Life Will Find a Way: Why The Origin of SARS-COV-2 Matters
Even as “reopening” unfolds, there is a growing awareness that the world we are returning to is not the same one we left in March. The virus has disrupted or possibly ended our way of life. Masks, social distancing, high food prices, chaotic air travel, Zoom meetings, and empty stadiums are here for the long term.
So how did we get to this new world, and where are we going?
That question is almost entirely dependent on the origin of the SARS-COV-2 virus.
In a practical sense, it matters little whether the virus escaped from a lab or fell from a bat’s hairy butt into a livestock pen. On a human level, however, the origin story may be more impactful on how we proceed than the vaccine that relegates the disease to history.
The origin of the virus is foundational to how we conceive and cope with our new world because it dictates the narrative structure we use to assign meaning and take lessons from the pandemic. The battle over the narrative is the unspoken reason why intense conflict exists around where and how the virus emerged.
Essentially, there are two competing narratives that describe the source of the virus. The natural emergence narrative and the lab escape narrative.
Natural Emergence
In a case where the data and intelligence on the origin of the virus are ambiguous, the natural explanation is preferred because it is the least disruptive.
A natural, zoological transmission validates the warnings and research of infectious disease researchers and public health officials. The risk of a bat coronavirus jumping to humans in China or South America had been long feared and often studied. The 2011 film “Contagion” even used a bat originated illness in China as the means by which a global pandemic started.
In a natural emergence, there is no one to blame as it’s just Mother Nature up to her old games.
As in the movies, the scientists are the heroes who save the world and return us from chaos to order. The reward for their heroism is generous funding for their life’s work to keep the world healthy and safe.
The narrative is one of conquest over nature by an erudite class, and the moral of the story is “trust the experts.” The old ways failed us and led to catastrophe; we must follow the new ways to keep progressing.
The Lab Escape
The competing narrative is complicated, dangerous, and possibly true. A cautionary tale like that of Icarus, the Tower of Babel, or Jurassic Park.
Researchers have worried for decades that bat-borne coronavirus pathogens could make the leap to humans and spawn a pandemic. The 2011 film “Contagion” even used the scenario of a bat to pig to human transmission as the cause of a fictional pandemic starting in China. Countless books and research papers had been written on the same danger to smaller audiences starting since the original SARS outbreak almost two decades ago.
In order to predict how a virus might leap from animals to humans and the kinds of disease such a virus may cause, researchers began using lab techniques to help pathogens mutate. This “gain on function” research stirred a years-long ethical debate among researchers who feared once we created a virus that it may escape and create a global pandemic.
For years, the NIH determined the potential reward of “gain of function” research merited the risk. Aside from helping us understand what pathogens may emerge, the gain of function research also offered to help develop virus types that could be used to deliver antigens for an RNA vaccine. Essentially, a virus could be designed that injects the RNA into human cells, which provides the instructions for the immune system to defeat a disease like HIV.
The conflict between protocol at the labs working on the gain of function research and the human bent toward complacency flashed in 2014 after a series of high profile mishaps at labs around the country. At the same time, researchers announced they had engineered a bird-flu to be more contagious and set off a debate in the science world. The best-funded and regulated American labs were having safety issues that posed the risk of accidental pathogen release.
As a result of the public attention on the issue and the safety failures, the NIH suspended funding for work on the gain of function research in the United States.
A few projects were allowed to conclude, however, notably, research by the University of North Carolina researcher Dr. Ralph Baric and a Chinese researcher, who is the world’s leading expert on horseshoe bat pathogens, Dr. Zheng-Li Shi. Shi uncovered a virus in 2013 that is 96% similar to the SAR-COV-2, now rampaging through the world population.
From October 2014 until December 2017, the US did not directly fund any virus gain of function research, but work continued in China, with some of it funded indirectly by the NIH. There were several good reasons for funding work in China. The world’s leading experts on bat coronavirus lived there, research cost less money, China is a hotbed for potential disease outbreaks, and funding gave the NIH visibility into pre-published research.
The decision to resume gain of function research, and any work with Chinese partners from 2017 to present, happened under the Trump administration and specifically under the guidance of Anthony Fauci. The story breaks from this point into the realm of mostly speculation, but there are generally three scenarios possible for a new virus to be “created” in a lab.
The first is that the lab engineers a virus as part of its research, and it accidentally escapes. The second is that the lab uses techniques to induce a virus to leap between species. The third is that a naturally occurring but isolated virus is taken from nature in another part of China and brought into the lab for study.
Numerous researchers — including a Nobel Laureate — claim the virus shows evidence of engineering, but the broader scientific community is eager to rule this out as a “conspiracy theory.” The pushback from most scientists being that any similarity to an engineered virus is coincidental. The often-cited source for natural emergence, however, is actually a Letter to the Editor in Nature Medicine and not a formal paper.
The other two scenarios would produce a virus that is, in fact, “natural” but still able to escape from a lab.
At this point, anyone in politics or law must take pause and look at the incentive structure of the relatively small pool of experts qualified to determine the origin of the virus.
Most of the researchers work for the government directly or are mostly funded by the government (NIH) funds. Unless the virus is so clearly engineered that they would look foolish for denying the obvious, the rational researcher would simply take the company line that the virus is natural. The handful of scientists who have dissented from the consensus have been mocked, publicly discredited, and de-platformed, so voicing any doubt is also bad for your reputation.
Additionally, what infectious disease researcher would want to throw their colleagues and their profession under the bus by admitting to a lab escape?
The eagerness of the Trump administration to tie the pandemic stone around China’s neck may be a method of redirecting attention away from the administration’s own policy change on the gain of function research and partnership with Chinese researchers. It’s also possible the Chinese scientists were working on pathogens developed alongside American scientists.
This explains why China insists the virus came from America. From the Chinese perspective, it would have been far easier to cast blame for the virus on immigrants or less developed countries on their borders. The tension between China and the US may be as much about the cost of the pandemic as it is about the shared liability for inadvertently creating the pandemic.
The politics are simply speculation, but if a lab escape scenario happened, there are a few morals of the story worth noting.
First, the risk of good intentions. The lab research was intended to stop a pandemic, but through unintended consequences, the research actually fostered a pandemic
The second is a warning about the risks of humans playing God and creating when they should be custodians. Human’s intelligent design of life goes awry because the flaws of the created come from the human creators.
The third is that our actions to attempt to prevent chaos in the world can become a cause of chaos. Our fear of a pandemic led us to breed the very pathogens we feared and made us more susceptible to a pandemic.
Finally, a lesson on the fragility of complex systems like high-security bio labs or global supply chains. We can build something complex, or we can make something strong, but we usually can’t do both.
Admittedly, the scientists involved are in a hard spot.
What if they are just the victims of happenstance? What if the virus just happened to breakout yards away from one of the world’s preeminent virus research labs dedicated to researching the very virus now rampaging across the planet? What if the scientists did such a good job researching pathogens that they discovered this virus seven years ago and stored it safely in said lab?
What if the only conspiracy is coincidence?
What if nothing escaped the lab…this time.
If you replace Coronavirus with “Velociraptor”, you find the potential for an odd plot match with Jurassic Park. A story warning us not to confuse our ability to create with our ability to control in a chaotic world.
As the famous line by Dr. Ian Malcom (played by Jeff Goldblum) goes, “life will find a way.” SARS-COV-2 found a way either through random Darwinian chance or through human error. The question of our way forward, however, is defined by the origin narrative we assume, because the way we describe the past will dictate the future of a newly emerging society.
If the virus came from nature, our defeat of the pathogen signals our way should be bold and confident. If however, the virus came from a lab, our lesson is one of humility and caution as we move deeper into the century with yet more powerful technology.
