The Lab Leak Hypothesis
nymag.com
nymag.com
The article suggests that the gain of function was accomplished via passaging of the samples that the miners obtained, but the key point in the paper that is being cited is that the gain of function happened entirely inside the miner's lungs.
How did WIV get samples of this virus? Well, they harvested the thymuses of at least one of the miners, which then contained the fully passaged virus, no laboratory passaging necessary.
Why didn't this cause an outbreak in 2013? Initially, the virus was not infectious to humans without the kind of megadose that the miners received, and by the time it had evolved enough affinity for human ACE2 receptors, all of the medical staff involved in the care of the patients were extremely careful.
I'm just paraphrasing the paper that is cited in the articles conclusion. It's worth a read, and NYmag gets some of the details wrong. https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a-propos...
> But in the climate of gonzo laboratory experimentation, at a time when all sorts of tweaked variants and amped-up substitutions were being tested on cell cultures and in the lungs of humanized mice and other experimental animals, isn’t it possible ...
I confess to having skimmed the article except for the final two sections, but the subject matter expert[2] I see quoted has this to say:
> Baric said he still thought the virus came from bats in southern China, perhaps directly, or possibly via an intermediate host, although the smuggled pangolins, in his view, were a red herring. The disease evolved in humans over time without being noticed, he suspected, becoming gradually more infectious, and eventually a person carried it to Wuhan “and the pandemic took off.” Then he said, “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.”
So the SME thinks it's zoonotic. But proving it's zoonotic is not currently a question science can answer (apparently), and the SME is being responsible by saying so. The author is taking advantage of that fact (IMO) to write this long-form piece.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker
[2] https://www.med.unc.edu/microimm/directory/ralph-baric-phd-1...
Despite the author's protestations of this-is-not-conspiracy-theory, it is a conspiracy theory. The pull quotes include one beginning with: "I’m just asking, Is it a complete coincidence ...". Ah, yes, the old favorite of Qanons everywhere, "I'm just asking".
This is just another attempt to cause a significant fraction of the population to throw up their hands in resignation, and excuse everyone in the USA from responsibility.