Ask Ethan: Couldn’t COVID-19 have originated in a Chinese lab?

For a long time, after speaking with an enormous number of virologists and experts in related, adjacent fields — from the pandemic’s early days up through to the present — I’ve asserted that we can be certain that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, definitively spilled over from a wet market in China into the human population. The other mainstream narrative — that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory through gain-of-function research, which then infected lab workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — is undermined and refuted by an overwhelming suite of scientific evidence, all of which points toward the zoonotic spillover scenario.

You would think that going to the relevant experts and asking them what the scientific evidence supports, including why and how, would be the way to truly uncover the origins of the 21st century’s worst global pandemic so far. But instead, the majority of Americans believe that the lab leak scenario — itself a conspiracy theory — has more merits, and that the “real” conspiracy is taking place among scientists who seek to cover it up. After my latest piece, many have written to me asking why I dismiss the lab leak scenario when so many, including intelligence agencies, prefer it. Inquiries include:

“[The] C.I.A. now favors a lab leak theory to explain Covid’s origins, why don’t you?”
“The chutzpah displayed in calling the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis a “conspiracy theory” at this stage is remarkable given that the FBI and scientists at the Department of Energy, as well as many prominent virologists and geneticists… have lent credence to it.”
“it becomes clear that [the office of the director of national intelligence] does not say that there was no biosafety incident; it says they did not know of one. Big difference!”
“Time for a mea culpa on your long history of denying the lab leak.”
“Back in 2021, you had multiple posts on the lab leak theory for Covid, which you debunked. Considering the news… it would be interesting to revisit this issue.”

I’ve already written at length about the evidence for this, so this week I’m very pleased to outsource my “Ask Ethan” to an even better expert: Dr. Philipp Markolin, whose new book, Lab Leak Fever, has just been released in Europe, and is still seeking an English-language publisher willing to take the risk on publishing his book. What follows is a question-and-answer interview with him about this exact topic.

The host cell, shown in yellowish-brown, contains ACE2 (in green) on its outer cell membrane. SARS-CoV-2 is excellent at binding to this molecule, allowing it to infect the cell. ACE2 behaves as a cellular doorway, and the virus’s receptor-binding domain (RBD) is what allows it entry.

Ethan Siegel (ES): You made some very interesting choices in how to approach the telling of the origin story for SARS-CoV-2: the virus that causes COVID-19, in your book, Lab Leak Fever. I was reminded of a Frank Zappa quote, “One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.” And yet, that’s exactly what you’re seeking to do with Lab Leak Fever. What challenges did you recognize you were up against as far as science communication goes, and how did that inform how you chose the book’s structure, tone, and style?

Philipp Markolin (PM): I thought about this a lot. We humans are not immune to facts and reasoning, albeit we might often experience otherwise, when other motivations and needs supersede our desire for good factual information. Yet research shows that evidence and arguments can and do change minds; we are not completely irrational or hopeless either. I think what we often forget in science is that we humans are also a storytelling species; we need stories to make sense of our world and circumstances.

The big disadvantage science has in the competitive information age is that fictions can be optimized for engagement and audience demand, but facts usually can not. That means that you will have a complicated, messy, incomplete scientific explanation based on facts that has to compete with countless fictional narratives optimized by the best storytellers the world has to offer. I believe that in order to give science a fighting chance, science communicators, writers, and advocates have to somehow try to level the playing field by using our scientific literacy and expertise to become more creative, more interesting, or smarter in the factual stories we try to tell. So that is what I tried to do with Lab Leak Fever, telling the inside story behind the origin controversy using unheard testimony and unique insights from many scientists in the center of it all; and maybe more importantly, also expose the many obstacles, agendas and tormentors that set out to sabotage their work and our public understanding of it.

But my god, this pandemic origin story was the most difficult story to tell by any comparison. You have so many complexities: the complicated science, the geopolitics, the media, the various protagonists with different expertise spread out over many countries, places, and times. It took me more than a year of planning how such a monstrous story can ever be told without getting hopelessly lost, and I have to say, looking back, the book proposal that I had was running over 70 pages of planning, notes, timelines; all in an effort to reduce complexity but retain accuracy; to tell what really happened without missing any critical pieces, to make it interesting and count on and respect the intellect of readers. Honestly, at some point, I just had to write and hope that at the end of this process, what comes out does history justice. 

So to do this, the book follows a few guiding principles, most importantly of factual accuracy, a focus on evidence-based reasoning and a seriousness and rigorousness towards it; and lastly, treating the many scientists in the book as humans, not as their function, their track record or their affiliation to a profession, nation or cabal. But I guess that is in a way trying to uphold factual accuracy, we humans are idiosyncratic beings, and to accurately reflect us and our actions, we should not ignore this reality as writers, but embrace it. My hope and belief is that it is still possible to tell what really happened, no matter how messy the reality, and that people will appreciate that, even in our current chaotic age.

The Lab Leak conspiracy theory, promoted here in 2021 by Sen. Rand Paul, vilifies Dr. Fauci and attempts to tie him to the notion that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in and leaked from the Wuhan Institute for Virology. The scientific evidence says otherwise on all counts.

ES: Whenever there’s a controversy over a science-based issue, one danger is that the “losing” side, or the side that the evidence doesn’t support, is going to abandon scientific reasoning and instead try the case in the court of public opinion, where scientific facts are not the only issue at play. When you were investigating the controversy over the origins of COVID-19, what significant findings did you uncover, and what do they imply for both COVID’s origins and the origins of future pandemics?

PM: I think this is correct, science is a myth-buster and that will eventually ruffle feathers, be it our own when it challenges what we want to hold true, or when it debunks the narratives of those who seek to manipulate with fictions and falsehoods.

The first important finding is that there never was a “scientific” laboratory origin hypothesis, but only a faceless blob of shifting speculations, allegations, and magical thinking that mutated and adapted over the years to fit the desire of audiences, governments, and the powerful. These ideas were not advocated for to lay out a scientific case. Instead, they were used as a tool for manipulation; they were optimized to trigger our suspicions, to emotionally capture us, and to persuade us to join into a nihilistic worldview where everybody supposedly lies, nothing is ever really true, therefore everything is always possible.

The second important thing, and I think the most dramatic finding, is how our information ecosystem is vulnerable in very specific ways that not only lead to exploitation by the powerful, but to an asymmetry that works against facts, science, and an evidence-based worldview. This is very dangerous, because when we lose our connection to a shared set of facts, we can not build a consensus reality, we can not corroborate to find solutions, all our conflicts become perpetual and democracy is dead. This is what we observe today, with new dangerous movements, based on old and dark ideas of power, subjugation and extinction, gaining traction around the world.

Unfortunately, this implies that the lab leak myth will continue in public discourse for as long as it holds emotional power of its believers and serves the strategic aims of those who fuel and amplify it again and again. It also means that every future pandemic will be a war on two fronts; one to contain the spread and havoc of a new biological threat, and one to contain the corrosive impact of cynical profiteers and manipulators who spread false narratives for self-serving gains. While science learned an incredibly amount to deal with the former, we seem more vulnerable and less prepared when it comes to the latter.

This illustration shows a coronavirus molecule with a string of RNA inside. Although a SARS-CoV-2 virus might have a genome that’s only 30,000 base pairs long, about 1000 of those base pairs are different from its closest naturally-found relatives. Meanwhile, just a few small genetic changes can lead to it evading the immunity developed from prior infection(s), enabling it to infect humans again and again.

ES: A lot of people point to suspicious circumstances surrounding the origin of this pandemic as evidence that it was leaked from a Chinese lab. That circumstantial evidence includes the proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the wet market where cases first emerged, the secretive behavior of the Chinese government and the Chinese CDC, past biosafety incidents at the WIV, a rejected DARPA proposal to perform gain-of-function research on existing coronaviruses, and more. In what sense, from a scientific point of view, do these circumstances actually count as evidence either in favor of or against the notion of a lab leak origin for the virus?

PM: We can take them one by one.

a) proximity to lab: I think this seems superficially obvious, but looks at the problem from the wrong perspective. The better questions to ask are: What are the odds that a novel virus would show up ONLY at a wet-market that has animals susceptible to and carrying these types of viruses if it came from a lab 10 miles (16 kilometers) away? Or, how discriminative is lab proximity really for a theory? If the virus broke out in another Chinese megacity, what are the odds of a coronavirus lab in the same city? It turns out, the answer to the latter is that 8/10 Chinese megacities have coronavirus labs, sometimes multiple of them, and many of them were sampling in Southern China, or collaborating with EcoHealth Alliance, Institute Pasteur, etc… that would have given rise to the same “lab in the city” proximity argument as Wuhan. So it just is not a very good discriminative argument by itself.

b) secretive Chinese behavior: China controls information flows and pushes its official narrative, which is that the virus did not come from China. The only verified evidence of cover-ups from China we do have all surround the market origin theory, which is a big embarrassment for them after SARS in 2002/2003, where they promised to clean up their act. Instead, they now lied about wild mammals being at the market, they actively suppressed any investigation into market suppliers, got rid of animals without testing them, they prohibited bat researchers from searching for SARS-CoV-2 relatives in China and punished them when they did; they incentivized/required Chinese researchers to conduct studies about “cold chain” products and influenced their publications to push this narrative in the scientific literature and for the WHO mission. On top of that, the (illegal) wildlife trade is often done by what some call the black/red alliance (criminal syndicates and Chinese Communist Party members looking the other way for a cut), and the owner of the Huanan market is reportedly entangled with the Xi family. Chinese researchers also have been muffled, are not allowed to speak up for a market origin, and their publications are getting vetted and approved by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and politicians. Social media censors also reportedly remove content claiming the Huanan market was the origin of the pandemic, something that does not happen about lab speculations, at least based on some Chinese sources. So yeah, have fun arguing that their secrecy clearly points to the lab.

c) past biosafety incidents: Unverified and ultimately irrelevant. Accidents can happen, their likelihood does not factor into the origin question at all in my opinion. I always assumed they have a 100% likelihood of leaking every virus they ever had, and this assumption does not move the needle at all from a zoonotic origin. Because the real problem for the lab leak theory is not the idea of whether an accident is likely or not, but explaining how an unknown pandemic-ready virus came about in a lab/or was found by a lab (which is insanely unlikely as we will see), and why all verified evidence of the outbreak points away from the lab and towards a wet market instead.

d) rejected DARPA proposal: was not funded and work was never conducted. Even if it had been conducted (with a lot of fantasy and eye-squinting to look over actual details and outlines in the proposal), it could not possibly have created SARS-CoV-2. No experimental setup, known, proposed, or imagined, could have reasonably created the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2. Certainly not in 2019. But to appreciate this, one needs to first go and learn a lot about virology and the specifics of the virus.

Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan in this 2017 photo. The P4 epidemiological laboratory, part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is one of the world’s leading research centers on coronaviruses. Since 2020, it has also been the target of many baseless accusations about biosafety, secret research, bioweapons development, and more.

ES: On the other hand, there is some very strong and compelling scientific evidence of SARS-CoV-2’s origins: written in the genome of the virus itself. The virus, in particular, exhibits what’s known as a mosaic genome: where components of its genome are found in a variety of other viruses that are known to exist in the wild. How does the genome of SARS-CoV-2 reveal its origins, and why have so many virologists — the overwhelming majority of professionals in the field — been convinced of its natural origins since March of 2020?

PM: Yes, so a common argument is that because there are molecular techniques to manipulate viruses, even create viral genomes, without obvious markers of manipulation, we can never exclude that a virus has been artificially created. That argument might be true for a generic virus, but it is not true for SARS-CoV-2. This has to do with a special feature of sarbecoviruses, so the sub-genus of SARS-related betacoronaviruses circulating in bats in the wild, which is that much of their evolution is driven by recombination.

Recombination happens when two viruses infect the same cell and produce offspring that have genetic segments from both parental lineages. It turns out that sarbecoviruses mix and mingle a lot, and so their genomes look much like a mosaic or patchwork of high sequence similarity with (sometimes) quite distant parental lineages. This is telling because genomes, like for us humans, are not only building instructions but also contain our ancestry.

When you look at SARS-CoV-2’s mosaic genome, you do not see a single history of one ancestor virus, but at least 27 different pieces that all have a higher similarity to viruses found in the wild than to any particular virus like RaTG13 that Zhengli Shi at the WIV had. So that means SARS-CoV-2 could not have come from mixing close relatives through some lab experimentation, like swapping the RBD domain as Zhengli has done in the past. SARS-COV-2’s mosaic genome could only have come about in the wild, so that excludes a lot, albeit not all, speculations of laboratory manipulation. However, recombination does not have the highest resolution, so it is not impossible that the WIV found SARS-CoV-2 bat ancestor in the wild and then made small changes like mutations or even introducing things like a Furin-cleavage motif; but there are other lines of evidence that strongly argue against this. To quote Linfa Wang: “I always say making a recombinant virus is easy. Making a virus like SARS-CoV-2, before nature came up with it, is impossible.”

This figure shows the structure of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2. Panel A shows the spike homotrimer in its open configuration, while panel B shows the cleavage sites on the spike protein. Note how the configuration of a protein, and how it folds in its environment, controls many aspects of its functioning. Even an identically structured protein isn’t going to perform the same in different environments, which is research that would be outlawed under the proposed Dangerous Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act.

ES: The hallmark of what separates a scientific hypothesis from a conspiracy theory, at least in my mind, is specificity. If you have a step-by-step pathway by which something could have occurred, then you can test and either validate or refute your hypothesis by gathering the relevant evidence. If you only have a vague collection of ideas, however, then you can move your goalposts or change the narrative to keep a conspiracy theory alive indefinitely. How does the idea of a lab leak, and whether it’s a scientific hypothesis or a conspiracy theory, stack up in your mind?

PM: This is actually a very interesting question. So per definitions from the past, I think that conspiracy theories tended to be extremely complicated and specific; convolutedly trying to find explanations for how the conspiracy is still possible given the evidence. I do not think that what we call the “lab leak theory” is actually that; it is much more a large narrative — a myth — heavily leaning on conspiratorial ideation and speculation, but with a very intuitive, simple, and emotionally salient message: “Somebody in the lab fucked up.” I call the amalgamation of mutually exclusive speculations, allegations, conspiracy theories and special pleading a myth, because while each individual idea is easily debunked by available evidence, in their sum, they act as a narrative juggernaut that seemingly can explain away, or throw enough doubt at, all scientific evidence to the contrary.

However, and just to be clear: There has never been a scientific “lab leak theory,” or if there was, I never encountered it. No paper, no scientist, no advocate ever formulated a testable hypothesis that can explain all the available evidence; like how exactly would a lab create a viral mosaic genome like SARS-CoV-2 in 2019? What experiments? Or how could a virus leak from a lab and cause what looks like two divergent lineages spreading from a wild market? Show me your epidemiological modelling that is scientific and can produce that outcome and the likelihood for that. All people do is handwave and postulate magical explanations or invoke god-of-the-gaps arguments. But if nobody can formulate a theory that can at least incorporate and not contradict available facts and evidence, that alone should be telling, in my opinion.

Markets, such as this one in Hong Kong, often contain fruits, vegetables, animals, and other derivative products available for purchase. Produce and animals are brought in from up to thousands of kilometers away, including adjacent provinces and even foreign or offshore sources, for sale at such markets. Wuhan is the hub city for all of central/southern China, and goods, including animals, often arrive at markets there after journeys in excess of 1000 kilometers.

ES: One key piece of evidence that’s often very overlooked is the fact that the “ground zero” site for the first COVID-19 infections in humans, the Huanan Seafood Market, saw two different strains of the virus appear in the infected population. In other words, there were two different genetic sequences for SARS-CoV-2 found among infected patients. What can that piece of information tell us about the origins of this virus and how it found its way into humans?

PM: This is remarkable. So from early on, epidemiologists saw that about ⅓ of all cases belonged to so-called lineage A, and about ⅔ belonged to lineage B. But when they traced the root of those respective phylogenetic trees, they realized that they were not connected to each other; these two lineages most likely came from two separate introduction events. This has to do with their specific tree-shape, or polytomy, that makes the original roots of lineage A and lineage B diversify quickly after introduction into humans that a single introduction event can not explain well at all.

If you take this result seriously, then any type of lab accident scenario becomes a non-starter; unless you want to postulate that two lab workers got independently infected, went to the Huanan market independently, about a week apart from each other, so infectious that they caused a massive outbreak there twice in a row, but without infecting anybody else along the way, in the lab or in their personal lives. It is just one of those pieces, when combined with all other lines of evidence, that create a very coherent picture of what happened at the market and in Wuhan, and what did not happen there.

The central idea of the lab leak hypothesis, that the virus spilled over from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is only possible if the virus from which SARS-CoV-2 originated was actually ever inside the institute itself. If the virus originated naturally, with parts of it found in animals that were located in a wild population in Laos, which genetic sequencing uncovered in 2021 indicates, the lab leak hypothesis is ruled out as a possibility. You cannot create something through gain-of-function research that will have an identical genetic code to something that came about in the wild through natural processes such as recombination.

ES: A very underappreciated piece of information about how viruses evolve is related to the idea of virus recombination, sometimes known among laypersons (but despised by virologists) as “virus sex.” You remarked, in your book, that this was something you yourself needed to learn about, as it was a gap in your knowledge about virology when you first took an interest in the origins of SARS-CoV-2. If you could talk to 2020-era Philipp Markolin and tell him about virus recombination, what would you say to a younger version of yourself?

PM: Yes, I did not appreciate the role of recombination in viral evolution out of pure ignorance, and to be fair, science in 2020, even 2021, was not that far along yet. Not enough SARS-CoV-2 relatives had been found. What really opened my eyes was the study published by Spyros Lytras, “The origins of SARS-CoV-2 through the lens of recombination,” which preprinted in late 2021, published in 2022. That really was like: Ah, here is a huge gap of ignorance about all those wild viruses and how they relate to each other; that is why all the experts in Feb/March 2020 got more firm in their conclusion when the human-binding RBD in pangolins showed up that was almost identical to the RBD in SARS-CoV-2; and then of course bat coronavirus RmYn02, a close viral cousin collected by Professor Alice Hughes, really made recombination clear.

This color-coded diagram represents 15 recombinant fragments of various SARS-related beta coronaviruses compared to the original genome of SARS-CoV-2 that first infected humans. Several different strains show a “best match” for a variety of these 15 fragments, indicating a recombination-based origin for SARS-CoV-2, and refuting the feasibility of a lab creation through gain-of-function research.

ES: There are still a great number of people — perhaps spurred on by a variety of untruthful, disingenuous narratives they’ve read in a variety of news and opinion outlets — who believe the virus might have escaped from a lab. Back in May of 2021, you and I had our first online interaction, and you were adamant that the lab leak idea wasn’t a conspiracy theory and that it could be the way that COVID-19 entered the human population. Clearly, people far less educated in biology and virology than you still believe that. How did you change your mind, and what would you encourage others to consider if they want to understand “what is true” instead of “what they can imagine is possible?”

PM: The point was that I had fallen for the narrative that the idea of a laboratory accident was discarded too soon based on the disinformation campaigns throughout all of 2020 coming from the Trump administration. Even before that, I believed that an accident could not be excluded, and it was unscientific to discard the lab leak theory without compelling evidence. Of course, this was before I actually spent the time and energy to learn what evidence was already available and what it would tell us; and that is the problem, isn’t it? For understanding the zoonotic origin theory, one has to acquire A LOT of knowledge; about bats and spillovers, about coronaviruses, about recombination, about viral evolution, epidemiology, computational models, history… because each different area contributes just a bit to the full picture. But once that full picture emerged from all these different lines and types of evidence, all telling the same story, that becomes a really powerful body of scientific evidence that can not be moved anymore by the next shiny pseudo-event the media ecosystems cough up into virality.

For the lab leak myth, it is completely different. You are presented with a very simple full picture — “somebody in the lab fucked up” — but never with any evidence; and then a lot of handwaving and encouragement to never ask deeper questions and fully think it through.

Horseshoe bats, as seen here in their natural environment, are abundant and diverse all across southern and central Asia, and carry a wide range of coronaviruses. The ancestral strain, RaTG13, is a 96% match for SARS-CoV-2, but is missing some important parts of the genetic sequence that lead SARS-CoV-2 to be infectious to humans. That genetic information, importantly, exists within viruses found in related animal populations throughout the wild.

ES: There’s a piece of information that troubles me greatly. Nature has its own “gain of function” laboratory: the wild, where viruses circulate in animal hosts, and where animal-animal (and hence, virus-virus) contact is widespread and ubiquitous. Knowing just a fraction of what’s out there in the wild, and knowing what the potential for human-animal contact is in these regions, what should people be aware of if they’re actually serious about conducting effective pandemic prevention and mitigation?

PM: So the situation is actually getting more worrisome. Because our world is changing in ways that make viral pandemics a lot more likely given our increased connectivity, mobility, and transport hubs on the one hand, and our increased encroachment into and destruction of natural habitats on the other, we increase the amount of “risky” interfaces where natural viruses can spill over and then quickly find a path to our cities. On top of that, by dislocating bats, taking away their roosts or feeding grounds, we reduce their immunity, making viral titers in them higher and more likely to shed virus, all while forcing them to mix and mingle ever more with other species, which can become intermediate host reservoirs, making our farming practices and meat consumption habits dangerous.

On top of that, human encroachment into previously wild places also means that every year, tens of thousands of humans can get directly infected with new viruses. Serological studies in places like Myanmar showed that for people who had contact with wildlife in this Karst region, up to 20% had antibodies against coronaviruses we have not even discovered yet. So that is worrisome; the more opportunity we give viruses to jump into us, or our domestic animals like cows, pigs, or chicken, the more likely the viruses will find a way to adapt and ultimately become a danger to us all.

That being said, not all is hopeless. The beauty of science is that we have pragmatic solutions to most of these issues already, from surveillance in animals to education of risk communities, from vaccines and antivirals to fast-acting outbreak playbooks. All these efforts already reduce the frequency and severity of outbreaks; and destroying these programs as has happened now will make everybody worse off.

Marburg virus, a deadly infectious disease, spreads through close contact with infected body fluids. It isn’t just the most popular respiratory viruses that virologists work to protect us against, but a wide assortment of afflictions for humans and animals.

ES: It’s kind of amusing to me — albeit in a horrifying way — that there are so many people accusing China of covering up “the truth” about the origins of the pandemic, insinuating that there was illegal, unethical, or even bioweapon research conducted in a Chinese lab, and that a lab leak is the real culprit. Yet China did cover up the actual truth about the pandemic’s origins: an illegal wet market, with live and dead animals for sale that were collected from up to 1000+ kilometers away, that poses an incredible threat to human safety. Other than to read your book, which I recommend, what do you wish that everyone knew about this practice and its potential to trigger pandemics in humans?

PM: The wildlife trade, and especially the smuggling of exotic and illegal wildlife, is extremely problematic. I think the evidence we have today strongly suggests that only within these wounded and vulnerable intermediate animals can a bat coronavirus (which lives in the gastrointestinal tracts of bats) really explore new routes of infection and become a respiratory pathogen like SARS-CoV-2. That is some serious, completely unregulated, serial passage gain-of-function experiment we are conducting on a scale much larger than anything virologists ever get to do in a lab. So some of these practices really breed these types of dangerous respiratory pathogens along the wildlife trade and smuggling operations before they reach their endpoint: being sold at wet markets in Chinese megacities.

A typical example of a scene at a fur farm, showing human-animal contact. Animals are often killed en masse prior to them being skinned by hand at a pelt or fur farm. This industry is a $61 billion per year enterprise in China alone, and is a prime candidate for the zoonotic spillover of SARS-CoV-2 into humans that occurred at the Huanan Wet Market in China.

ES: This book should have come out in the United States already, even before the now-released German language edition came out. However, now the book is only available for sale in German for the time being. What happened?

PM: So the book was slated to be published by now, first in the US, by a small printing press associated with a state college. But after the Republicans won the election, it became too risky, especially since actors in Trump’s inner orbit became powerful again and started pushing the lab leak theory from the get-go. (We all saw that the CIA immediately started making headlines pushing the lab leak theory as more likely once John Ratcliffe, a lab leak manipulator and part of the Heritage Foundation’s “origin commission” that I describe in my book, got installed to lead the agency). That, I believe, made the stakes too high for my publisher, who not only worried about all their jobs at their printing press, but the whole college they are associated with. And honestly, I can not blame them, especially seeing how aggressively the Trump administration has attacked universities, scientific institutions, and higher education since they took power. They even tried to find a bigger publisher with more resources to withstand potential pushback, but so far, to no avail. So we parted respectfully, and I will always be grateful for the work they put in to make the book professional, and I had to gear up with Swiss lawyers looking for a way forward, which still is not without significant risk for me personally.

I mean, it was always clear that the book will ruffle some feathers, and I am very worried about my protagonists becoming targets again, and also what China could do to me if they sense this book is a threat to their official narrative. But never in a million years did I think that I now have to worry even more about actors in US, in the highest halls of power, and what they could do to punish me for threatening their narrative. It is deeply unsettling, personally, but also for journalists and writers anywhere. If even somebody like me, sitting in Switzerland, one of the safest countries in the world and famously neutral, cannot tell a well-researched and factual story about the origins of the pandemic, then what hope is there? So I decided to go ahead, publish it in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and hope to gain enough support that at some point, I can make it accessible to everybody abroad as well.

So yeah, any courageous US publishers out there reading this, feel free to approach me.

And yes, the irony has not escaped me that all the lab leak people cry “censorship” 24/7, and it is actually me who has all these troubles and will face the existential risks if things go south.

In February of 2025, noted anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride, and anti-GMO crusader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., despite the objection of qualified scientists and medical professionals, was sworn in as the director of Health and Human Services in the United States.

ES: One final question for you. You completed this book in late 2024, before any of the events that have now taken place during the second Trump administration. Looking at how the scientific, political, and media landscape has changed, is there anything you didn’t mention in your book that you would like to mention to anyone seriously pondering the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the oft-discussed possibility that it did indeed arise from a Lab Leak?

PM: Yes, I want people to look back at how media manipulators, influencers, and politicians used the lab leak narrative in the US as a test run for their fascist anti-science playbook. The illegal cancellation of research grants, the smearing and scapegoating of scientists, subservient House “revenge” committees abusing the power of the state to punish independent scientists and attack the independence of scientific institutions, the fabricated post-hoc rationalizations and selective leaks that supposedly justify these actions were all tried and tested with the lab leak narrative; often under the applause of a cultivated and willing audience. We see this play out today along all of science in the US, already causing hard-to-fathom harm to people, prosperity, the planet, and all of our futures.

This worries me immensely, the new vulnerabilities that emerged with our interconnected information age seemingly enabled that type of extremist politics of grand narratives and fascist myth-making that we all hoped to have left in the past. I worry that other countries might follow the US if we do not grow wiser about this very fast.

Send in your Ask Ethan questions to startswithabang at gmail dot com!