand.
What goes on regarding scientific matters is that a very tiny group at the top of a pyramid can control what millions of other people believe, as illustrated in the diagram below (in which the tiny pink triangle at the top controls the beliefs of all the other layers).
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