Boris Johnson's support for Covid lab leak theory is significant

For once, Johnson may have done a public service

September 29, 2024 5:57 p.m.(Updated 5:58 p.m.)

Boris Johnson releases his memoir, timed to coincide with the Conservative Party conference, in his usual attention-seeking manner and written in his familiar raspy, florid style.

Political autobiographies tend to be solipsistic attempts to cement their authors' place in history, so most are very dreary. Given Johnson's shameful record in office, his selfishness and his sad relationship with the truth, his book would normally serve only as a sad reminder of his party's descent into the stupidity that led to such a brutal rejection of the share of the electorate.

Yet one nugget stands out: his suggestion that the Covid-19 pandemic was triggered by some sort of leak from a Wuhan laboratory rather than zoonotic transmission from an animal species.

The horrible thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it seems to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects, he writes. It now seems extremely likely that the mutation was the result of a botched experiment in a Chinese laboratory. Some scientists were clearly piecing together virus fragments, like the witches from Macbeth, bat eye and frog toe, and oops, the frisky little creature jumped out of the test tube and started replicating itself everywhere in the world.

This allegation, reported by Sunday mailis significant since Johnson was prime minister when a strange new coronavirus burst into this central Chinese city, spreading death, fear and economic devastation across the planet (and almost causing its own demise).

The former prime minister becomes the most high-profile leader after Donald Trump to publicly express these suspicions, although the view has become increasingly widely held among the public in the 55 months since I began investigating China's cover-up of the birth of Covid.

Like the former President of the United States, Johnson is a politician with a history of deception and hated by many enemies. But that doesn't mean he's always wrong.

It would be nice to think that we have learned from the stupid tribalism that has clouded the debate over the origins of Covid, because the outcome is so important in guarding against another pandemic.

Johnson's statement, coming from such a crucial source, should finally spark serious exploration of these issues in Britain. Politicians, civil servants, key scientists and intelligence agencies must be put on the spot and questioned under oath about their knowledge of the outbreak, especially given all the growing evidence of an organized attempt at the highest levels levels of stifling the debate on the origins by stigmatizing the epidemic. the idea of ​​a lab leak as a conspiracy theory.

Last week, Professor Kevin Fong, former national clinical advisor on emergency preparedness at NHS England, described the pandemic as the biggest national emergency this country has faced since the Second World War, so that he spoke movingly and often tearfully about the medical response during Covid hearings.

This investigation costs taxpayers 200 million euros. Yet when former minister Michael Gove, another central player in the UK response, said there was a significant body of judgment that believed the virus itself was of human origin, he was quickly shut down for having got lost on this somewhat controversial issue.

This is unacceptable. There is not enough space to wade through the complex debate here, suffice it to say that there is no definitive proof on the origins yet. Intense efforts to find a host creature that could have led a virus from bats living hundreds of miles away to transmit to humans in Wuhan with attempts to blame creatures such as pangolins and raccoon dogs led to suggest the virus broke out in a wet market. .

This hackneyed theory, which keeps bouncing like a penny, has been firmly rejected by the Chinese authorities and the best coronavirologist in the world. This does not match the evidence on early cases, nor much research attempting to date early infections.

The alternative argument raised by Johnson gradually grew stronger as each scrap of evidence accumulated. There were always well-founded suspicions that a pandemic was breaking out in the city that is home to the world's largest Sars-like virus research laboratory, particularly when it emerged that there were concerns known regarding security practices.

This lab collected thousands of bat viruses from southern China and Southeast Asia, but hid its database. He has conducted high-risk gain-of-function research to increase the infectiousness of coronaviruses in low-security environments, called the Wild West even by his backers in Washington.

And we learned that shortly before the pandemic, scientists in Wuhan proposed with their partners in the United States to create viruses with the defining characteristic of the Covid virus, the furin cleavage site that allows more efficient entry into the human cells and which are not found on similar types of coronaviruses. . This lab leak theory has been supported by a series of shocking leaks and revelations surrounding some of the most prominent figures championing the zoonotic case.

Yet this heated debate divides even intelligence agencies in the United States, although at least Washington has made some effort to establish the truth, even if discussions in Congress have been hopelessly partisan.

In Britain there has been only deep official silence, despite similar concerns about the role of some leading scientists and institutions, including Sir Patrick Vallance, recently appointed science minister by the Labor government.

Science is based on openness and the vigorous clash of ideas. Yet the issues here go beyond the central question of the cause of Covid-19 and Beijing's role in covering up the initial outbreak, which compounded its impact with terrible and tragic consequences.

They raise questions about the regulation of risky experiments, the role of Western funding agencies, the behavior of leading scientists, the failures of global public health agencies, the duplicity of academic journals, the shaky reporting of naive journalists, and even the corruption of universities by the Chinese. species.

Behind all this lies the stench of elitist arrogance and the curvature of democratic institutions in the face of a repugnant dictatorship. For once, Johnson may have done a public service.