He is a virologist. So this is disagreement amongst virologists. He's also a senior almost-political appointment as I understand it albeit maybe not subject to senate confirmation.
I'd like to see the debate between virologists about this. Belief statements in science tend to need to come with qualitative reasoning.
There are also quite a population of free and independent people with non-trivial levels of education capable of identifying how politically expedient it would be for the field of virology and for China in general if the blame could just be deflected away from anything having to do with how they do research.
Just because you have a Ph.D doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't be called out by those without. The world was impacted hard by this, and the required, rather quick independent verification and transparency that would quickly absolve WIV of any suspicion has not been forthcoming. What has come from "experts" has been tainted from the start by conflicts of interest in doing anything possible to avoid further restraints on possible avenues of research, combined with China's shiftyness regarding the early days of the pandemic does not lead to or inspire confidence in the establishment narrative.
Just because everyone else seems to believe human beings aren't capable of doing stupid, self-serving, but ultimately destructive things doesn't mean everyone else has to drink that kool-aid.
Sorry, not very convincing. As they point out, peer review sources needed. The peer review sources they cited are either speculative, side issues or informational, but not evidence.
Why would anyone think that? Surely, it's just a coincidence it happened to break out in the same city as a major research institute that studies corona viruses....
Given this quote: "It's a stunning assertion, offered with little evidence, by the man who led the U.S. government's public health agency from the time the virus was first detected in Wuhan through the entirety of the Trump administration's response."
Why carry this headline with no evidence? It seems like this would just increase tensions and making getting to the cause even more difficult.
because a lot of people want it to turn out to be true so they can say "I told you so" and rattle sabers against China. There is just enough plausibility that it's not an impossible claim compared to other origin hypotheses.
If his hypothesis is correct, it might provide a useful evolutionary lesson for the future of virus and other pathogen research. It might even mean we need policies to deal with the consequences of such a conclusion.
But please let me elaborate before downvoting, in two parts.
First "baseless assertion" :
To begin, what does "originate" in a lab signify ? It does not say either way whether "chinese scientists did it on purpose or out of negligence", nor the opposite. It just says, it was somehow born there, and when it got detected, it had already freakishly high power of infection and transmission human-to-human, way out of the generally measured probability envelope for such a thing in such a short time.
What MIGHT have happened is an instance of what is called island pressure, originally called Foster's rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster%27s_rule). In short, isolated environments are pressure cooker for evolution.
Here's a possible (baseless) hypothesis : some relatively inoffensive SARS variant genetically engineered to study gain of function, as per the CDC/Wuhan contract from Fauci, might have gotten out of a secure container inside the lab, or out of an animal during manipulation, in a minor lapse of protocol. Mind you, It didn't get out of the lab at that moment. It might then have jumped-to-and-fro among the human and non human fauna, evolving as it went, until it became strong enough, within that enclose environment. THEN and only then it was enough for safety protocols to fail a second time, in a minor way, considering how easily it transmits, for the virus to get out in the world.
Also, the scientific method is by definition the invention of baseless assertions (hypotheses), and then their very methodical verification, to gain useful knowledge.
Now the answer to "why give it oxygen" ?
Hardly anybody finishes to explain the sentence "it originated in..." in the US public sphere with "due to effects of evolution", save some off-the-mainstream guys like Brett Weinstein. I have the hypothesis, born out of my european ignorance, that it was because some part of Trump's and Republican's electorate do not believe in the concept of evolution itself, and would not like it spread by their representatives.
Still, I would give it oxygen, as indicated at the start, because if true we'd need to develop some policy to deal with that. It might go anywhere on the spectrum from much stringent safety protocols when dealing with gain of function to a complete prohibition of such research.
I'd like to see the debate between virologists about this. Belief statements in science tend to need to come with qualitative reasoning.
Because "wuhan" is not really it for me.