Article says there is compelling but contested “smoking gun” evidence in favor of both lab leak and zoonotic/wet market origin theories (only one of which can be the actual origin), including new elaboration of details about infections at Wuhan Institute of Virology that could have started the pandemic:
> Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Zhu Yan, three gain-of-function coronavirus researchers at WIV, became severely ill with COVID-like symptoms in the second week of November 2019 and sought hospital care.
The article is ultimately agnostic about the truth and concludes:
> the origins question has broken down into a pair of rival theories that don’t—and can’t—ever fully interact. They’re based on different sorts of evidence, with different standards for evaluation and debate. Each story may be accruing new details—fresh intelligence about the goings-on at WIV, for example, or fresh genomic data from the market—but these are only filling out a picture that will never be complete. The two narratives have been moving forward on different tracks. Neither one is getting to its destination.
I think this is a good point, but here’s a follow up question: is the zoonotic theory incompatible with this list of patient zeros?
It would be a somewhat odd coincidence for virus researchers to be the people infected at the market. But… it seems not completely unlikely that there could be other people infected who didn’t have serious symptoms. Without China sharing all available data it’s going to be impossible to be sure one way or another.
The article is ultimately agnostic about the truth and concludes: > the origins question has broken down into a pair of rival theories that don’t—and can’t—ever fully interact. They’re based on different sorts of evidence, with different standards for evaluation and debate. Each story may be accruing new details—fresh intelligence about the goings-on at WIV, for example, or fresh genomic data from the market—but these are only filling out a picture that will never be complete. The two narratives have been moving forward on different tracks. Neither one is getting to its destination.