24.04.2025

Crime scene? US is basing its case on outright lies

Lies, damned lies and viruses

Trump is determined to use every propaganda weapon against China, so, argues Ian Spencer, it is time, once again, to blame it for the Covid-19 pandemic

On April 18, the White House issued a web document titled ‘Lab leak: the true origins of Covid 19’.¹ It confidently asserts that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. This seems to have replaced a previous White House web page that gave out useful information about Covid, including how to get tested and practical measures to take if infected. So far, so normal, for an administration that is distinguished by a disregard for science in general (and scientists who do not do as they are told, in particular). The document goes on to castigate Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and immunologist Anthony Fauci for their handling of the pandemic and their alleged cover-up of the ‘real’ origin of the virus.²

With Fauci, it is starting to look personal. Trump’s website has not only poured scorn on the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but has removed Fauci’s security details - even though Fauci has faced numerous death threats for his role during the Covid pandemic.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Trump famously said: “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots” - a bit rich from a president who wistfully speculated on the use of bleach and sunlight inside the body as a means of eradicating the virus.³ Of course, what Trump was really annoyed about was the potential limit on profits due to silly old, scientifically validated, public health measures.

Billionaires

He need not have worried: in the USA and beyond, the pandemic seems to have been instrumental in transferring a huge amount of wealth to billionaires. Elon Musk, for example, saw his wealth grow from an estimated $25 billion in 2020 to $185 billion at the beginning of 2024. He was not alone. In 2020, Forbes reported that the USA had 614 billionaires with a total wealth of $2.947 trillion. By 2024, there were 737 billionaires with a total of $5.529 trillion.⁴

The ‘Lab leak’ web document is derived from the 557-page ‘House Oversight Committee report of a select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the US House of Representatives’. Phew! Published on December 4 2024, it is a tortuous read - made up, in large part, of ‘evidence’, such as subpoenaed emails and other correspondence, purporting to show this, that or the other.

The report leads with bold claims, such as “The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature”,⁵ without saying what that is (leaving aside the fact that, logically, the statement cannot be true. After all, the virus is found in nature and therefore all its biological characteristics are found there). Of course, a further look at the report shows that what is meant is that there were viruses found with particular characteristics. A logical leap is then made to assert that these must have been due to laboratory manipulation, rather than as the result of evolution.

The report is largely compiled by politicians who seem to be determined to prove, one way or another, a series of pre-determined conclusions. It is quite unlike enquiries chaired by someone supposedly neutral that include submissions from a wide range of experts and non-experts alike. For example, it was chaired by Brad R Westrup, a Republican member of the House of Representatives and doctor of podiatric medicine. Don’t misunderstand me: Dr Westrup’s opinion on my ingrowing toenails would be of the greatest interest to me, but I suspect his expertise on the genomic origin of zoonotic viruses is not his strong subject.

Much of the ‘evidence’ is marshalled to discredit research used by Fauci to show that, on the balance of probability, the virus originated in other species and crossed over to humans, as have many other viruses before.⁶ In particular, ‘The proximal origin of Sars-Cov-2’ published in Nature in March 2020, comes under attack. A lot of email correspondence is reproduced to show that the authors of the letter in Nature had somehow colluded to ensure that the ‘lab-leak’ hypothesis was downplayed in order not to upset the Communist Party of China. It also railed against US funding (tax dollars, no less!) being used for research by China’s WIV lab. Moreover, they assert, this work was carried out with substandard levels of safety and focused on ‘gain-of-function’ research: that is, the modification of a biological agent, so that it confers new or enhanced activity.

The report then goes on to confidently assert that this is the origin of the pandemic, despite numerous other, reputable, peer-reviewed studies in highly respected journals that can show that the overwhelming balance of probability is that the virus occurred naturally in the wet markets of Wuhan.

Opinions

The problem is that the possibility of a laboratory accident cannot be entirely dismissed, and may be near impossible to falsify. But this conduit for emergence is highly unlikely, relative to the numerous and repeated human-animal contacts that occur routinely. What we are then left with is that the Chinese government has shown a “lack of transparency” about the working practices in the WIV. Which apparently means that good evidence from viral gene sequencing can be ignored in favour of a conspiracy theory used to attack China. Trump was, after all, very fond of calling Covid 19 the “China virus”.

There are the opinions of scientists and others cited in the report. However, it is not clear what evidence they provide - except to say, ‘Look, we’ve got clever people on our side too, you know!’ For example, Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, is cited as supporting the WIV hypothesis. His area of specialism in the Covid pandemic was genetic factors contributing to the transmissibility of the virus, garnered from a detailed study of identical twins and extensive evidence from his Zoe startup company, which developed a highly influential app to gather data.

Interestingly, Professor Spector is closely linked to Zoe Health Limited, which recently secured a $15 million investment to expand in the US. Founded in 2017, Zoe provides at‑home testing kits for customers to find out their blood fat, blood sugar and gut microbiome health. It also markets ‘personal nutrition plans’. Zoe’s rapid expansion during the pandemic faced a setback in April 2024, when the company’s co-founder and CEO, Jonathan Wolf, announced layoffs to cut costs by 20%. While it might seem cynical to suggest that professor Spector’s views would be influenced by Zoe’s wish to penetrate the lucrative US health market, the inclusion of his opinion supporting the WIV hypothesis will not do him any harm.⁷

Professor Spector is best known for his specialist subject of the importance of gut biome for health. That does not mean he has nothing to say about viral genomes, but the precise nature of the evidence which supports his views is not easy to determine from the report. He has expressed them publicly on the Zoe podcast and they have been reported in the press as ‘his opinion’ rather than being based on original research. Instead, he draws on the congressional report that cites him and the fact that there was collaborative research between WIV and the US labs.⁸ This sits alongside another opinion cited in the report - that of former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was hardly well known for the suitability of his skill set, whatever that was, or his handling of the pandemic. The idea of ‘following the science’ always must be tempered with following the money!

Such opinions stand in stark contrast to an excellent dissection of the evidence in the Journal of Virology of the American Society for Microbiology.⁹ In their article, published in March 2023, James Alwin et al go through the evidence supporting the natural origin of Covid-19 as the most plausible explanation. They also rigorously examine the evidence for the laboratory origin. Although that cannot be fully refuted, the overwhelming balance of probability is that the virus originated in the transmission and mutation of a virus from animals to humans, probably in one of the numerous markets trading in live animals in Wuhan. This view is also supported by research published in Nature in 2024, but that did not find its way into the report’s bibliography.¹⁰

Further evidence, published in September 2024 in the highly respected journal, Cell, demonstrates clear links between the virus that infected some of the first patients to succumb to Covid-19 and samples from animal specimens in Huanan market in Wuhan. It uses genomic sequencing to show that the common ancestor of the virus was found in civets, bamboo rats and raccoon dogs.¹¹ A further study, also published in Cell at the same time, showed that “No epidemic has been caused by the escape of a novel virus, and there is no data to suggest that the WIV - or any other laboratory - was working on SARS-CoV-2, or any virus close enough to be the progenitor, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.”¹²

Left field

When what passes for the left takes up the subject of Covid, their views sometimes depend on how supportive they are of the People’s Republic of China. For example, the Morning Star draws on reports from Reuters to assert that during the pandemic the USA ran covert anti-vax campaigns to discredit China and derail its ‘vaccine diplomacy’, which adversely affected the uptake of vaccines during the first Trump administration. This was particularly the case in the Philippines, where a Pentagon-directed social media campaign was used to sow doubts about the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac vaccine and other forms of life-saving aid, from face masks to test kits. The Star goes on to quote Keith Bennett of Friends of Socialist China as saying, “The US accuses China, Russia and others of creating ‘fake news’ and spreading conspiracy theories, but again and again is revealed to be the worst culprit.”¹³

While there is always plausibility about the nefarious actions of the US secret services, counterposing two conspiracy theories does not necessarily ensure the truth or a proper scientific understanding of the history of the Covid pandemic. Understanding large-scale public health emergencies never results from just the history of the interaction of the causal organism with its hosts. Nor is it just about the actions of the state, however that is characterised. It is also about understanding the impact of a wider social context, such as the fondness of large numbers in China for wild animals, when it comes to prestige food.

The understanding of the history of disease and health entails a full scientific investigation of the factors involved. This can be seen from the black death of the 14th century, rooted in the development of world trade, to HIV/Aids, with its tragic history of imperialism, colonialism, African social dislocation, poverty and the international trade in blood products.

It is also not enough to take a world-historic event, such as a pandemic, and use it as an exercise in wishful thinking. For example, the World Socialist Web Site of the US Socialist Equality Party asserted that the pandemic is a ‘trigger event’, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which led to World War I, and by implication the Russian Revolution.¹⁴ Of course, again, public health can have a world historical impact. For example, the development of malaria in the Roman empire was arguably a factor in the empire’s decline - but one of only a number and not necessarily the most important.

Whilst few would disagree with the assertion that “the pandemic was not simply a medical issue, but primarily a political, social and economic crisis, arising from the broader world capitalist crisis”, it is a bit of a stretch from that to assert that this is part of the beginning of the end for capitalism. Catastrophes like Covid-19 will exert a range of effects, as will climate change, future pandemics and the continued decline of capitalism. Undoubtedly, our duty as communists is to struggle for a more humane society, but that is not helped by using the latest disaster to build a sect.

Our task is to scientifically study the present in order to fully understand the decline of capitalism, which means using the evidence to inform the potential membership of a mass workers’ party. That is as true of the history of a pandemic as it is of political economy.