United States of America Scoping: The Lab Theory Is Back

The Lab Theory Is Back

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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May 26, 2021

The Lab Theory Is Back

Formerly dismissed as a conspiracy theory, the notion that Covid-19 spilled from a lab in Wuhan is returning in force, as President Joe Biden on Wednesday directed US intelligence agencies to "redouble their efforts" to get to the bottom of Covid-19's origins.

Why now? For one, it has come to light that a US intelligence assessment noted several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with Covid-19, as CNN's Natasha Bertrand, Kylie Atwood, Katie Bo Williams and Zachary Cohen detail. (The Trump administration had already alluded to researchers who'd fallen ill that autumn.)

Some scientists were quick to swat away the lab theory in early 2020, but their opinions have not been monolithic, as Nicholas Wade writes in a long essay for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, citing highly technical disputes over what the virus's particular spikes indicate about where it came from.

Wade's former colleague at The New York Times, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., writes at Medium that journalists were waved off the lab theory early in the pandemic, but a trickle of new information over the last year has led him to view it as plausible. While McNeil takes issue with Wade's insinuations of a coverup in the scientific community, McNeil writes that "more and … more scientists feel misled. I now agree with Nick's central conclusion: We still do not know the source of this awful pandemic. We may never know. But the argument that it could have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or a sister lab in Wuhan has become considerably stronger than it was a year ago, when the screaming was so loud that it drowned out serious discussion."

A Future of Authoritarian Skyjacking?

Following the sensational story of a plane carrying a Belarusian opposition journalist, from Greece to Lithuania, being instructed to land in Minsk (and escorted by a fighter jet) on Sunday following a disputed bomb threat, Anne Applebaum writes for The Atlantic that we should expect this to happen again.

"Invariably," other authoritarian leaders will employ the tactic of coercing planes over their territory to land, "if only because it sends a message to their dissident and exile communities: You are not safe," Applebaum writes. Applebaum urges the West to stand up to such behavior, but The Economist wonders what can be done. "The problem is that there are few teeth with which to bite Belarus," the magazine writes, noting the complex legalities of aviation and the International Civil Aviation Organization's lack of regulatory authority.

"Had aviation been included in post-war international trade treaties, breaches would be subject to the World Trade Organisation's dispute-settlement mechanism," the magazine writes. "But the mechanism is slow, and in any case intended to deal with quarrels about international commerce—not acts of piracy."

Let the Superspreading Begin?

As the Global Briefing has noted before, a public outcry has emerged in Japan against convening the summer Olympics—already delayed by a year—as planned late next month, given the pandemic. Nikkei Asia underlines that point in an editorial citing widespread public opposition and calling on the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to issue more detailed plans for holding the games safely.

Health experts are worried, too: A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine warns that the International Olympic Committee's "playbooks are not built on scientifically rigorous risk assessment, and they fail to consider the ways in which exposure occurs, the factors that contribute to exposure, and which participants may be at highest risk." The IOC should work to segment low-risk sports like archery from higher-risk ones—and figure out what to do about spectators—the authors write, suggesting that canceling the games may be safest, though the Olympics would indeed provide an opportunity for the world to connect after a year of separation and isolation.

Come See Me in My Office

As the worst of the pandemic begins to abate in countries with high vaccination rates like the US, some CEOs are back in the office, while rank-and-file employees seem reluctant to return, Joshua Chaffin writes for the Financial Times, previewing bosses' attempts to lure them back and foreshadowing labor-market competition, as workers could jump ship for more-flexible setups offered by competitors.

"At stake are competing visions of the workplace of the future, and the degree of flexibility that workers should have in deciding where and how they do their jobs," Chaffin writes. "Or, as [Wharton Property Advisors CEO Ruth] Colp-Haber predicted in a recent note to clients, 'class warfare may soon be coming to an office near you regarding the scope of hybrid work' … This would not be the first time a pandemic has tilted the labour-management balance. After the Black Death swept Europe in the 14th century, leaving fields without farm hands, landowners were forced to grant better pay and conditions to serfs."