This market resolves once we have a definitive answer to this question. (i.e. "I've looked at all notable evidence presented by both sides and have upwards of 98% confidence that a certain conclusion is correct, and it doesn't seem likely that any further relevant evidence will be forthcoming any time soon.")
This will likely not occur until many years after Covid is no longer a subject of active political contention, motivations for various actors to distort or hide inconvenient evidence have died down, and a scientific consensus has emerged on the subject. For exactly when it will resolve, see /IsaacKing/when-will-the-covid-lab-leak-market
I will be conferring with the community extensively before resolving this market, to ensure I haven't missed anything and aren't being overconfident in one direction or another. As some additional assurance, see /IsaacKing/will-my-resolution-of-the-covid19-l
(For comparison, the level of evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change would be sufficient, despite the existence of a few doubts here and there.)
If we never reach a point where I can safely be that confident either way, it'll remain open indefinitely. (And Manifold lends you your mana back after a few months, so this doesn't negatively impact you.)
"Come from a laboratory" includes both an accidental lab leak and an intentional release. It also counts if COVID was found in the wild, taken to a lab for study, and then escaped from that lab without any modification. It just needs to have actually been "in the lab" in a meaningful way. A lab worker who was out collecting samples and got contaminated in the wild doesn't count, but it does count if they got contaminated later from a sample that was supposed to be safely contained.
In the event of multiple progenitors, this market resolves YES only if the lab leak was plausibly responsible for the worldwide pandemic. It won't count if the pandemic primarily came from natural sources and then there was also a lab leak that only infected a few people.
I won't bet in this market.
1,000People are also trading
Jimmy Tobias has the fabled May 2020 Z-Division report, supposedly concluding lab leak, out via FOIA and it's almost entirely redacted.
What do you think is the website article that's redacted to kick off the reference list?
Yuri Deigin's falsified April 2020 theory that SARS2 is a lab chimera of a bat and pangolin virus?
Project E.P.S.T.E.I.N. (later renamed "Project E") that found it "highly unlikely anyone would drive a car filled with animal carcasses. Consider the stench."
None of the above
And, can anyone think of a rationale to redact the entire thing? All I can come up with is that it's embarrassingly bad.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimhaslam/p/meet-the-woman-who-published-peer?r=44y3h&utm_medium=ios
Nature is one of the most prestigious science journals — the kind every researcher dreams of publishing in. The COVID-19 origin debate has centered on peer-reviewed papers, most famously the natural-origin Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Professors and virologists have often taunted independent lab leak researchers: Publish in reputable journals like Nature if you want to be taken seriously. But with a peer-review process mired in politics and gatekeeping, that’s nearly impossible. Well, that happened — and her name is Dr. Li-Meng Yan, from Hong Kong.
@George Real pros at work in the documentary that Haslam bases this on!
Dr. Yan claims COVID was intentionally released from the Wuhan BSL4. I’ve argued that COVID would’ve required BSL-5 to contain, given it was designed to spread in the air upwards of 60 feet.
What a joke.
Why we still don’t know where COVID-19 came from. And why we need to find out.
Five years after COVID-19 emerged, killing millions, costing trillions, and disrupting global life, we still don’t have a definitive answer as to the origins of the pandemic and the virus. This continued uncertainty is not due to scientific limitations but the withholding of critical information, particularly by China.
In June 2025, the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 international experts, published its most thorough analysis to date. What SAGO said is clear: Without China providing fundamental data, definitive conclusions remain impossible.
The reason you know Relman is full of it on this topic is because he previously advocated for the disproven Mojiang miner + recombinant SARS2 origin theory. He doesn't mention it now, because it's been disproven. But he still asks for more evidence without any idea of what theory it would test. The idea that more evidence would change his mind is a joke. So is the idea that he'd gladly open his lab books if conspiracy theorists in China demanded it.
Dr. Tom Inglesby, Director, John Hopkins Center for Health Security, Bloomberg School of Public Health:
"It remains a priority to study the origins of COVID. While the evidence for accidental origin of COVID is not definitive, there is a substantial body of strong circumstantial evidence. US intelligence agencies remain divided. The WHO Director has said publicly there is not enough information to conclude one way or another, and the WHO SAGO committee just concluded its recent report saying it did not have sufficient evidence to definitively make judgements about COVID, and it is seeking additional clinical, epidemiologic and laboratory information. Dr Kadlec’s paper includes data and references to reports around biosafety and laboratory practices that are not referenced by SAGO, and so represents a new source of information, references and reports."
@MikePa67d It's odd you can't find any quotes endorsing Kadlec's report's conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 was clandestine mind control virus engineering research gone wrong.
It's almost as if everyone knows it's nuts even if they don't know just how divorced Kadlec's report is from reality on the facts.
Since @MikePa67d is quoting random reviews of Kadlec's report from people who hopefully haven't actually read it and aren't aware of all of it's errors, here's an interesting comparison.
First Muddy Waters report:
The RGD motif is not found in strains identified as RaTG-13 nor GD Pangolin. It is, however, found in a number of other SARS-related coronaviruses, including Rco319, BANAL-52, BANAL-236, RshSTT182, Rs7924, RmYN08, RsYN04, and several others. Therefore, this motif is not an unusual feature unique to SARS-CoV-2, unlike the furin cleavage site. Its clinical implications are significant.
From the latest report (Muddy Waters Version 2, part B, if you're following along):
The SARS-CoV-2 and Pangolin-GD strain also share an integrin-binding protein [sic] at the distal end of the RBD [the "RGD motif"]. This sequence is novel and was not identified in a previous SARS-related virus or coronavirus prior to the pandemic.
So, in the first report, Kadlec made a point about how the sequence wasn't unusual, although it might have clinical significance. He was right about the first part, at least. It's not unusual at all.
But now it's suspiciously rare because Kadlec has decided to add an unhinged story about Chinese research into mind control viruses that went wrong. In reality, this "RGD" sequence motif has been found in SARS2-like coronaviruses in bats in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, and Great Britain.
Dr. Roger Brent: So, while the report falls short of being a case for the prosecution, it continues to fill out a picture of a city engaged in active research efforts on coronaviruses and nipahviruses -- surely by 2020 the largest concentration of such virological R&D in the world-- with research animals and samples being schlepped across town among four different sites. A city in which, in January 2020, workers at one of those sites, a genomics facility at Huazhong Agricultural University uploaded to NCBI a reassemble-able genome of BAC vector into which had been inserted an entire, hitherto unknown, still unacknowledged, MERS-like coronavirus, complete with T7 promoter and Hepatitis D ribozyme and polyA, and so good to go to further engineer or to recover live virus. Presumably, accidentally sequenced, as a contaminant in their uploaded rice genomic datasets (6).
Andrew Weber, a former assistant defense secretary in the Obama administration now at the Council on Strategic Risks, said that Kadlec’s report adds to the “scientific and documentary evidence for an accidental release” of the virus, and highlights the need for the U.S. and other countries to implement “stringent safety measures and limit risky biological research.” https://share.google/gypq49gZo2Rzjcc9i
A claim occasionally pops up in lab leak literature that the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor binding domain is suspiciously well suited for human infections and poorly suited for binding its receptor, Ace2, in bats. A new paper tested this and found that it’s not true.
The results showed that the binding of SARS-CoV-2 S to hACE2 or Rp-bACE2 was significantly above that of BANAL-52 and BANAL-103 S, and the binding of BANAL-52 S to the receptor was the lowest, especially to Rp-bACE2
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01007-25
In other words, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain works fine against bat and human receptors. Exactly what you expect for the virus that happens to have spilled over somewhat recently. Not what you expect from extensive engineering experiments or something else to specifically develop a human targeted virus.
This isn’t a strawman argument — it was the core lab leak theory until Fall 2021 that the SARS2 receptor binding domain was suspiciously different from those found in bats. The furin cleavage site was once far less important to lab leak theorists… until it was the only thing left.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/robert-kadlec-covid-19-pandemic-report-bioweapons
Say what you want about Judith Miller, but she's got her sources in the conservative side of the intelligence community. She's convinced by Robert Kadlec's wildly erroneous report concluding that SARS-CoV-2 was an accident in a Chinese program to develop a mind control bioweapon. Does that mean it's impossible to find anyone with a less wacky story to tell?
Putting aside how Kadlec's report is fundamentally nuts, here's another specific error. From the same page as the one in the comment below.
Kadlec imagines that secret work was carried out by a Beijing-based lab in Wuhan. Kadlec explains that his rationale is a suspicious failure to say where work was done in some papers:
However, and perhaps significantly, General Zhou’s AMMS team did not identify where they conducted these animal vaccine challenge studies (with humanized mice and NHPs) as other vaccine study groups have.
Here, he's referencing two papers. The location of the work is described in the supplementary information for both paper. It's Beijing; not Wuhan:
All experiments involving infectious of SARS-CoV-2 were performed under Biosafety Level 3 facilities in AMMS.
and...
All experiments involving infectious SARS-CoV-2 were performed in biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) containment laboratory in Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, AMMS.
FYI, Kadlec has been nominated as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical, & Biological Defense Policy & Programs 🤯
Folks here who are too young to remember 2001-2003 vividly might want to go revisit what happens to the intel community in the USA when the President declares what the answer is and then everyone is tasked with figuring out how to prove it.
FYI for anyone who took the Vanity Fair and ProPublica reporting seriously (e.g. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab), Robert Kadlec's report linked by @George below shows that it was based on faulty information. Specifically this part of the Vanity Fair reporting:
We analyzed WIV documents, consulted with experts in CCP communications, asked biocontainment experts to help analyze documents, and reviewed with independent scientists the possible evidence that certain vaccine research may have begun far earlier than acknowledged.
Kadlec's report assumes that the vaccination schedule for that research would've required 40 days after a booster dose to collect enough data for a February 24, 2020 patent application. E.g. with this figure:
This is wrong. The data in the patent application only includes samples from 12 days after a single dose.
In other words, this moves the timeline up several weeks from what Kadlec and his investigators assumed. It's no longer suspicious. Case closed.
Edit: There's TONS of stuff in Kadlec's report that is far, far worse than this, but this is the one thing that people seemed to have taken seriously and still do. Now we learn that it was always bogus.
Scowcroft Institute Report Examines COVID-19 Brain Effects And Origins
Texas A&M research institute releases final installment of study highlighting the pandemic’s neurological impact and raising concerns about Chinese military research on coronaviruses.
The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University has released the second and final installment of a major report completed by Dr. Robert Kadlec in 2024. The report, A Critical Review of COVID-19 Origins: “Hidden in Plain Sight,” examines the evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and the disease’s impact on the brain.
The final installment of Kadlec’s report reaches three overarching conclusions:
Evidence suggests that the pandemic began due to a virus escaping a laboratory rather than natural spillover from infected animals. This finding was included in the first installment of the report, published in November 2024.
COVID-19 infection often has major short- and long-term effects on the brain, even in children and people with mild cases. Efforts to treat and prevent these effects should be urgent priorities.
The Chinese military may have been researching a vaccine to protect against the effects of COVID-19 prior to the pandemic. This and other Chinese military research on coronaviruses threaten U.S. national security and raise concerns about Chinese compliance with international arms control treaties.
@George LOL at setting up a proton mail account because the Dean over there is tired of fielding emails about Kadlec's inane reports.
It's also funny he kept in the HVAC renovation data point after he corrected it from a $55.1M to a $550k contract. It was half a billion bucks in the original Muddy Waters report!
To say the least, the guy who has a whole team in the basement of a Senate office building including one guy who said he spoke secret Chinese, but no one in his brain trust knows what 万 means or that air conditioners don't, you know, cost half a billion dollars... that guy isn't going to crack the case now.
Eddie Holmes predicted exactly what trajectory this would take long ago:
To assign the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology requires a set of increasingly implausible “what if?” scenarios. These eventually lead to preposterous suggestions of clandestine bioweapon research.
And now, here we are:
The report further suggests the possibility of offensive biological weapons (BW) research occurring in China with link to the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This is the report’s most provocative finding and one worth taking seriously
The Covid ‘lab leak’ theory isn’t just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that’s the case is bad for science
Dr Jane Qui has gone from being very dismissive of any lab leak scenario to now penning a piece in the Guardian saying it's not a conspiracy theory and blaming the likes of Peter Daszak for damaging trust in science. Quite a turnaround. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/25/covid-lab-leak-theory-right-conspiracy-science
@MikePa67d Until the other day, Jane Qiu was part of the conspiracy theory in lab leak world. Now she and Peter Daszak have some sort of falling out over a movie, we get an odd opinion piece that adds nothing to the debate and absolutely does not say that Jane Qiu thinks lab leak is likely.
But, give that there's no actual evidence to support any "lab leak" theory. The lab leak hive mind is jumping on this as vindication:
Same dude, back when Qiu was part of the global coverup conspiracy:
In the real world, this shows that there is no global coverup of "lab leak" being a likely origin. For people who thought that was somehow plausible a week ago, your inferred likelihood of lab leak should drop. For the rest of us, it's a boring spat between a journalist, a scientist, and a filmmaker spilling over in public.
That kind of spillover is a bit more common than the ones that cause pandemics.
@zcoli Aren't you the guy who gets paid to harass people who disagree with you by emailing their employers?
@Marion8w2 I sent a message (not by email) to the organization that has a book listed under "our work" on its website that says a paper I co-authored might be fraudulent, but doesn't explain why -- Bratlie has two employers and I didn't mail the irrelevant one. I asked if someone could explain what the issue is so that I could answer it; apparently and unsurprisingly, Bratlie can't back up what she writes and put on some performance on X claiming it was censorship to ask a question. If an organization employing someone says that a book is "our work" and the topic of the book is on the same topic as the work they do for the organization, I assume it's work for hire.
Ironically, the relevant part of her book is a call to remove articles, including one I co-authored, from the scientific literature.
The last thing I heard from her was posting an email of mine to X, including my email address, but cropping out the bottom of the email. Here it is -- the question she's so incapable of answering that she doesn't want her audience on X to know that it was asked.
The rest of the email can be seen here -- https://xcancel.com/sigridbratlie/status/1932786213762564129#m
Part of being a scientist is responding to criticism and that's what I tried to do there. This will be the end of responding to anonymous trolls coming over from X. I recommend taking it with a grain of salt when conspiracy theorists claim to be victims of censorship. Inevitably, claimed "censorship" is criticism that they can't respond to.
@zcoli she says a bit more than that. She appears to be calling out your co-authors like Edward Holmes and co. She also clarified her dispute with Daszak was over his continued denial of any conflicts of interest and about the nature of the research undertaken with WIV.
"Some scientists assert evidence supporting natural-origins hypotheses with excessive confidence and show little tolerance for dissenting views. They have appeared eager to shut down the debate, repeatedly and since early 2020. For instance, when their work was published in the journal Science in 2022, they proclaimed the case closed and lab-leak theories dead. Even researchers leaning towards natural origins theories, such as the virus ecologist Vincent Munster of Rocky Mountains Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, told me they lamented that some of their colleagues defend their theories “like a religion”.
@MikePa67d Who cares?
As far as Qiu's example of excessive hubris goes, this from Holmes' article has held up quite well:
To assign the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology requires a set of increasingly implausible “what if?” scenarios. These eventually lead to preposterous suggestions of clandestine bioweapon research.
The lab leak theory stands as an unfalsifiable allegation. If an investigation of the lab found no evidence of a leak, the scientists involved would simply be accused of hiding the relevant material. If not a conspiracy theory, it’s a theory requiring a conspiracy.
Qiu uses Filippa Lentzos as a counterexample, one of "these scholars [that] have lent scientific legitimacy to the debate." Here Lentzos is about a year after Holmes' article joining in evidence free speculation that... clandestine bioweapon research sparked the pandemic.
I think I'm gonna score this one for Holmes.
The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent, international, multidisciplinary experts, today published its report on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
SAGO has advanced the understanding of the origins of COVID-19, but as they say in their report, much of the information needed to evaluate fully all hypotheses has not been provided.
“I thank each of the 27 members of SAGO for dedicating their time and expertise to this very important scientific undertaking over more than three years,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “As things stand, all hypotheses must remain on the table, including zoonotic spillover and lab leak. We continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics.”
@George The report found that there's the same level of support for an engineering origin of SARS-CoV-2 that there is for other Intelligent Design origin theories.
The report describes the consensus best supported theory by scientists:
While available data support that the HSM played a significant role in early transmission and amplification, it is not conclusive that the HSM was where the virus first spilled over into the human population, or if it occurred through upstream infected humans or animals at the market.
The report then talks about additional evidence that could possibly be collected that could support this theory further or support something else. The paper on market environmental samples from Crits-Christoph et al on this subject says the same thing:
Any hypothesis of COVID-19’s emergence has to explain how the virus arrived at one of only four documented live wildlife markets in a city of Wuhan’s size at a time when so few humans were infected [3]. Human introductions linked to the animal trade offer one explanation for this, and the introduction of the virus by an animal trader or farmer cannot be excluded, but these hypotheses are challenged by phylodynamic evidence for multiple spillovers [11].
When it comes to lab leak on the other hand, there is no specificity at all about how the evidence demanded could test any lab leak theory. This would be impossible, because the there's no falsifiable lab leak theory presented in the report. The report can't even settle on which lab to investigate. The requested data is basically all biosafety data and occupational health data for two large organizations, plus access to open-ended interviews of everyone there. By definition everything that's requested couldn't falsify lab leak theories because the underlying assumption is that everyone who might spill the beans now has been lying for over five years as part of a perfect coverup. A failure to find lab leak evidence would be rejected by anyone who finds it plausible now that there was a lab leak and a massive cover up to suppress evidence of it.
It's telling that the access requested to vaguely investigate lab leak isn't requested for investigating wildlife origins -- because there's just no need to look for what evidence might exist were it not covered up; the evidence that's not covered up is strong enough.
But you can tell from SAGO wasting time humoring the "MA-30" theory that someone susceptible to lab leak nonsense has influence in the report. Plausibly that might be the person who spoke on behalf of a report that concluded one scenario out of four was the only one with supporting data, yet decided to lead with your "all hypotheses must remain on the table."