I tried to keep this as short as possible. Of course. I failed as usual. If Jon (or anyone else) wants to respond, I don’t expect him to address every single point I made at once.
Prologue
So, recently there was a conversation between Jon Perry , Dr. Daniel (@dsterncardinale), Jackson Wheat (@JacksonWheat1), and me on Jackson’s channel.
And @dsterncardinale made a follow-up video on this:
I think most members aware of Jon Perry and his youtube channels ‘Stated Clearly’ and ‘Stated Casually’. His style of science communication with stellar animations is top tier. This opinion of mine hasn’t changed, which is why it pains me to see that things have come to this. We discussed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 (will abbreviate as SARS2) originated from a lab leak. A subject which has been talked about on - this - forum - before - several - times. Back in the early days of COVID in February 2020, Jon made a general video on the origins of viruses, which was also played during our live stream. The possibility of a lab leak was mentioned, but it wasn’t a strong defense of it. More time was spent discussing zoonosis. But I noticed things started to change in 2021 when he published a video on Gain-Of-Function in March; and a video fully dedicated on the question ‘Did COVID-19 come from a lab?’ in April; and then his first interview with Alina Chan in December and promoting her book ‘Viral’.
That last one in particular was rather stunned me. Before that interview, I was already aware of Alina her book ‘Viral’ mainly from following Joseph Moran’s blogs. Alina is one of the most prominent supporters for the lab leak origin of SARS2. She first co-authoring a preprint in May 2020 (still not published) arguing that SARS2 was preadapted to infect humans and that this could point to a lab origin. This study is flawed, which I have covered this on the forum before. The preprint did not have an impact on the scientific community, but she rose to fame on social media and pop journals, and later writing that ‘Viral’ book with Matt Ridley who has argued that AIDS originated from Polio vaccination campaigns. This alone does not automatically invalidate any points he makes (I will discuss that later), I just did not expect Jon to promote such unreliable sources.
Today Jon Perry promotes the lab leak hypothesis being ‘fully plausible’ as stated in one of his replies to Jackson back in May on Twitter, which eventually prompted the live conversation (emphasis mine).
JON: There’s no direct evidence it leaked from lab but the lab is 10 miles from the alleged epicenter, they were doing passage experiments in humanized mice, they were bringing thousands of viruses into the city, & Dazsak has a well documented history of lying. That’s not nothing.
JACKSON: I could agree with all of these things, but none of these are evidence of a lab-leak though.
JON: Let’s do a video on this together. It’s probably time. Here’s my argument: A lab leak is fully plausible and we need to stop pretending it’s not. I could do something next month.
Although he would later alter this statement (see section ‘Fully plausible’ or ‘Very implausible?’). And before the live stream, Jon and I also interacted on Twitter,which I will bring up later (see section ’ Scientists suppressing debate? [Part I]'). There were lot’s of point made but did not have the chance to fully respond to them, especially since my internet connection frequently cut-off.
Defining ‘Conspiracy Theory’
Just to get this out of the way first, this was one of the more heated points of contention. Jon really doesn’t like when we use the term ‘conspiracy theory’. However, to me at this moment, there is no way to not consider the lab leak as one. But I need to establish some definitions, and we need to differentiate between ‘conspiracy’ and ‘conspiracy theory’ which we sadly did not do during the live stream.
Definition - Conspiracy (or coverup): A secret plan conducted by a group (the conspirators) for some nefarious self-serving purpose which often inflicts harm onto others; with an attempt to keep the agenda hidden from everyone outside the circle of conspirators. Conspiracies DO happen, nobody would disagree. Famous examples include the Watergate scandal and and the recent Trump’s fake electors plot. Some (not Jon) may whine and throw a tantrum about me mentioning this latter. I don’t care.
Definition - Conspiracy Theory: Claims or narratives which postulate that something happened due to - or was covered-up by - a conspiracy, which persists in spite of a lack of evidence for it and/or when it faces evidence against it. The conspiracy theory handbook provides seven traits that typifies conspiratorial thinking. Examples include QAnon (pizzagate) and the Moon landing hoax.
So, to be fair to Jon, one reason why he might be resistant against calling the lab leak a ‘conspiracy theory’ is that while he would agree that it entails a ‘conspiracy’ (first definition) but he does not agree that it is a ‘conspiracy theory’ (second definition). Probably because he either believes that there is not sufficient evidence against it, or there is sufficient evidence for it, or both, such that it remains - as he claimed - “fully plausible”.
But I would still disagree. The evidence for zoonotic origin (and against a lab-leak) is very strong. This case was already strong when the the proximal origins paper came out in March 2020, which is unsurprisingly despised by many lab-leak proponents; and the lead author deleted their twitter account after facing severe harassment. The evidence has only grown since. Some papers I can recommend include Worobey et al., 2022 (which Jon showed on stream), Pekar et al., 2022, Crits-Christoph et al., 2023, Liu et al., 2024, Pekar et al., 2025. Also good review papers by Holmes et al., 2021, Alwine et al., 2023, and Holmes 2024. On the other hand, lab leak proponents just repeat the same arguments but are now just louder than ever; which in spite of the fact that the lab leak hypothesis hasn’t gained any evidence since the start of the pandemic. The lack of evidence for the alleged conspiracy is explained (through circular reasoning) by the alleged conspiracy. This is how a conspiracy theory operates. I can’t consider it to be anything else in good faith.
The ‘Terrorism’ argument
Jon makes the following argument as to why he thinks it is inappropriate to call the lab-leak a conspiracy (emphasis mine).
[6:49] JON: Uh, well see, the reason that I disagree with that is that… okay, so technically at this point if it’s true it would either have to be an insane insane coincidence. And we’ll go over this when I show the slides. Or it would have to be technically a conspiracy theory in that a bunch of people conspired to cover it up. But that term is very inappropriate, like what comes with that term. It it’s like saying that the Native Americans protesting the pipeline were terrorists in 2005, because they lit some stuff on fire. They were labeled terrorists, which is technically true they terrorized the construction site. But what that did in the public is it just it just screwed up everyone’s brains. These these Native Americans, they’re terrorists now, and that’s what this conspiracy word does.
Now, I have several issues with this. Firstly, I would define terrorism as (the threat of) violence against non-combatants especially for the purpose of a political goal. Unless these Native Americans were threatening people, this doesn’t count as terrorism, at least not in my eyes. I would rather describe it as vandalism: the deliberate destruction of private/public property. Secondly, even if it was terrorism, I don’t think we should be afraid to call out acts of terrorism for what they are, even if… or I would rather say… especially if it comes from those which we happen to sympathize with. If we don’t, we risk ending up in a very dark place.
Why the lab leak is inplausible
Likewise, we need to be able to discuss a conspiracy theory on it terms; how it operates and reinforces itself by adding more layers of complexity over time. As the amount of evidence against a supposed conspiracy grows and/or the evidence for it is remains absent, then the alleged conspiracy has to become more and more elaborate in order to account for this. The rabbit hole just must go deeper than previously thought. That makes it increasingly less plausible.
Hence why… after Jon stated this:
[9:00] The reason why there’s no evidence [that SARS2 came from the lab] is because we have not been allowed to look no one has been allowed to look
…Daniel and I pointed out that the lab leak requires a large international conspiracy involving thousands of people, not just post-outbreak. There would have to have been an ongoing cover-up years prior to hide the fact that they possessed SARS2 or a precursor. Something that would’ve been out of the ordinary, since the Wuhan lab (and other virology labs) are known to publish their work.
For example, Daniel mentions a draft from 2018 containing all the virus sequences they had in the supplementary files, which they tried to publish but it was not accepted by the journal. I don’t know exactly what he is referring to. Perhaps @dsterncardinale can link it here. So, they had to deliberately exclude the sequence of SARS2 (presumably others as well) from this 2018 draft - for some reason. Alternatively, they obtained the sequence of SARS2 (likely among others) between 2018 and 2019 and kept these secret - for some reason. Furthermore, as I will discuss later (see section ‘thousands of physical samples’), these sequences are not represented by live isolated viruses. It’s meta-genomic data obtained from RNA extractions, which does not leave intact viruses. The only way to get a live virus from this is via reverse genetics using bacteria artificial chromosomes, which is not a small feat and such work has been published before (Ralph Baric’s lab famously does this). Alternatively, they managed to directly isolate a live virus from a sample, which the Wuhan lab only managed to do three times in the past and these were also published. These three are WIV1, WIV16, and Rs4874. These are related to SARS1, not SARS2.
Why would such an impressive achievement (either reverse genetics or virus isolation) be kept a strict secret this time around? And how would they managed to keep such a project hidden considering the scale of the conspiracy it would require? Additionally, as Daniel mentioned later [28:50] the people at Wuhan lab reportedly tested negative for SARS2-antibodies. This would require yet another layer of complexity to keep a conspiracy viable.
Jon does not seem to consider these factors. He underestimates how challenging it would be to maintain such secrecy at such a large scale. At least that’s the impression I got from him, particularly from this short interaction:
[26:52] JON: I said earlier that there’s like two possibilities. There’s it’s either a big cover up, a quite large cover up. It does wouldn’t really require all the thousands of people. I don’t think it might seem. But it would definitely be a cover up where you’ve got top researchers that are sitting down and saying “How do we fool the rest of the world scientists?” Which would be extremely difficult and extremely risky so it either has to be…
NESSLIG: Including all those people working underneath them. They also have to be quiet for some reason as well.
Dr. DANIEL: Yup, all the lab staff. All the clerical staff. The peer reviewers…
JON: That’s not as hard as you think in China, because the culture of not asking questions.
The Market and the Lab
Around [24:33] Jon brings up how close the Wuhan Lab was to the outbreak. He also shows Michael Worobey’s paper on the slide and saying that…
[25:15] JON: he’s always taken lab leak stuff seriously.
Michael Worobey has indeed seriously considered the possibility of a lab leak, but he is not a lab leak proponent, especially not now. The paper he co-authored shows that the Huanan market, not the Wuhan lab, was the epicenter of the outbreak. Which is something you would expect from a zoonotic spill-over at the market. In response, lab leak proponents often respond with suggesting that the market was simply a super-spreader event, not the source. However, this is very unlikely. Super-spreaders are far more likely to happen in venues where there is a high human traffic, which does not describe that wet market (see figure 3 of the Worobey paper). Dr. Daniel also points out that a serological survey on blood banks have shown that there was (in all likelihood) no cryptic circulation before we detected SARS2.
Michael Worobey also explains this in the LA times why the presence of virology labs near a location where a viral outbreak is actually not coincidental considering why both epidemics and high-tech labs tend to occur in population dense cities:
MICHAEL WOROBEY: Lab leak proponents cling to the contention that the presence of a lab that studies viruses and the emergence of a coronavirus pandemic in the same city can’t possibly be coincidental. But my colleagues and I showed in 2021 that this virus wasn’t going to emerge just anywhere in China: It took a city. Simulations indicate that when a virus with the properties of SARS-CoV-2 jumps into a human in a sparsely populated rural area, it will fail to cause an outbreak 99% of the time. But take that same virus into a huge city like Wuhan, and about a third of animal-to-human transmissions will result in an epidemic. We should instead be asking: What is the chance that a big Chinese city like Wuhan would have a lab doing the kind of research that has come under suspicion? The answer is, the vast majority of the biggest cities in China have labs involved in such research. If COVID had emerged in, say, Beijing, there would be no fewer than four such labs facing suspicion.
Contradictory scenarios
Around [37:00] Jon mentions one way how virologists can revive viruses in the lab via reverse genetics from a sequence. Daniel and I explained how this version of a lab leak would entail an implausible a scenario. The people at Wuhan lab must have sequenced virus(es) but these were never published, nor did anyone mention this project to anyone else anywhere; and they later had to use reverse engineering to produce a live virus from the sequences, which was also kept secret. Jon responded by staying:
[38:13] JON: Well okay, but then there’s the other thing that you’re not thinking of. The fact that these people are going out and collecting samples all over China. So, they’re directly interacting with bats, and then they’re coming back into town. That’s another area where you can get an infection.
But then we are no longer talking about a lab leak anymore. This is zoonosis, and patient zero just coincidentally happened to be a virologist working in the field. So, after we criticize one lab-leak scenario that was brought up, Jon defends the lab leak by positing another scenario which does not involve a virus going through a lab at all. I was confused to say the least.
How viruses have leaked from labs before
At [32:49] Dr Daniel explains how experiments on viruses that are passed through cultures pose a very low risk because of the low virion amount and the absence of airborne exposure. Then at [34:41] Jon mentions some examples of incidents when viruses got out from a lab, but none of these examples are what Daniel just described. These leaks came from ongoing work with high titer cultures (containing high concentrations of live virus particles), which involved viruses that were quickly identifiable. No lab leak has ever involved an novel virus. See discussion here.
Thousands of physical samples
[35:46] JON: You were talking about the sequences that we have in the labs. Like we don’t have any record of them having this sequence. A sequence closely related to this. On one hand that’s true but they had just thousands of actual physical samples as well. Actually we don’t even know how many they had, because we weren’t allowed to look.
This is where I jumped in to explained what I mentioned before. These “physical samples” don’t represent live virus isolates or samples from which virus can (easily) be isolated. What we are talking about are samples of bat feces and anal swabs, which is why some virus sequences have names that contain ‘BANAL’ (Bat anal). These are rather poor sources to obtain live viruses. The Wuhan lab only managed to isolate three SARS1 (not SARS2) related viruses in the past; WIV1, WIV16, and Rs4874. They did this by serial culturing using Vero E6 cells.
SIDE NOTE: When this serial culturing is done with SARS2, it consistently loses its furin cleavage site (FCS). This makes it unlikely that SARS2 with an intact FCS could have been isolated in a lab this way. See discussion here.
Most virus genomes that WIV sequenced (e.g. RaTG13) are not from nor represented by live virus isolates. These sequences are obtained via metagenomics from sequencing RNA extractions, a process that kills all viruses present in the sample. Se discussions here and here. It’s possible to revive a virus via reverse genetics, but I already covered that before.
It’s misleading to say that they have ‘thousands of physical samples’ since to a laymen this sounds like they have thousands of hazardous vials containing live viruses, each poised to infect someone, which isn’t the case.
‘Fully plausible’ or ‘Very implausible’?
This is a line that Jon repeated many times [4:42 - 40:05 - 40:30 - 41:45 - 42:20 - 45:45 - 52:45 - 57:32 - 1:03:53] in our discussion: “We can’t rule out a lab leak (because we are stone walled by China)”. For which he cites Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci; who say that the lab leak “POSSIBILITY has to be considered” and that it is not “INHERENTLY a conspiracy theory” respectively. Okay, I would agree. I do not agree that the lab leak is PLAUSIBLE, certainly not at this point as previously discussed, and I doubt that Collins or Fauci would say otherwise.
So, during a particular section of the talk [40:00 to 1:05:00], we were stuck in a loop. Whenever either of us made an argument for why a lab leak is very implausible, Jon would fall back on this statement often mentioning China not being transparent and citing Collins or Fauci. In particular, at one point I said that we don’t need the idea of a lab leak in order to criticize China for their lack of transparency; and in spite of that, we do have a lot of evidence that we brought up which point strongly to the wet market and which makes the lab leak is very implausible. Jon said he agreed it is very implausible… but then he immediately repeated the same line again (emphasis mine):
[57:32] JON: I agree with you that it’s very implausible, but it cannot be ruled out. It it has not been ruled out and it cannot be ruled out until we have full transparency.
If it is not “ruled out” even when it is very implausible, then when can we ‘rule it out’? When it is impossible? That is not how this works. We will always have a degree of uncertainty left. I also have to point out that Jon’s agreement here stands in stark contrast to what he said to Jackson before the live stream (emphasis mine):
JON: Let’s do a video on this together. It’s probably time. Here’s my argument: A lab leak is fully plausible and we need to stop pretending it’s not. I could do something next month.
Putting virology labs outside cities
This is one comment Jon made [1:01:47]. He suggests that we put virology labs away from crowded areas as a precautionary measure. Since virus outbreaks require high density populations, putting labs outside cities will minimize the risks. However, I don’t think this is feasible. Virology labs, like any other research facility, is sustained and maintained by a complex infrastructure which provide human and material resources. There is a good reason why research facilities and universities exist within or nearby big cities.
The price we should not be willing to pay
After [1:05:10] Jon started to make the argument that while these things are not related to the origins of SARS2, one good thing that came out from all this global discussion is the reevaluation of safety practices in virology labs around the wold and the investigation of bad actors. Jon mentions Peter Daszak specifically (I have more to say on that later).
But Jon starts to make the argument that the lab leak discussion (in some sense) is worth it.
[1:08:30] JON: The only thing I’m saying is… if we dismiss this as just a crazy conspiracy theory that you’d have to be dumb to believe, then we’re going to lose this opportunity for the whole world to re-evaluate and actually get a lot of people caring about what are we doing in labs. How safe is it really. Is it appropriate.
DR DANIEL: Do you think we can do that… because I think that’s a perfectly reasonable conversation that we can have… do you think there’s a way to have that conversation without centering it on COVID 19 and without empowering anti-science wackados that are in charge of the US government right now?
JON: It wasn’t happening, so, now it is. And I think that’s a good thing.
This was really alarming to me. I really recommend people to listen to Dr Daniel’s responses between [1:08:30] and [1:32:00]. I can’t do it justice here. He really nails it how dangerous this sentiment is, no matter how well-intented it is. We don’t need to ride the wave of anti-science narratives in order to have good-faith discussions. On the contrary, as Dan pointed out, I would argue that entangling such bad-faith notions with good-faith questions is completely counterproductive to any noble cause. The baby is being poisoned by the bathwater. Let’s not get ourselves trapped in a motte-and-bailey fallacy. We don’t need to, and we should not, entertain a lab leak (nor any other unsubstantiated ideas) in order to either criticize the Chinese government for their lack of transparency, or to improve safety practices in labs. This does not help our goals in defending the practice of science. It will more likely backfire on us badly and only cause more harm.
Why collect viruses from nature
Related to the preivous section, Jon makes some odd suggests to improve safety:
[1:19:56] JON: In 2014 there was an argument. I think it was David Reaman making the argument. He was saying that certainly we should stop creating chimeras. He did not like that. I don’t know if you know who David Reaman is. He’s he’s been a virologists doing this stuff for a long time. In 2014 he says that making chimeras is inappropriate. We’re making things that don’t even exist in the wild. Doing the wild virus collecting is debatable. What I believe it was him who suggested this. Instead of doing actual wild virus collecting why don’t we just survey the heck out of hospitals. Especially near the frontier between human populations and animal populations, because that way… the debate is…
DR DANIEL: I can answer that if you want.
JON: The debate is that, well, we won’t be as ready.
DR DANIEL: Yeah, exactly. You find stuff in nature before it infects us, so we can prepare. You know, like, here are eight potential vaccine targets that we may have to deal with in the next decade. Yes that’s why you do that. Yeah.
JON: I haven’t heard a good, I’m sure someone’s done it by now, but there’s there must be a good analysis to, did that research help with COVID? Maybe it did. Maybe it helped.
I don’t know what Jon was going for here. Dr Dan mentions an example of antibiotic resistance where scientists allowed a pathogen to evolve resistance in the lab, so they can determine what to expect when a resistant strain appears naturally. To me it should be obvious that a better understanding of SARS-like viruses (including those that circulate in animals) would help us be better prepared for the next pandemic. I found this review paper from 2016 in a matter of minutes. Quoting just one section:
Since the S2 region of the human SARS-CoV and bat SL-CoVs are more conserved compared to the S1 region, mAbs that target the S2 domain are broadly neutralizing and can confer cross-protection against bat SL-CoVs.18-20 The identification of broad-spectrum inhibitors targeting highly conserved proteins in human SARS-CoV and bat SL-CoVs, such as the 3C-like protease, as well as inhibitors that target important host proteins required for viral entry and pathogenesis, such as host surface and endosomal cysteine proteases, are other feasible ways to develop novel broadly-neutralizing SARS therapeutics (for a full review see ref.21). For vaccine development, a comprehensive understanding of CoV-induced immunity is necessary. Identification of conserved epitopes in human SARS-CoV and bat SL-CoVs that give rise to cross-neutralizing antibody and T cell responses can lead to vaccine strategies that cross-protect against all the viruses.
Jon may think that the risk of infection is too high, but stopping this won’t help us prevent future outbreaks. Viruses have… are… and will continue to spill-over into humans regardless of what scientists will do. There will be a SARS3. With the current political climate, we are not prepared to deal with it when the time comes. Physically or mentally.
Scientists suppressing debate? [Part I & II]
[word limit reached, see reply below]
[To be continued]
