More covid origins news…
Interest in “alternative” explanations for covid’s origins (explanations that were previously considered heterodox but apparently no longer are) seems to be continuing to gather momentum. At first blush, this whole story wouldn’t seem relevant to investors. On the contrary, I think, the potential implications in terms of the credibility and reliability of various institutions and experts are profound, and especially so for those weighing choices about whether to trust their assets to supposed experts versus letting algorithms, data, and machines to the thinking.
In light of previously suggesting on this blog that arguments privileging the belief that the novel coronavirus could not have escaped from a lab were quite weak as a logical matter (see here), the following seems relevant! Not sure what he means by “other perspectives,” but that’s a far cry from language like “Coronavirus almost certainly came from an animal, not a lab leak, top scientists argue”. To wit (emphasis added):
The director of the National Institutes of Health said Monday it appears Covid-19 originated from an animal, but he didn’t rule out the possibility that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were secretly studying it and that it could have leaked out from there.
It’s still unknown if the virus leaked out of a Wuhan lab, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins said Monday in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding that the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origin of the coronavirus has gone “backwards.”
“The vast evidence from other perspectives says no, this was a naturally occurring virus,” Collins said. “Not to say that it could not have been under study secretly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out of there, we don’t know about that. But the virus itself does not have the earmarks of having been created intentionally by human work.”
The WHO investigation has been made harder by China’s refusal to participate, says Collins.
“I think China basically refused to consider another WHO investigation and just said ‘nope not interested’,” Collins told CNBC’s Squawk Box
