The SARS-CoV-2 red herring

From my piece in The Hindu today:

We don’t know where or how the virus originated. If it did in a lab, we would have to re-examine how we regulate research facilities and their safeguards and the manner of political oversight that won’t curtail research freedom. If the virus is au naturel, we would have to institute and/or expand pathogen surveillance, eliminate wildlife trafficking, and improve social security measures to ensure populations can withstand outbreaks without becoming distressed. But even as these possibilities aren’t equally likely (according to scientists I trust), the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is less important than it once was because the COVID-19 pandemic caused us to implement all these outcomes to varying degrees.

Not many people I've encountered seem to harbour the view that the origins question has become irrelevant. I sincerely believe there are many things we just can't know. They're easier to find in science but they're likely there in all domains. The origin of SARS-CoV-2 has become one of them. The virus could have been entirely natural or it could have been engineered in a lab. This means we need to establish a clear and straightforward genetic link between two species: SARS-CoV-2 and its ancestor, a bat coronavirus called RaTG13. We haven't yet. Even when we do, we'll have to find a way to prove that the evolution from the in-between species to SARS-CoV-2 was natural, not engineered. As for the second possibility, we simply need China's cooperation whereas China hasn't been cooperating. But as I've written, we've already done what we'd do if either of these possibilities is established without doubt. It's time we move on.

In fact, one thing I've left unsaid in the piece — mostly because of the word limit — speaks as much to the origins of the origins question as to the sort of people who continue to keep these concerns alive. (My piece itself was motivated by the US Select Subcommittee Report, a Republican-led effort that earlier this month concluded the lab-leak theory remains plausible and worthy of investigation.) The origins question is no longer about science when it's on the big stage. Instead it's an excuse disguised as scientific inquiry for the US to punish China. Both the US and China didn't help the cause of working together during the COVID-19 pandemic: one reduced funding for the World Health Organisation, actively spread misinformation, and hoarded vaccines and the other limited scientific access to medical data and used it to curry favours. Now, with Donald Trump a month away from his second term as the US's nincompoop-in-chief, the origins question is being used to set the stage for the US to smack down a challenger in the global world order.

This hasn't been about science for sometime. If science is why you're interested in the origins of SARS-CoV-2, I suggest switching from either hypotheses to the eternal third possibility — "I don't know" — while keeping in touch with scientists you trust.