Molecular biologist Sigrid Bratlie recently published her book “The Mystery of Wuhan”, and I met her for a debate at Wonderful World – the Nordic philosophy and science festival in Stavanger at the end of May 2025
The reason I was invited was that I am one of those who have been publicly critical of Bratlie's view on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that gave us the disease COVID-19 and the associated pandemic that started in 2020. You have probably heard of it.
The debate
While Bratlie initially supported the zoonosis hypothesis, i.e. that the virus originated in nature, she is now almost certain that the virus originated from a lab leak, i.e. the so-called “lab leak hypothesis.”
However, I am fairly certain that the virus came from nature, which is why they wanted me to participate as a counterweight in the debate.
Or, debate and debate. Originally, Bratlie was supposed to present her book alone, so there was no real opportunity for debate. When I was invited at the last minute, there wasn't really room for much discussion.
The session was moderated by Torkild Jemterud, host of Abels Tårn on NRK, and lasted only 45 minutes. The first half hour was mostly spent on her talking about the book and what she thinks happened around 2020. This is completely understandable, as this was supposed to be mostly about her and the book.
I was able to raise a few counterarguments, which I hope were valuable contributions to balancing the view she presented to the audience.
Bratlie's journey
Bratlie's conviction stems from watching public hearings and grilling of people like Anthony Fauci and key researchers, reading lots of research and relevant documents, looking at leaked messages from email and Slack communications between researchers, and being inspired and convinced by DRASTIC, or Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19, a group of enthusiasts who “research” the origin of the Covid virus by scrutinizing all the information they find on the internet – without much scientific rigour.
She is therefore almost certain that the virus comes from a lab leak. But as I hope to show in this blog post, there is no real lab leak hypothesis. Let alone a theory.
The lab leak hypothesis is nothing more than a “god of the gaps” argument that attempts to find holes in the zoonosis hypothesis, but without managing to come up with a plausible scenario itself. It is full of contradictions, has contradictory timelines, clings to isolated pieces of information that may contribute to sowing doubt about zoonosis without actually being true or having reliable sources, and reminds me very much of young earth creationists' relationship to the theory of evolution.
Much of the origin of the Saksynt (this) blog stems from the fact that in the early 2000s, I spent a lot of time discussing with creationists when I lived in Tonstad. The discussions took place mainly in the debate section of the local newspaper Sirdølen, and the local Christian conservatives were keen to show that the theory of evolution was not only wrong, but a deliberate lie to lead people away from salvation.
But their counter-theory was simply “God created us.” Without evidence. Without any plausible explanation. Without any data to support it. And in the absence of a theory of their own, their strategy was to find holes in the theory of evolution.
Because in their world, if they could prove that the theory of evolution was wrong, then the only logical conclusion that all people could come to was that the Christian God created us as described in Genesis.
This is, of course, not a rational conclusion. If the theory of evolution were wrong, it would still not strengthen creationism in any way.
Perhaps the explanation is the panspermia hypothesis, that life came to Earth through primitive single-celled life forms riding on a comet or meteorite. Or maybe aliens made us. Or maybe we just exist in a computer simulation. Or maybe it was the Scientologists' god who created us. Or maybe the creation story in one of the thousands of other religions that exist is the true one.
The point is that the lab leak hypothesis does not hold water, and its proponents therefore resort to finding flaws in the zoonosis hypothesis, as if everyone must then “default” to lab leak as the only credible alternative.
No comprehensive hypothesis
But what exactly is the lab leak hypothesis? Or hypotheses. Because there is no single hypothesis, but a number of different hypotheses, all of which lack data to support them.
If the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), i.e. the laboratory referred to in the lab leak hypothesis, was involved in the origin of SARS-CoV-2 (SARS2), there are many different ways in which this could have happened:
- SARS2 may have been designed as a bioweapon and deliberately leaked by the Chinese (or Americans) to harm the rest of the world.
- SARS2 may have been designed as a potential bioweapon and accidentally leaked from the laboratory.
- SARS2 may have been created by combining several different viruses and constructed entirely “artificially” using genetic engineering, but leaked out of the laboratory by accident.
- SARS2 may have been a natural, relatively harmless virus found in nature, but where so-called “Gain of Function” (GoF) research was carried out to enhance the virus's properties to make it more contagious to humans using genetic engineering, but leaked out of the laboratory by accident.
- SARS2 may have been a natural, relatively harmless virus found in nature, but natural selection through a series of experiments in animals made it more contagious to humans, and it accidentally leaked out of the laboratory.
- SARS2 may have been a naturally occurring, dangerous virus collected from bats for research in the laboratory, without being genetically manipulated, and leaked accidentally.
And so on.
Bratlie is clear that she does not believe the virus was created as a bioweapon or deliberately leaked to start a pandemic. She therefore rules out points 1 and 2, but believes, as I understand her, that scenarios 3, 4, 5, or 6 are highly likely, with a preference for scenario 4.
A little history
In this blog post, I will address some of the issues I have with her book, which I otherwise find well written and interesting to read.
It is divided into two parts, the first of which is a kind of historical review of everything that has led up to where we are today, and part 2 focuses more on hearings, leaked emails, “conspiracies,” the aftermath of her previous statements on the matter, and her own theory of what happened.
Although I strongly disagree with much of this, the book provides a good insight into the debate, the history of the pandemic, and why the fronts are so entrenched. However, it is unfortunate that she chooses to omit much contradictory information, cherry-picks data that fits her view, presents contradictions and different arguments that cancel each other out, and generally does not provide an objective assessment of the controversy, but rather attempts to build up a preferred conclusion in the hope that readers will not fact-check her too much.
The fact that several reviewers who have written about the book have become quite convinced of lab leak after reading it probably says more about them being book reviewers than critical thinkers. That is why I think it is important to highlight the problems with the book.
Foto: Charlotte Førde Skomsøy
It should also be mentioned that this is not a comprehensive review of her book. This is based solely on the research and notes I made before the debate with her, primarily on the points I felt were relevant to highlight there. And since I only got to use about 0.1% of the arguments in the debate itself, I will publish them here for the sake of the record, for my own benefit and that of others.
For this reason, there is much in the book that I could have discussed but have not, both because this text is already long enough and because I focused on the most important points that could be useful to have ready for an oral debate. A complete review of her book would require three books, and well, I have no ambitions to publish books on this subject.
Previous writings you should read first
I must admit that I had never heard of Sigrid Bratlie before the big VG article where she presented her lab leak conviction in the summer of 2024.
In retrospect, I have realized, as she also writes in her book, that we are largely on the same page when it comes to scientific issues. I appreciate that she is pro-GMO, as I am, and is a keen advocate of vaccines and the scientific method.
But on this issue, we strongly disagree.
The VG article was largely about a “memo” she had published earlier in 2024 through her job at the think tank Langsikt. In the memo, she presented her arguments for the lab leak hypothesis, and after reading the VG article, I wrote a blog post where I went through her arguments and criticized them:
Gunnar R. Tjomlid
My blog post about Sigrid Bratlie's Langsikt memo, August 11, 2024
In the wake of my blog post, there were many heated debates on Facebook, so I ended up writing a new blog post to summarize some more of the reasons why I believe the virus must have come from nature:
Gunnar R. Tjomlid
My blog post in the wake of extensive lab leak debates on social media, August 17, 2024
You should read these two first, because in this blog post I will try not to repeat too many of the explanations and details I have already gone through there. Nor will I spend much time here explaining the geography around the WIV, who the various people mentioned are, the more intricate aspects of the virus genome, etc. You can find that in the two previous blog posts.
Conspiracy theory?
Is the lab leak hypothesis really a conspiracy theory?
The first thing I think is worth addressing, although I did so in my first blog post on the subject, is the question of whether the lab leak hypothesis is a conspiracy theory.
The reason I want to say something about this again is that what I wrote back in August 2024 turned out to be more accurate than I thought at the time.
I wrote:
* The label leak theory is not based on evidence, but on what is known as “anomaly hunting,” i.e., looking for “anomalies” or missing pieces in the puzzle that could open the door to doubt. And where there is doubt, exciting explanatory models can be pushed forward that appeal greatly to those who find the truth too boring and sober.
* Another reason why the hypothesis appears conspiratorial is that there is a significant degree of cherry-picking of data, i.e., highlighting claims that speak in favor of label leakage and ignoring the stronger arguments or data that speak against it. There is an extreme focus on questions for which we lack evidence, often because such evidence is impossible to produce, and a total denial of some key, weighty pieces of evidence that speak very strongly in favor of the virus having a natural origin. [...]
As we will see in this blog post, Bratlie is not a conspiracy theorist. But the way she argues overlaps greatly with conspiratorial reasoning.
At the time, I had only read her Langsikt memo, but after reading the book, I think this description was an understatement. The entire book further confirms these points.
Or, in this particular case, one could argue that Bratlie actually is a conspiracy theorist. The book is one long argument that the causes of the pandemic's origin are being hidden from us through a conspiracy, so I may have given her too much credit in last year's analysis.
The lab leak hypothesis is not, in itself, a conspiracy theory. When the pandemic broke out in early 2020, it was definitely a plausible hypothesis.
There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lab leaks in the past, depending on how you define it. Such lab leaks have also taken lives and even probably led to a pandemic (1977, H1N1 influenza).
At the same time, new viruses and pandemics have a historical precedent of emerging from nature. Ergo, one could argue that before we had any more knowledge, it was not unreasonable to say that there was a 50/50 chance that SARS2 came from a lab leak or from nature.
However, Bratlie's argument is largely conspiratorial.
Her conclusion relies heavily on interpretations of things that have been said and written by researchers in the early stages of the pandemic. Things that have been taken out of context, interpreted in the worst possible light, and linked to more or less random events that could be interpreted as related if one really wanted to, but without any evidence to support this. And where there are more plausible natural explanations.
That's it.
No evidence is presented. No solid data. Nothing that actually supports the hypothesis of a lab leak. It's just an “exciting narrative” based on a long series of “what ifs?”
Or “Just Asking Questions” – known as JAQing Off in internet lingo. In the book, she writes the following about me:
In the days after the VG article was published, the first criticism came – and it covered the entire spectrum from one extreme to the other.
First out was blogger and self-proclaimed fact-checker Gunnar Roland Tjomlid, who believed that I had completely lost my scientific perspective and was acting like a conspiracy theorist: “The biggest problem is that she engages in what is nicely called ‘JAQing off’, where JAQ stands for Just Asking Questions, which is the primary rhetorical tool of conspiracy theorists.”
The sad thing is that the book she has written is just a symphony of the same thing.
It's all about building up the idea of “no smoke without fire”. Or: There are too many things that don't add up for zoonosis to be the definitive answer!
But as mentioned earlier, many of these things that “don't add up” are simply untrue, based on cherry-picking and subjective interpretations and representations. If you strip all that away, there isn't much that doesn't add up at all.
This makes it very easy to resort to Occam's razor to cut the hypothesis to pieces. Occam's razor, in short, says:
When two theories explain a phenomenon equally well, one should choose the one that requires the fewest assumptions.
So when the lab leak hypothesis requires a long series of assumptions, while the zoonosis hypothesis requires very few assumptions, Occam's razor suggests that zoonosis is more plausible.
Of course, this is not proof of zoonosis in itself, which we will come back to, but it can be a good starting point for calibrating the odds before more information is available.
I will not go through the book chronologically, but will simply give a few examples of where I think Bratlie is seriously mistaken.
Absurdities in the timeline
The hypotheses' timelines contradict each other
According to the “official” narrative, SARS2 began to spread in humans in the second half of November 2019.
The first confirmed case of infection we know of is from December 10, 2019. This was a female seafood/shrimp vendor at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.
Note that this does not mean she was “patient zero”; there had obviously been others infected before her, but she is the earliest confirmed case we know of.
Then we saw more and more people becoming infected in Wuhan and eventually outside the city, and on December 31, 2019, the WHO first heard about this novel virus.
In mid-January 2020, we began to see cases of infection outside China, and by the end of the month in other parts of the world such as Japan, Europe, and the US.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared a global pandemic.
But Bratlie believes this is not correct. She argues that there is much to suggest that SARS2 infected humans long before this.
Amirouche Hammar
She refers to studies that claim to have found infection in Italy as early as September 2019, and writes that other estimates go as far back as August.
She also writes:
Amirouche was diagnosed with the infection in December 2019 – before China had alerted the world. In the US, researchers found antibodies to the virus in blood from blood donors from early December 2019. In Brazil, the virus's genetic material appeared in sewage from November of the same year.
Amirouche Hammar was a French-Algerian fishmonger who lived northeast of Paris and was hospitalized on December 27, 2019 with symptoms that we now know are consistent with COVID-19.
But at that time, no one outside China, and hardly anyone there, had heard of a new virus or disease. He had not been to China, nor had he been abroad (Algeria) since August 2019, and must therefore have been infected between December 14 and 22, given the incubation period.
In early January 2020, after COVID-19 had become known, French researchers tested samples collected from patients in December 2019 and January 2020 in France. Among 14 samples, they found a positive match for COVID-19 in Hammar's sample, and X-rays of his lungs were also consistent with COVID-19.
There is therefore some evidence that Hammar may have had COVID-19 – or a similar disease – as early as December, and thus had COVID-19 several weeks before others in France contracted the disease, but there are uncertainties surrounding the tests.
Many believe this may be due to contamination of samples, and it also turns out that his wife worked at the airport that received many travelers from China. However, she did not become symptomatic, while Hammar and their two children did.
It is possible that Hammar had COVID-19 a month before the first other confirmed cases in France, but this is unlikely given the contagiousness of the virus. With a doubling rate of around 3-4 days in the first phase of the pandemic, this would most likely have led to outbreaks among many more French people.
The researchers who found a positive sample from Hammar's hospital stay also write in their published research article:
This study has several limitations. First, owing to the retrospective nature of the analyses, medical records were not exhaustive and some relevant information might have been missing. Second, we are not able to rule out false-negative results due to the sensitivity of RT-PCR and a technique of storage that may possibly impair the quality of samples.
It is therefore difficult to know whether Hammar really had COVID-19 as early as December 2019. But before we conclude, we need to look at a little more data.
Infections in Norway in December?
Bratlie continues:
In blood samples from over 6,000 pregnant women, researchers at Ahus and Rikshospitalet found antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 as far back as December 2019 and January 2020. Most striking are the findings from Italy, where several independent research groups have detected both antibodies and the virus's genetic material in samples dating back to autumn 2019.
I have checked these studies, and her claims are correct. While Bratlie makes it sound as if several Norwegian women were infected with SARS2, the Norwegian study found antibodies in only one woman in December 2019.
This in itself does not contradict her argument – after all, a single infected patient is enough to confirm a new timeline. But even if this is real documentation of SARS2 infection a couple of months before we saw it elsewhere in the country, it would not be inconceivable that a Norwegian woman could have been traveling and become infected in late November or early December. We know that the virus was already spreading in Wuhan at that time.
However, there is much else that makes this data unreliable.
The manufacturer of the test used in Norway says it has an uncertainty of 0.17%. In the Norwegian study, they found 0.2% positive tests (one person) in December 2019. This sounds like a false positive.
Data from other countries consistently show that contamination and false positives largely explain all the very early cases, and in the few cases that are more plausible, from December 2019 onwards, these always involve people who had recently visited Wuhan. And in many of the early cases from Italy and samples from wastewater in Brazil appear to have a mutation that did not occur until 2020, ergo these must be due to contamination.
Peter Miller has a good review of all the studies Bratlie refers to here, and there does not appear to be any good data to suggest cases of infection outside Wuhan in autumn 2019.
The main reason is that these tests are unreliable. They are based on testing for antibodies to SARS2, not for the virus itself. There are no actual viruses in any samples from countries outside China in 2019.
These tests are prone to error, because most of these studies show conflicting results depending on the type of test performed. The studies also acknowledge that whether a test is positive or negative is highly dependent on the “cut-off” limits they choose, and that the results are uncertain and contradictory.
A positive sample may also be due to contamination or cross-immunity to other similar coronaviruses. As mentioned, they do not find the virus itself in these samples, so it is impossible to know with certainty whether the antibodies are from SARS2 or a similar coronavirus, e.g. one of the more common cold viruses.
However, a few of the studies appear to be more reliable, but largely confirm positive tests outside China in November and December 2019. Perhaps as early as October, but earlier findings than that are highly uncertain. Some researchers nevertheless argue that since there are quite a few analyses that claim to have found the same thing, they must be taken seriously.
One possible scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 migrated with travelers from China to various other countries and caused very mild illness that went undetected until the end of 2019. The virus may therefore have infected random people around the world, but it never spread further in the various countries until sometime in 2020.
As I will return to later, it is by no means impossible that there were several “spillovers” from animals to humans in China in the fall of 2019, without leading to further infection and a pandemic. We know, as I will also return to, that antibodies to various coronaviruses are often found in Chinese people who live near bat caves or who work with wild animals.
At the same time, analyses of over 75,000 cases of respiratory diseases at hospitals in Wuhan show that none of them were caused by SARS-CoV-2 before December 2019. And no increase in deaths related to respiratory diseases was found there until the end of December. So it seems strange that there should have been widespread infection in other countries before this.
It is therefore not particularly relevant to this debate, as it does not change the epidemiological data and analyses of molecular clocks that indicate that the first infection with the pandemic virus probably occurred around November 17, 2019, in Wuhan, China. And it is this virus variant and this outbreak that we are interested in.
Potential infections prior to this are therefore no evidence of a lab leak, nor are they an argument against the Huanan wet market as the epicenter of the pandemic in November 2019.
Claire Crossan
Contradictory arguments
But more important than this is that if it turns out that there was indeed infection circulating several months before the official narrative claims, it undermines one of Bratlie's other core arguments: That the virus was too well adapted to humans from the start to have been natural.
Because if she really believes that the virus circulated in a less contagious variant for several months before we had a pandemic, then it is not surprising that the virus was so well adapted to humans from the start, i.e. from December 2019 when the first outbreak was recorded.
This could explain the early cases of infection in Europe that never led to any major outbreaks, because the virus was not yet well adapted to humans at that time. It could also explain why, after the evolutionary adaptations that took place in humans over many weeks, the virus was finally ready to infect humans quickly and efficiently by December 2019.
But why would that happen in Wuhan? If the virus was circulating in France, Italy, Germany, the US, Brazil, and Norway long before, why would it be in Wuhan that we saw the outbreak start? In the same area where the bats believed to be the natural reservoir of the virus are found, and where the animals that are believed to be the source of the virus are sold? It doesn't make sense. It would have been more statistically likely for the outbreak to start in any other city with millions of inhabitants, such as New York, London, Paris or Rio.
And how is this supposed to be an argument for a lab leak? In isolation, it is interesting to discuss when the virus actually appeared in humans, but whether the virus first appeared in humans in the summer of 2019 or November 2019 does not in any way strengthen the lab leak hypothesis. On the contrary, it weakens it considerably, because it does not fit in with any coherent timeline of events at the WIV presented by lab leak proponents.
So Bratlie has to choose. Either she believes that the virus jumped to humans earlier in 2019 and had plenty of time to adapt to humans, or she must believe that it is “strange” that the virus was so well adapted to humans from the outset in December 2019.
She cannot believe both at the same time.
But it clearly shows how the intention is to “sow seeds of doubt” about the official narrative, rather than actually arguing for the likelihood of a lab leak. Everything becomes mere circumstantial evidence. There is no actual evidence.
World Military Games
The fact that Bratlie is so concerned that infection may have occurred much earlier than November/December 2019 also undermines several other arguments she presents in the book.
Among other things, she is very concerned about a military exercise in Wuhan in October of that year:
In October 2019, several thousand athletes from over 100 different countries participated in the seventh International Military World Games (CSIM Military World Games) in Wuhan. Several athletes fell ill with respiratory infections shortly afterwards and reported symptoms similar to those of COVID-19. This may have been the first super-spreader and may explain why traces of infection and the virus have been found in many countries much earlier than the official infection cases indicate. Access to more information about the sick athletes from the various countries' defense organizations would shed more light on the matter.
The problem with this claim, which she spent a lot of time discussing with Wolfgang Wee when she was a guest on his podcast recently, without, of course, being asked a single critical question by Wee himself, is that it is neither plausible nor consistent with the rest of her argument.
Again: If she really believes that it was participants at the Military World Games in Wuhan who brought the infection to the rest of the world as early as October 2019, why does she also argue that there were infections in other countries before October?
Why highlight such an event when it does not fit with the other timelines she presents in the book?
And if she had bothered to check whether this hypothesis is likely to be true, she would have discovered that it is not.
For example, we know that if there were indeed Americans infected with COVID-19 who returned to the US, France, Germany, and other countries in October 2019, they strangely failed to infect a single other person. None of their fellow soldiers in their home countries were infected by this virus, which Bratlie herself argues was extremely well adapted to infecting humans from the outset.
The US military has released its own report on this, in which we can read that of 263 participating military personnel from the US at the games in Wuhan, they found that 7 people had experienced illness with respiratory infection between October 18, 2019, and January 21, 2020. However:
The COVID-19-like symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections. All 7 Service members' symptoms resolved within 6 days.
No increase in mysterious respiratory infections has been found during the period these soldiers returned home:
Data surveillance reports from military treatment facilities indicate no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them. In addition, no significant increase in COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms was documented for the dates of October 2019 through March 2020 as a result of U.S. Army separate surveillance testing.
Later analyses of cases of COVID-19 infection in various countries, including the US, show significantly more genetic diversity than in the original Wuhan virus. The infection must therefore have spread over time throughout the world, with room for further mutations, before it reached the US or other countries. Genetic analyses show that it is unlikely to have come directly from Wuhan to these places by plane in October 2019.
If soldiers who had been in Wuhan brought the SARS2 virus back to France, Germany, the US, and dozens of other countries in October 2019, we would also have had a pandemic at least a couple of months before it actually arrived, given an infection doubling time of 3-4 days.
These hypotheses by Bratlie fall apart as soon as one looks at them a little more critically. But she serves them up to her readers anyway, without a single critical reservation, because they are important for creating the illusion of “smoke.”
One might even call it so much artificial smoke that it becomes a smokescreen for the truth.
Mysterious events at the WIV
She also writes about several mysterious events at the WIV in October 2019, much of it taken from Minerva's “investigation” of the case:
On September 12, the WIV's virus database is closed to external access. It has been unavailable since. A few days later, an emergency drill is held at Wuhan airport simulating a coronavirus outbreak. On September 30, the WIV announces general safety recommendations to students, asking them to stay away from crowds and report their whereabouts. In mid-October, all signs of activity at the WIV cease: telephone data shows that no mobile phone signals were registered inside the area, and satellite images show roadblocks and minimal traffic in the area. During the fall, WIV made several large purchases, including new equipment for analyzing virus samples, and hired additional security guards. On November 19, WIV line managers reviewed security procedures and security breaches during the current year.
None of this has been verified, nor is it evidence of anything relevant to this debate.
I have already mentioned in previous blog posts that the WIV's virus database was shut down on September 12. There does not seem to be anything unique or suspicious about this. It was occasionally available from December 2019 to February 2020, before disappearing for good.
A coronavirus emergency drill in a country where, just a few years earlier, there had been an outbreak of the deadly SARS1, and where researchers in Wuhan had repeatedly warned before 2019 about the risk of more coronaviruses in bats jumping to humans and causing a pandemic? Not very suspicious.
The aforementioned “suspicious” announcement to students is very strange to highlight here, and shows how exceptionally conspiratorial Bratlie and Minerva are thinking about this.
If you actually read it, as I have done, you will see that it is a reminder to students to take care of themselves as the national holiday approaches and many are going away. They should take care of their valuables, remember to turn off the electricity and unplug appliances before leaving their apartments, be careful in traffic, not be fooled by scammers on the internet or on the phone, etc.
But what Bratlie chooses to highlight as suspicious is one of many points that students were reminded of before they left for their national holiday vacation:
Do not participate in illegal gatherings. During the vacation, you should avoid going to crowded places or gathering places, and do not participate in illegal gatherings or activities. When a crowd gathers and a security incident occurs for a group, you should take self-protection measures and evacuate in time.
In other words, do not participate in illegal gatherings and be careful if you are in large groups. Bratlie believes that this could be a sign that “something scary” happened at WIV.
I am not so convinced.
As for the review of security procedures, US intelligence has come to a different conclusion than Bratlie:
[...] the intelligence report said the November 2019 safety training appeared to be run-of-the-mill rather than a response to a biosecurity breach. “We do not know of a specific biosafety incident at the WIV that spurred the pandemic, and the WIV's biosafety training appears routine, rather than an emergency response by China's leadership,” said the report, which was drafted by the national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction and proliferation and coordinated with the intelligence community.
The review was therefore of a routine nature, they believe. There is little to suggest that this was a reactive event based on something that had happened at the laboratory.
It is also striking how Bratlie loves to point out that, according to her, key organizations in US intelligence believe that a lab leak is most likely, but at the same time chooses to omit everything from US intelligence that totally contradicts her claims.
This is one example of this, and I will come back to more later when we address other omissions in the book.
That they purchased new equipment is also difficult to understand as suspicious. WIV also purchased new equipment earlier in 2019, and later in November 2020 – a year after the pandemic started.
This is part of the operation of such a laboratory. One of the most central figures in this story, virus researcher Shi Zhengli at WIV, warned of the risk that a bat virus could spread to humans in published research articles before the pandemic. That is why their research was so important.
But when she tries to conduct responsible research, it is used as evidence that she must have been the cause of the pandemic. This is both irrational and ugly.
It clearly shows how a conspiratorial mind chooses to pick out completely everyday events and present them as “suspicious,” simply because, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that a new virus appeared a few months later.
It also shows the conspiratorial nature of Bratlie's claim that safety at the WIV was too low (for which there is no good evidence), and that a lab leak is therefore likely. But when the laboratory buys better air filters, testing equipment, conducts safety training, etc., this is also “proof” that something must have happened there. How can they win?
If they have poor security, it is proof of a lab leak. But if they take security seriously, it is also proof of a lab leak.
It's a bit like the testing of employees. When they were tested in early 2020 to see if they could have spread the infection, they tested negative. But lab leak supporters find that suspicious. How could they test negative for SARS2 in 2020 when there were so many infected people in Wuhan?
So if they tested positive, it would be proof of a lab leak. But when they test negative, it also becomes proof of a cover-up of a lab leak.
You can't win.
As for the alleged roadblocks and radio silence around the WIV in October 2019, US intelligence itself writes that the roadblocks were most likely related to the World Military Games in Wuhan at the same time. A perfectly natural explanation.
I can find no reliable sources confirming that there was no mobile communication in the area. Some sources, such as Sky News Australia, have reported this, and it has been used by the Trump administration and Republicans as an argument in hearings, but I cannot find any primary sources for this.
The claim appears to be based on very weak evidence. Remember that not many people worked at the WIV, and in the period before this alleged “radio silence,” there were never more than 10 mobile phones active at the same time. It is doubtful that anyone has solid data showing that these suddenly disappeared for a few days. The closest one gets to a source on this is that Republicans have challenged China to provide more information on this to find out if it is true, but this has not been provided.
Ergo, Bratlie is also basing her claim on hearsay. Again, a fragment of something that may be true, and which “if true” seems suspicious. However, not a single one of the points she raises about the “suspicious” activity surrounding the WIV in October 2019 is supported by good evidence or lacks natural explanations.
One must interpret everything in the worst possible light with a preferred conclusion of lab leak in order to find these things important. It's just more smoke, but still no fire.
Cherry-picking
Selective quoting and cherry picking
Bratlie's book and argumentation are characterized by selecting data that fits and ignoring what does not fit the lab leak hypothesis.
As mentioned earlier, she likes to highlight US intelligence to support her case.
In the book, we can read that of the “18 different intelligence organizations” (I count only 17) in what is called the Intelligence Community (IC), only the FBI initially believed that a leak was most likely – with moderate confidence in the conclusion. Later, the Department of Energy (DoE) came on board and agreed, but with low confidence in the conclusion. Finally, the CIA also agreed, again with low confidence in the conclusion.
The other organizations have either not drawn any conclusions, and at least four believe zoonosis is most likely, albeit also with low confidence in the conclusion.
In other words: All IC organizations believe both scenarios are plausible, but they lean slightly towards one side or the other. There is no reason to give these much weight.
However, Bratlie writes extensively about them and makes a big deal out of the fact that three of these intelligence organizations are on her side. But she does not mention that they also completely contradict her claims on several points.
Among other things, they are clear that they do not believe the virus was genetically engineered:
We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way.
The organizations that believe a lab leak is most likely do not believe that the virus was genetically engineered. This directly contradicts Bratlie's main hypothesis throughout the book, namely that illegal GoF research was conducted at the WIV and that this was the origin of the virus. This is also the entire premise of her own theory of what happened, which she presents towards the end of the book.
So why does she constantly refer to US intelligence, which in the minority supports her, while never mentioning that they actually disagree with her main hypothesis?
She also writes a lot about the three employees at the WIV who allegedly fell ill in November 2019:
The most sensational revelation was that several researchers at the WIV had been ill in the fall of 2019. The symptoms were consistent with both COVID-19 and more common respiratory infections such as influenza.
I also wrote about this in an earlier blog post on the subject (my emphasis):
Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19. The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19.
Furthermore, one can read:
We have no indications that any of these researchers were hospitalized because of the symptoms consistent with COVID-19. One researcher may have been hospitalized in this timeframe for treatment of a non-respiratory medical condition.
China’s National Security Commission investigated the WIV in early 2020 and took blood samples from WIV researchers. According to the World Health Organization's March 2021 public report, WIV officials including Shi Zhengli—who leads the WIV laboratory group that conducts coronavirus research—stated lab employee samples all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
In other words: There is absolutely no evidence that these researchers actually had COVID-19 in November 2019.
US intelligence, which she so frequently refers to when it supports her case, thus completely disagrees with her. She does point out that their symptoms were consistent with, among other things, influenza, but does not write that anyone also had symptoms that were not consistent with COVID-19.
And when she repeatedly mentions these three sick employees later in the book, she makes no reservation that the intelligence agencies themselves do not consider this likely and therefore do not base their assessments of the likelihood of a lab leak on this.
When the names of the three employees were later leaked, journalists contacted them. Two of those who worked at the lab say they were never ill, while the third has not commented. None of them worked with live viruses, nor did any of them later test positive for COVID antibodies.
The strange thing is that they are claimed to have fallen ill in November 2019. Again, this is completely at odds with Bratlie's hypotheses, which point to an event in September (when the virus database was taken down) or in October (when “mysterious” things happened at the WIV). And if they first fell ill in November due to an infection a few days days earlier, why does Bratlie believe that there was infection in Europe several months earlier?
The Department of Energy, which also leans toward a lab leak, points to the premises of the Wuhan CDC as the most likely source of the infection. These buildings are located quite close to the wet market, on the other side of the Yangtze River from the WIV. No research on viruses was conducted at the CDC, at least not before December 2019, as they only moved into these premises then. Any research would have had to have taken place somewhat later, so it is of little relevance to the case.
Florence Débarre
So even though three intelligence organizations lean toward a lab leak, they do not even agree among themselves about where this leak occurred. Simply because they have no data showing such a leak, only speculation about the research that may have taken place there and the risks involved.
So once again, we see that there is no plausible hypothesis. They just find something that “seems strange” and believe it is evidence of a lab leak. The fact that these are completely contradictory, or do not fit into any coherent timeline, apparently does not matter.
Gain of Function
Another key point in Bratlie's hypothesis is that research on SARS2 was conducted at the WIV, so-called “Gain of Function” (GoF) research. This involves, for example, taking parts of one virus and splicing them into another, or generating point mutations to change the genome of the virus in order to alter its properties.
But here too, US intelligence disagrees with her.
As previously mentioned, they reject the claim that the virus has been genetically manipulated. They also write that there is no evidence that the WIV conducted any research on SARS2 or any closely related virus:
Information available to the IC indicates that some of the research conducted by the PLA and WIV included work with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.
[...]
The IC assesses that this work was intended for public health needs and that the coronaviruses known to be used were too distantly related to have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
[...]
Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.
This is nevertheless the core of Bratlie's own hypothesis, in which she writes, among other things:
This research resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019: a genetic puzzle composed of a RaTG13-like bat virus and a pangolin virus (alternatively a virus from the BANAL family), or a genetic “average virus” based on various viruses they had collected – to which a furin cleavage site was added.
There is absolutely no evidence for this.
Nothing. Nada.
Not a shred of evidence has ever been found that the WIV has ever had a virus in its collection that is closely enough related to SARS2 that it could have been used as a “backbone” for genetic manipulation. Nevertheless, Bratlie's entire argument stands or falls on the following: “Well, if they had such a virus, then my hypothesis is plausible.”
Sure, maybe, if you ignore a number of other factors that contradict the WIV as the source of the pandemic, but there is no indication that they had such a virus, and thus her hypothesis collapses. And US intelligence, despite all its investigations, hearings, and interviews, disagrees with her.
She is not very keen to talk or write about that. And the few times she mentions US intelligence disagreeing with her, it is because they were pressured or paid to lie... Claims based solely on rumors and hearsay, without any actual evidence.
The A and B lineages
Another factor that points to zoonosis is that two different lineages of SARS2 were found in the very first cases of infection in Wuhan: the A lineage and the B lineage.
I write more about this in previous blog posts, but in short, both virus variants were found in infected individuals, but there were approximately twice as many cases of the B line as the A line in the earliest COVID patients.
This suggests that there must have been two “spillovers,” meaning that the virus must have jumped from animals to humans twice. Once with the A variant and once with the B variant. And since there were many more cases of the B lineage, this may indicate that it jumped to humans first, since it had time to spread more in the population, even though the A lineage is genetically “older” than B.
This is a strong argument for zoonosis, because if SARS2 has been present in animals at the Huanan seafood market, e.g. in civets or racoon dogs, which we know were sold illegally there, it may have mutated into (at least) two different virus variants in the animals. Then a human was infected by the B lineage, and a few days later someone else was infected with the A lineage.
In a lab leak scenario, the two lineages are difficult to explain. In that case, it would have meant that they had two different variants of the virus in the laboratory, and that two infection accidents occurred there, where one employee was infected with the A lineage and one with the B lineage. Then they would both have had to travel to the seafood market, half an hour's drive away, and infect other people only there, without infecting their families, friends, colleagues or anyone else in Wuhan.
This is extremely unlikely. That is why it is important for those who believe in a lab leak to cast doubt on these two strains, and not least that both strains were found right next to and in the wet market.
Bratlie therefore writes the following:
The different virus lineages probably originate from a single infection event – not two. Among other things, viruses have been found that are an “intermediate” between lineage A and lineage B, suggesting that B is a direct descendant of A and does not belong to another branch of the family tree.
She cites this study as her source. However, the conclusions drawn in this study have recently been called into question.
In a recent article from 2025, Pekar et al. write:
Early SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity has been classified into two distinct viral lineages, denoted “A” and “B,” which we hypothesized were separately introduced into humans. Recently published data contain two genomes with a haplotype suggested to be an evolutionary intermediate to these two lineages, known as “T/T.” We used a phylodynamic approach to analyze SARS-CoV-2 genomes from early 2020 to determine whether these two T/T genomes represent an evolutionarily intermediate haplotype between lineages A and B, or if they are a later descendant of either of these two lineages. We find that these two recently published T/T genomes do not represent an evolutionarily intermediate haplotype and were, instead, derived from either lineage A or lineage B.
This T/T lineage, which has been proposed as an “intermediate” between A and B, does not appear to have existed in the first phase of the pandemic and is based on viruses collected two months after the outbreak at the seafood market.
It is also quite certain that the B lineage circulated in the population before the A lineage, and since the A lineage is genetically older than the B lineage, it is therefore unlikely that the later T/T lineage evolved from A and later became B.
This “intermediate form” thus appears to have come from either the A or B lineage and evolved separately, but not be an actual “intermediate” that demonstrates that A became B via T/T.
Here, Bratlie is again completely out of step with the general scientific understanding of the evolution of SARS2, but since this hypothetical “intermediate form” weakens the zoonosis hypothesis, she clings to it without mentioning any of the criticism against it in the book.
And again, it is worth remembering that such an intermediate form does not support the lab leak hypothesis. If it were correct, it might weaken one of many central arguments for zoonosis, but it would not strengthen the lab leak hypothesis for that reason.
It is just another example of cherry-picking evidence, where studies that support the theory are included, while studies that contradict it are not mentioned, in order to create the impression that lab leak is likely.
Spread from the seafood market
Spread pattern causes problems
Another of the key arguments for zoonosis is the spread pattern of SARS2 at the start of the pandemic. All good analyses show that the spread started from the wet market and moved outwards from this epicenter the longer it went on.
See also previous blog posts for more details on this.
The most important studies here are Worobey et al's study “The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic” from 2022, which I wrote about in a previous blog post, and Crits-Christoph et al's study “Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic” from 2024.
These studies undermine Bratlie's case, so she is doing everything she can to cast doubt on them.
In the Worobey study, they found several interesting things when analyzing environmental samples from the wet market taken shortly after it was closed on January 1, 2020. Remember that the wet market is about the size of a football field and divided into two parts with a road between them.
Here are some of the main points from the studies:
- They found the most positive samples with the SARS2 virus, i.e. samples taken from machines, cages, floors, drainage channels/pipes, walls, etc. in the wet market, exactly where the most relevant infectious animals were kept, in the southwestern corner of the market. The further away from this area, the fewer positive samples were found.
- DNA from both raccoon dogs and SARS2 was found in the same samples, indicating that the animals had been in the area where the infection occurred.
- When cases of infection linked to the wet market were mapped, the same pattern was found. Most infected people were on the west side of the market.
- When analyzing cases of infection in Wuhan, most cases were found near the market at the beginning, and then gradually spread outwards. This applies both to cases with a known link to the market, i.e. people who worked there or had recently visited the market, and cases without such a link. The fact that even those with no connection to the market most often lived near the market suggests that the findings are not due to people from the market being tested more than others.
- When they analyzed data from death records and analyzed excess mortality, they found that deaths registered with a “mysterious flu” in December 2019 were closely linked to the wet market.
- Data from the mobile app Weibo showed that searches for symptoms such as coughing, diarrhea, etc. came to a greater extent from users near the market than from other places in Wuhan.
- When blood samples from hospitals in China were obtained and analyzed later, it was also found that most positive samples came from hospitals close to the market.
- The same was true when analyzing infections among healthcare workers. Most of these were in hospitals close to the wet market at the start of the pandemic.
- Both the A and B lineages were found at the wet market.
- Genetic analyses show little genetic variation in the samples found at the market compared to samples taken from humans later, suggesting that the outbreak started here.
- SARS2 was found in all samples taken where the most likely intermediate hosts, i.e., civets, racoon dogs, etc., were found, and human DNA was also found in some of the same samples.
None of these analyses find that WIV, located about 15-20 km away, on the other side of the great Yangtze River, could have been the epicenter. And none of the genetic analyses point to an epicenter other than the seafood market.
The year before Critz-Christoph et al published their study, Chinese researchers published a similar study, “Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at the Huanan Seafood Market”, by Liu et al. This is based on the same samples taken inside the wet market, but claims that the DNA in the samples comes from humans, not from animals such as raccoon dogs, etc.
Bratlie chooses to emphasize this study, which fits better with her narrative, even though there are compelling reasons to believe that the more recent study from 2024 is a more rigorous and thorough analysis.
When Kristian Andersen was in Oslo in the fall of 2024 and gave a lecture, Bratlie asked him about this study, and he replied as follows:
To the Liu et al. that largely they agree with us. They don't do these types of analyses. They just keep it open and saying like, well, initially they said it's all human, but clearly it's not all human reads, right? And then they can conclude that based on their opinions that, well, maybe it's the market, maybe it's something else.
Probably it's not even China. I disagree with those conclusions. I think our analyses are better. I think our analyses are different because they address different questions. For example, clustering inside the market itself, which they don't address.
So that's why our conclusions are different. It's their data set largely, not all of it, but most of it is. They also don't do the timing at the market versus the timing outside the market, which I think is an important data point too.
Criticism of Worobey et al
Critics such as Bratlie point to other studies that have criticized Worobey et al for their analyses and argue that these are flawed. Let's take a closer look at what Bratlie cites in his reference list.
One of them is this study, “Assessing the emergence time of SARS-CoV-2 zoonotic spillover” by Samson et al, which in short argues that based on the virus's molecular clock, the first transmission from animals to humans must have occurred between August and October 2019. However, by analyzing the entire virus genome, it may have occurred as late as November 2019.
Highlighting this study is again cherry-picking, because the vast majority of other analyses find that the spillover must have occurred in the period October-December, with November as the “midpoint.” This is entirely in line with the generally accepted timeline.
Worobery and co. are not alone in their conclusions, as Bratlie likes to portray it.
In addition, only November fits with epidemiological data, i.e., the spread of infection in humans. A spillover from animals to humans earlier than this would also have resulted in many more cases of infection in December than we actually saw.
Not least, the Samson study is actually based on the zoonosis hypothesis, so it is a little strange that Bratlie chooses to use it as evidence for an earlier start to the pandemic without mentioning that it also undermines her lab leak hypothesis.
At the same time, it is important to mention that no supporters of the zoonosis hypothesis dispute that there may have been, and indeed most likely were, several earlier spillovers from animals to humans. And perhaps also the other way around. It is likely that farmers on farms where animals sold at market were caught and collected may have been infected with SARS2 earlier. But the virus did not spread further because they do not interact with many people. It usually takes a fairly densely populated city of millions to start a pandemic, not a family living on a farm in the countryside.
As mentioned, this may also explain why there may have been infections in other countries earlier in the autumn, but without any epidemics breaking out.
Bratlie also cites this study, “An Evolutionary Portrait of the Progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and Its Dominant Offshoots in COVID-19 Pandemic” by Kumar et al as evidence against the official narrative. This is strange, as this study concludes that there are no samples from before 2020 that contain viruses that could have been the precursor to SARS-CoV-2.
The study thus rejects the idea that SARS-2 infected humans long before the outbreak in November 2019.
She then highlights Pekar et al's 2021 study “Timing the SARS-CoV-2 index case in Hubei province,” which places the first case of infection somewhere between mid-October and mid-November, perhaps as late as November 17, 2019. This places the start slightly earlier than is currently believed, but does not directly conflict with the prevailing idea of a start in the second half of November.
She also refers to this study, “Dating first cases of COVID-19” by Roberts et al from 2021, which essentially says the same thing as the previous study, but this time based on reported cases of infection and analyses based on them.
Perhaps most important for Bratlie is this study, “Statistics did not prove that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic” by Stoyan et al, which Bratlie believes refutes the idea that the wet market was the epicenter.
Stoyan et al. believe that the statistical analyses carried out by Worobey et al. are incorrect and that, based on their analyses, the epicenter could just as easily have been a train station or a shopping center nearby. Their argument is not that any of these places were actually where the infection started, but that they are statistically equally likely purely from a geographical point of view.
The problem with this criticism is that Worobey et al. based their findings on many different lines of evidence, not just environmental samples from the wet market or data from the first cases of infection. As mentioned earlier, they also looked at excess mortality, infected healthcare workers, mobile phone data, infected people with no connection to the wet market, etc., and all of these point to the wet market as the epicenter.
And even though they removed all cases close to the wet market, two out of three of the early cases, and analyzed only these “distant” cases, the result still pointed to the wet market.
It should also be mentioned here that among the earliest cases, all samples were from hospitals on the side of the river where the wet market is located. Not a single case comes from hospitals on the WIV side of the river. It seems strange if the laboratory was really the epicenter of the infection...
Stoyan and co's criticism shows that the epicenter may have been somewhere close to the wet market, 1-3 km from the market. In other words, even if their criticism is correct, it places the epicenter significantly closer to the wet market than the WIV, which is after all around 15-20 km away.
A later analysis by Débarre/Worobey, based on Stoyan's methods, shows that the epicenter may have been the parking lot outside the wet market. Again, the point is not that they believe the infection started in a parking lot, but to show that the statistical analysis Stoyan has used could just as easily point to the wet market.
In addition, Bratlie refers to criticism of the Worobey study by Weissman, “Proximity ascertainment bias in early COVID case locations” from 2024. This article focuses on the early cases of infection and argues that it does not necessarily point to the wet market as the epicenter. He believes this is because early cases linked to the market were analyzed to a greater extent, as it was initially believed that the market was the source of the infection.
The problem with this is that other types of data also support the hypothesis that the wet market was the epicenter, in addition to the environmental samples that point to the highest level of infection where the animals in question were located.
Weissman's criticism is based on the hypothesis that cases of infection with no known link to the market should have been further away from the market than cases with a known link to the market. However, Worobey et al. found the opposite, which they believe strengthens the hypothesis of the wet market as the epicenter.
Worobey and Débarre believe this is because those who worked at the seafood market often had longer commutes, while those who were infected near the market with no known connection to the market lived close to the market. After all, it is unlikely that most people who work at such a market also live right next to their workplace. Those who are not connected to the market, on the other hand, are infected by people who visit the market simply because they happen to live nearby.
More recent data on cases of infection from Chinese authorities, where links to the wet market have been removed as an inclusion criterion, show the same pattern. This was also shown by the analyses where all early cases near the market were removed.
In other words, Bratlie's criticism of the wet market as the epicenter is weak. It is based on studies that in no way remove the wet market as a highly plausible epicenter based on purely geographical analyses, and which confirm that the wet market is more likely than, for example, the WIV.
The studies she refers to also criticize only a couple of isolated statistical analyses, ignoring the fact that the spread studies used many different analyses that all pointed to the same thing. In addition, there is evidence that plausible intermediate hosts existed at the wet market and that environmental samples there show a pattern of spread consistent with the hypothesis that these started the pandemic.
In her criticism of the study, Bratlie also writes:
The authors claim that both virus lineage A and virus lineage B were found at the market, but this is not an accurate representation of the facts. Traces of lineage A were found on a glove left behind at the market, but otherwise all environmental samples were exclusively positive for the “younger” lineage B. All those infected from the market also had strain B. It is quite likely that the positive A sample is a so-called contamination.
This again makes it sound as if the two strains that are supposed to demonstrate two separate transmissions from animals to humans are not credible.
It is correct that the A line has only been found on a glove inside the market, and that one could therefore argue that this is contamination. But what Bratlie never mentions is that among the very first known cases of infection with the A line of the virus, these were just outside the market:
However, the earliest known lineage A genomes have close geographical connections to Huanan Market: one from a patient (age and gender not reported) who stayed in a hotel near Huanan Market in the days before illness onset in December and the other from the 62-year-old husband in cluster 1 who visited Yangchahu Market, just a few blocks north of Huanan Market, and lived just to the south (see the figure). Therefore, if lineage A had a separate animal origin from lineage B, both most likely occurred at Huanan Market, and the association with Yangchahu Market, which does not appear to have sold live mammals, is likely due to community transmission starting in the neighborhoods surrounding Huanan Market.
It is misleading to write that “all those infected from the market had lineage B” when we know that lineage A was found in infected individuals right next to the market. This does not significantly weaken the argument if we disregard the glove.
Other contradictions
Contradictions abound in Bratlie's narrative
At the beginning of the book, Bratlie writes extensively about previous lab leaks to substantiate that such incidents are not uncommon. This is both interesting reading and, of course, an important factor.
At the same time, it should be noted that in all these previous lab leaks, the diseases were traced to a laboratory because the cases of infection were directly linked to the lab. The spread from the lab to the general population could be observed.
We did not see this in Wuhan. There, the infection started at a completely different epicenter, probably the Huanan seafood market.
In addition, none of the previous lab leaks involved a novel virus stored or created in a laboratory. These were viruses that were already known to be infectious to humans.
Ergo, there are actually very few parallels between the historical lab leaks and an alleged leak at Wuhan that may have started a pandemic with a new and previously unknown virus, and Bratlie shoots herself in the foot with that argument.
Several of these incidents also occurred in laboratories with BSL3 and BSL4 security levels, which are the highest. But Bratlie directs much of her criticism at the WIV for conducting coronavirus research under BSL2, a lower level of security.
However, her own historical review shows that even with BSL3 and 4, there is no guarantee against such accidents. And while there is broad agreement that we must take the safety of such research seriously, and that there is room for improvement, it was not necessarily wrong to do this under BSL2.
After all, this was research on viruses that were not believed to be directly infectious to humans, and even the measles virus, one of the most infectious viruses we know of, and the rabies virus, which is 100% fatal to humans, are researched under BSL2.
One can debate whether this is sensible or not, but the fact that WIV researched these viruses under BSL2 is not an argument for any conspiracy.
Lack of security at WIV?
In chapter 21, Bratlie argues that there were serious concerns about security at WIV. Among other things, she refers to an article in The Washington Post in April 2020:
In 2018, representatives from the US Embassy in Beijing sent several reports of concern back to Washington. Although the laboratory was built on the basis of international cooperation, few international researchers were allowed to work there, they wrote. They were particularly concerned about the critical lack of adequately trained technical personnel and researchers who could operate the high-security laboratory in a responsible manner.
The diplomats also warned that the coronavirus research, led by Zhengli Shi, could in the worst case pose a risk of a new SARS-like epidemic if safety was not adequately ensured. They argued that the US should provide additional support to the laboratory, not only because the research was important, but also because it was risky and needed better security measures. An American official later described the diplomatic messages as “a warning shot” and said that the diplomats “begged people to pay attention to what was going on.”
But this has since proven to be completely wrong!
The newspaper's reporting was based on two “sensitive (but not classified) messages of concern”, of which the journalist only had access to the first. However, they were aware of the content of the second message through statements from an anonymous source.
When the full content of these “reports of concern” was later obtained in July 2020, it turned out not to be that at all.
The only thing the US representatives were concerned about was that the WIV needed more personnel with good security training and expertise. Although the Washington Post wrote that the reports contained warnings that the research there could start a new pandemic, which Bratlie repeats uncritically in his book, the reports actually said the opposite. They wrote that the research there was important to prevent a new pandemic and to develop important vaccines, so they urged the US to provide more financial assistance to the WIV to ensure they had competent personnel and equipment.
The concern was that the laboratories could not work at full capacity because they lacked resources. Not that there was an imminent safety hazard there.
The reports even argued that the WIV should be given Ebola viruses to research, which does not exactly suggest that they viewed safety at the WIV as a major problem.
The Washington Post's version was completely misleading, as they themselves later admitted:
Tellingly, when the full diplomatic cable referenced by Rogin was released in July, the Post itself concluded, “The full cable does not strengthen the claim that an accident at the lab caused the virus to escape.” Any reading of the cable makes clear it says nothing like Rogin’s interpretation. Instead, it makes clear that a shortage of qualified staff had precluded the lab from operating at full capacity and importing highly contagious diseases.
We have known this since the summer of 2020, but Bratlie places great emphasis on the first, incorrect version to argue that there was a high risk of lab leakage at the WIV, for which there is no evidence.
The only other piece of data she has to give the impression of poor security at the WIV is this:
The head of WIV's BSL-4 lab, Yuan Zhiming, himself repeatedly warned in the years before the pandemic about safety challenges at China's research laboratories, including his own, and believed that more money, stricter rules, and better control systems were needed.
That is correct, but this applied to BSL3 and BSL4 labs and is therefore not relevant to the research that was going on at the BSL2 lab that is relevant to this debate.
Zhiming never warned of any actual accidents, nor of any immediate danger, only that they needed more resources to maintain sufficiently high security at the labs with the highest security level in the whole of China – nothing related to the WIV specifically.
So both of the two data points Bratlie presents to us to support the idea that a lab leak at the WIV was highly likely to be dangerous poor security, and that many had warned about this earlier, turn out to be wrong.
And we have known this to be wrong for many years, but Bratlie fails to tell her readers, because this point is so important for people to buy into her narrative. But when we see that security at the WIV was not poor, the likelihood of an actual lab leak drops significantly.
US intelligence also writes:
Before the pandemic, the WIV had been working to improve at least some biosafety conditions and training. We do not know of a specific biosafety incident at the WIV that spurred the pandemic and the WIV’s biosafety training appears routine, rather than an emergency response by China’s leadership.
Birger Sørensen
Sigrid Bratlie is also very fond of virus researcher Birger Sørensen, who was quick to claim that the virus must have come from a laboratory.
He believed that the virus clearly showed signs of not being natural, that it was a genetically modified chimera, i.e. assembled from parts of different viruses. She writes this on page 21 of the book.
On pages 40-41, however, she writes:
Nor is it possible to look at the genes of the virus to see if it has been modified using genetic engineering – especially not with newer technologies such as gene editing, which makes it possible to make changes to the genes of any organism without leaving a trace. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, looks like a genetic jigsaw puzzle made up of pieces from a bat virus, a pangolin virus, and a furin cleavage site, but just by looking at it, it is not possible to determine whether it is nature or a human being who has put it all together. Nor is it possible to tell by looking at the virus whether it has adapted to a species through natural evolution in nature or whether it has occurred through “artificial evolution” in laboratory animals.
So she praises Sørensen for seeing immediately that the virus could not have developed naturally, but claims herself that this cannot be seen from the virus.
In other words, she does not really care whether what Birger Sørensen said was plausible, only that he is on “her team” in this matter. This is intellectually dishonest. Especially when most other researchers rejected his analyses.
It is also a little strange, when we are talking about sins of omission, that she never mentions that Sørensen also believes, for example, that the omicron variant of SARS2 must have come from a new lab leak. So there were two lab leaks, according to him. Does Bratlie believe that too?
Bratlie is a supporter of vaccines, but Sørensen has stated that he believes mRNA vaccines are harmful and that two doses are dangerous.
And it gets worse. Sørensen was part of a group that invested heavily in the financial gains of promoting his alternative COVID vaccine and engaged in intense harassment of investigative journalists and researchers to achieve their goals early in the pandemic:
One of the world’s most prestigious general science journals, Nature, was the target of a two-year-long sustained and virulent secret attack by a conspiratorial group of extreme Brexit lobbyists with high-level political, commercial and intelligence connections, according to documents and correspondence examined by Computer Weekly and Byline Times.
The group attempted to have Nature and its staff put under surveillance and investigated by MI5, MI6, the CIA, Mossad, and Japanese and Australian intelligence agencies. They met Cabinet minister Michael Gove and later asked him to arrange phone taps and electronic surveillance. One member of the group led intrusive investigations into the intimate personal life and background circumstances of senior Nature staff the group suspected of “extreme Sinophile views”.
When their campaign flopped and a Covid vaccine promoted by the group failed to reach any form of clinical testing, the group arranged for unfounded accusations against Nature magazines and staff to be published by the Daily Telegraph and on other right wing news sites. They called themselves the “Covid Hunters”. Their allegations against science reporting helped fuel an explosion in “lab leak” claims on right-wing conspiracy sites.
Read the rest of this crazy story here:
Computer Weekly and Byline Times Published: 03 Oct 2023 7:00
Doesn't Bratlie think that such statements, financial incentives and despicable behavior undermine his credibility? Shouldn't she mention this in the book when she praises him so highly and thanks him for good conversations and support during the writing process? When she portrays him as a martyr who was ridiculed for no reason?
But was it really completely without reason, considering the rest of the context?
A jigsaw puzzle
It is also not surprising that the virus looks like a “jigsaw puzzle.” That is exactly what you would expect from this type of virus.
SARS-CoV-2 is, as we know, a coronavirus. Everyone is aware of that. But it belongs to a subgroup called beta coronaviruses. And a subgroup of those called sarbecoviruses (SArs-likeBEtaCOronaVIRUS).
One thing we know about sarbecoviruses is that they are recombinant viruses. They “reproduce” by mixing parts of their genome with other viruses, like Lego blocks.
They do not evolve slowly and gradually through small random mutations here and there, but instead exchange larger “blocks” of the genome through random recombination of the RNA, mostly in the “spike,” where the famous furin cleavage site is located, which many lab leak supporters see as a “smoking gun.”
Knowing all this, it is not so certain that this gun was fired after all.
Isn't this also something Bratlie should have mentioned in her book? Instead, she points out that the virus looks like a “jigsaw puzzle” in the hope that the reader will think “that sounds suspicious and unnatural”, when the truth is that this is exactly what you would expect a sarbecovirus to look like!
In her book, she also writes the following:
The fact that the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 and ENaC are identical is probably an important reason why COVID-19 can cause severe lung symptoms.
If you want to know what ENaC is, you can read my previous blog post on the subject, where I explain in detail why it is not suspicious that ENaC has a furin cleavage site similar to that found in SARS2.
I write “similar” because, while Bratlie writes that they are “identical,” that is not true. They are very similar, but the arginine is coded differently. She does not mention this, even though it is quite central, because the version in SARS2 is found in other coronaviruses – but not in humans, and a clear sign that the furin cleavage site in SARS2 is unlikely to have been “spliced” into the virus from human ENaC.
Such uncomfortable facts are omitted throughout the book.
Danielle Anderson
She also never mentions Danielle Anderson, an Australian researcher who worked at the WIV until November 2019.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, she was interviewed a few times, until she went into hiding due to all the harassment and threats she received from lab leak supporters.
Anderson has repeatedly said that she never saw any sick employees at the laboratory while she worked there. She was tested herself in the fall of 2020, before she was to receive the COVID vaccine, and had no antibodies to SARS-2 in her blood. She was therefore never infected herself.
If several of her colleagues at the lab were infected with such a contagious virus, as Bratlie claims without evidence, it is strange that she did not become infected herself.
She also describes a very robust reporting system at the lab where employees had to report if they became ill with symptoms that could resemble those caused by the viruses they were working with. No such illness or symptoms were ever reported.
Bratlie also fails to mention that there are photos on social media of lab employees who, for example, attended a conference in Singapore together at the end of December 2019. No one showed any signs of illness, there was no talk or “gossip” about any incident at the lab, and everything was as normal.
It seems strange if Bratlie's claims about complete radio silence, roadblocks, lockdown, sick employees with mysterious symptoms, etc. in either September, October or November – depending on which of her many timelines one chooses to refer to – are true.
WIV also had a visit from a group of students in early 2020 and posted pictures of this. It seems strange that they would invite lots of students to the lab after they knew they had spread a new, dangerous virus that they were unable to control. But again, everything seemed normal.
On top of that, Shi Zhengli herself was at a conference in Shanghai on December 30, 2019, when she was asked for help because the authorities in Wuhan believed they could be facing a new, unknown virus. Why was she there if she was busy covering up a catastrophic outbreak at her workplace? Incidentally, she rushed back to the WIV to help.
The missing link
Another key point for Bratlie is that no intermediate host for SARS2 has ever been found.
The zoonosis hypothesis is based on the virus coming from bats, infecting an animal, an intermediate host, probably a raccoon dog, civet, bamboo rat or other species that we know can be infected by these viruses, before jumping to humans.
We have not yet found SARS2 in bats, nor in any intermediate host. This is suspicious, according to Bratlie.
She writes, among other things:
SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any of the more than 80,000 animals that have been tested across China.
That is correct. But what she chooses not to mention is that the 80,000 animals that have been tested are mostly farm animals that are unlikely to be intermediate hosts. At best, only a few hundred animals of the species of interest have been tested.
It is likely that no civets have ever been tested. Perhaps only a few dozen raccoon dogs and a handful of other relevant species.
Testing tens of thousands of goats, cows, pigs, and chickens is not very relevant. What Bratlie should have written, if she wanted to be honest, was that SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any of the few hundred (?) animals that have been tested across China.
Then it is suddenly no longer so strange that the virus has not been found in any intermediate hosts.
The animals sold at the Huanan seafood market were also slaughtered and destroyed on January 1, 2020, by Chinese authorities, wise from the damage caused by SARS1. Therefore, there were no live animals to test there afterwards. There were a few dead animals in cold storage/freezers, and a few stray animals, but these all tested negative for SARS2, and none of them were raccoon dogs – the most likely intermediate host.
Nevertheless, some people may find it strange that the virus has not been found in either intermediate hosts or bats. But it is not so strange if you have all the relevant context, which Bratlie never gives us.
After the SARS1 outbreak in 2003, it took less than a year to find the intermediate hosts, including civets and raccoon dogs, because there were actual animals to test. But after the Wuhan outbreak in 2019, all animals at the wet market were slaughtered and burned, and the same suspected species were also slaughtered and removed from the farms that supplied animals to the wet market. Millions of animals were destroyed, precisely because the Chinese wanted to try to stifle a potentially larger outbreak (and perhaps remove evidence that the infection came from them).
Trade in these animals was banned after the SARS1 outbreak, so the delivery and sale of such animals to the four markets in Wuhan that sold them was illegal. The Chinese authorities therefore cracked down hard on this as soon as the infection was discovered in 2019.
But even though the intermediate host of SARS1 was found fairly quickly, it still took 15 years before the SARS1 virus was found in bats in 2017.
Similarly, it took around 40 years to find the source of the Marburg virus, and after several decades, the source of the Ebola virus has still not been found. So it may take a very long time to find bats with SARS2, and we may never find it. And that's not mysterious. It's entirely in line with what history shows us about other viruses.
But Bratlie never tells her readers this. She wants to build a narrative where the fact that SARS2 has never been found in any intermediate hosts, despite testing tens of thousands of animals without finding the source, is suspicious.
The implication: The virus cannot have come from nature because we have never found it there.
In a debate with her on Facebook at the end of May, she wrote, among other things:
No natural viruses with the same sequence have been detected. [...] And do you agree that it is a little strange to conclude that the market is the starting point when not a single infected animal has been found?
No, Bratlie. It's not that strange, actually. Not when you're honest about the data.
It should also be reiterated here that many claim it is “strange” that SARS2 should break out in Wuhan, over 1000 miles away from where the bats are found. But we saw the same thing with SARS1, where there was roughly the same distance between the bats that were the source of the virus and where the first outbreak occurred.
A brand new study has also used genetic analysis to demonstrate that, in terms of timing, the hypothesis of animal transport from areas with bats coincides with the outbreak in Wuhan:
The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. Employing phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 existed less than a decade prior to their emergence in humans. Phylogeographic analyses show bat sarbecoviruses traveled at rates approximating their horseshoe bat hosts and circulated in Asia for millennia. We find that the direct ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to have reached their respective sites of emergence via dispersal in the bat reservoir alone, supporting interactions with intermediate hosts through wildlife trade playing a role in zoonotic spillover. These results can guide future sampling efforts and demonstrate that viral genomic regions extremely closely related to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 were circulating in horseshoe bats, confirming their importance as the reservoir species for SARS viruses.
A designed virus?
Was the virus created in a laboratory?
Another point Bratlie mentions a couple of times is that it is suspicious that SARS2 would infect humans so quickly if it was not “designed” to do so. But again, she omits the facts.
For example, she does not mention that the H1N1 virus that gave us the swine flu pandemic in 2009 also infected humans very effectively as soon as it jumped from pigs to humans. It did not need a long period of adaptation in humans before it took off.
Nor does she mention that SARS2 is a “generalist virus,” which we know can infect over 40 different species. As I wrote in a previous blog post, we know that the virus can survive in deer populations, for example, by infecting only other deer, without requiring a human reservoir or catalyst.
The fact that the virus spread quickly among humans from the outset is not necessarily correct. We know, for example, that the virus actually evolved quite rapidly only after it jumped to humans. Mutations that made the virus more contagious were found as early as the beginning of 2020, suggesting that it was not optimized for human transmission from the outset. Later, we also got the more contagious omicron variant, and in 2025 we are facing yet another new and perhaps more contagious variant.
And again, this argument refutes all the pages in Bratlie's book where she writes that the virus actually existed in humans for many months before it was discovered in December 2019. If she really believes that, it means that the virus may have infected humans many times before, but was not well enough adapted to cause an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.
Only after evolving over many months in intermediate hosts and humans, where the infection may have jumped back and forth several times, did we get a variant that infected humans well enough to start the pandemic.
In other words, her argument does not support lab leak. Both because it appears to be incorrect, but also because, if it is correct, it only strengthens the zoonosis/evolution hypothesis.
Superspreader-event?
An intermediate version that could explain why the wet market was the epicenter of the pandemic, but which does not rule out lab leak, is that the wet market was a superspreader event. In other words, the virus did not come from animals there, but people with COVID-19, perhaps infected employees from the Wuhan lab, visited the wet market and started an explosion of infection.
This could explain why we first saw infection there, even though it actually came from the WIV.
Bratlie himself believes this is likely and includes it as a key point in his personal COVID theory towards the end of the book. However, there is a great deal of evidence against this, which Bratlie never mentions.
For example, we know the R0 figure for the infection inside the wet market. It showed that the infection doubled every 3-4 days inside the wet market. But we find exactly the same doubling rate in the cases of infection outside the market. Ergo, there is no evidence of any explosive growth of infection inside the market.
No superspreader event there, then.
In addition, and as I wrote about at length in a previous blog post, it is unlikely that the wet market, of all places, would be the scene of such a superspreader event.
The wet market is not very large. More than 1,500 hubs have been identified in Wuhan that are more densely populated and have more visitors every day, e.g., train stations, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, etc. It is unlikely that if an infected person from, for example, the WIV walked around Wuhan, it would be at the wet market that such a superspreader event would occur. It would rather have happened in a place where more people were gathered.
However, only the wet market had the animals that were the source of the virus, which is why the pandemic started there rather than at a train station or a larger market without the animals in question.
Incidentally, only one sample containing the influenza virus was found in the environmental samples. And this was during the flu season.
If the wet market had facilitated a superspreader event, influenza would also have spread there. But that is not the case. Only SARS-CoV-2 is spreading, quite slowly and calmly, from the southwestern corner with the animals and outwards. First on the west side of the road, and then gradually over to the east side.
But no spread of influenza. There was no superspreader event.
The Mojiang mine and the incident in 2012
Bratlie makes a big point of something that lab leak supporters love to conspire about, namely when the RaTG13 virus was found. It is a central part of her own hypothesis about the origin of the pandemic.
In 2012, some miners at the Mojiang mine suddenly fell ill, and some died. Researchers from the WIV went there in 2012/2013 and collected samples from bats in the mine.
Bratlie writes early in the book that when she first heard about this, she really began to question the zoonosis hypothesis:
The collection included the virus that was declared the closest known relative of the COVID virus shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic – RaTG13. But they had not told the world about the link to the mine and the deaths. Why not? And how did the COVID virus get to Wuhan, a city far away from the areas where such bat viruses originate – without leaving any traces along the way? The case was long, thorough, and well-documented, and the question the authors asked sent a chill down my spine: What if COVID had escaped from the laboratory of these researchers in Wuhan and did not come from nature?
One of the virus samples the researchers found from bats in the Mojiang mine was analyzed and catalogued as BtCov/4991. After the pandemic broke out in 2020, Shi Zhengli went through the viruses they had at WIV and found that this virus was the closest they had come to SARS2.
In the debate I had with Bratlie at the philosophy festival in Stavanger, she again mentions this as suspicious. She believes that it is likely that the lab leak started with a virus they found in the Mojiang mine in 2012, which was later made more dangerous with GoF by inserting a furin cleavage site, which accidentally infected a lab employee and started the pandemic.
But that makes no sense at all, and it is strange that Bratlie never seems to have thought through her own central theory about the origin of SARS2 very carefully.
Remember that the virus in the Mojiang mine killed about half of the miners who fell ill. A mortality rate of around 50%, based on the cases we know of.
Why on earth would you need to use GoF to investigate whether you could make such a coronavirus infectious in humans when it was already proven to be both infectious and deadly?
It would fit with the scenario that researchers found RaTG13, kept the virus in the lab for six years, before an employee happened to become infected. That is somewhat more plausible. But we know that SARS2 is not RaTG13. So maybe it was another of the viruses they found in the mine? But if this scenario played out, it would undermine all of her arguments, which after all take up large parts of the book, about GoF and the cover-up of illegal research, etc.
Then more than half of her book would be superfluous. None of this makes sense.
It is also important to remember that when viruses are stored for a long time, they are effectively "killed" and stored in a liquid solution. Ergo, they can no longer infect anyone many years later.
And how is it possible that a virus they found in 2012 that was more similar to SARS2 than RaTG13 was never included in any of the articles they published with an overview of the viruses they had, long before they ever knew that it would lead to a pandemic and extreme scrutiny of the lab?
Bratlie presents it as suspicious that the virus was first catalogued as BtCov/4991, but later, after the genome sequence was published in 2020, it was suddenly called RaTG13.
The reason, as Zhengli has explained, is that BtCov/4991 was the catalog name of the virus sample, while RaTG13 is the name of the virus itself. Ra stands for Rhinolophus affinis, i.e. the type of virus, TG stands for Tongguan, the place where the virus was collected, and 13 for 2013, the year it was collected.
The same applies to SARS-CoV-2, which was called 2019-nCoV before it got its final name.
And again: There is absolutely no evidence that researchers at the WIV ever collected a virus from the Mojiang mine that is similar enough to SARS2 to have been transformed into the COVID virus.
Later tests of the miners found no antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and Zhengli claims they most likely fell ill from a fungal infection in their lungs, from mold that we know was present in the mines. It was also medication for such fungal infections that made those who survived recover, and more thorough analyses of the cases do not point to SARS2. This is a not insignificant factor that Bratlie never mentions.
Bratlie refers to a master's thesis that claims that the miners tested positive for a SARS-CoV-like virus. But that is not surprising when we know that antibodies to such viruses are quite common among many Chinese people who live near or work in mines with bats. There is therefore no good evidence that they actually had SARS-CoV-2.
This just adds to the list of completely hopeless arguments that say that if they had such a virus, and if they were conducting gain-of-function research at the WIV, and if the virus infected an employee, and if the employee infected others in a superspreader event at the seafood market (but no other people anywhere else), then a lab leak is plausible.
The problem is that all of these assumptions either lack evidence or are demonstrably false. The argument falls apart as soon as you actually dig a little deeper into the facts.
The furin cleavage site
Let's also take a closer look at this furin cleavage site, which is at the heart of the controversy. How could SARS-2 have a furin cleavage site that was so important for human transmission when no other sarbecoviruses have one?
Well, for starters, we don't know. We have identified only about 1,500 sarbecoviruses in nature, and of those, 26 are quite similar to SARS2. But there are certainly thousands of others out there that have not yet been found, and one or more of them may have a furin cleavage site, as many other coronaviruses do.
Here it is useful to mention that in bats, coronaviruses are found in the gastrointestinal tract. Samples are collected from the feces or saliva of bats because that is where the virus is found. In the stomach, the viruses have no use for a furin cleavage site, so you won't find this in a precursor to SARS2 in bats. RaTG13 from the Mojiang mine did not have this either.
It is only when infecting lung cells that a furin cleavage site is useful. Therefore, this will only appear in viruses when the virus jumps from bats to a mammal such as a raccoon dog, civet or human. And this is not unknown in nature.
We have previously mentioned the SARS1 outbreak in China in 2002/2003, caused by the SARS-CoV virus. But we also had an outbreak of a similar virus in Saudi Arabia in 2012, which was called MERS-CoV, also a coronavirus closely related to SARS. This was also found to come from bats, which infected camels/dromedaries, which in turn infected humans.
The furin cleavage site was not present in the virus when it was in bats, in the BatCov-HKU4 virus. It was only when it infected camels that the furin cleavage site became useful, and through random recombination it appeared in some viruses that had an evolutionary advantage from this, so that it eventually became prevalent in the MERS virus.
In other words, we have seen this happen before. A coronavirus without a furin cleavage site is found in bats. It jumps to an intermediate host where a furin cleavage site develops, which then makes it infectious to humans as well.
This is what we believe has happened with SARS-CoV-2, and it has historical precedent.
Natural origin
We also know that two of the factors that are useful for the virus to become infectious in humans, the furin cleavage site (FCS) and a receptor binding domain (RBD) at the tip of the spike protein, already exist in nature.
Other coronaviruses have FCS, including Bat-CoV-CD35, which is the most similar to SARS2's furin cleavage site, although the virus as a whole is more different from SARS2 than RaTG13 and BANAL-20-52. And we have already found viruses in pangolins with an almost identical (>99%) RBD as in SARS2.
Several of the sarbecoviruses we know have an RBD that easily binds to the ACE2 receptor, which is critical for effective transmission in humans.
In addition, we have historical precedent for such recombination occurring to create a virus that is infectious to humans. Bat-CoV-CD35 and MERS-CoV show that furin cleavage sites can occur naturally in coronaviruses. Ergo, the argument that “this could never have occurred naturally” is not very good, even though it is an underlying premise of the lab leak hypothesis.
And it is precisely these factors that led the leading researchers in February 2020 to go from thinking that a lab leak was very plausible to realizing that: Hey, we've seen all this before, so maybe we shouldn't accuse the Chinese of a lab leak without a shred of evidence when we see that this could also have happened completely naturally.
We also know that among farmers living near bat caves in China, some measurements have shown that perhaps 3% of residents in nearby villages have it, and it is estimated that perhaps 70,000 Chinese are infected with such bat viruses every year. Ergo, it is clear that these viruses are constantly infecting humans, but in a variant that is not well enough adapted to create a chain of infection from human to human.
The paradox of the whole debate is also that it is reminiscent of “the Texas sharp shooter fallacy”. That is, shooting at a barn wall, then drawing a bullseye around the bullet hole afterwards and claiming to be a sharpshooter. It is also reminiscent of the creationist argument that God must have created everything because the Earth is too well suited to life for it to have happened by chance.
We had a pandemic in 2020. It was caused by a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site. That is why we find the furin cleavage site interesting – and, for some, suspicious. If there had not been a pandemic, no one would have cared about such a virus.
Billions of recombinations occur in viruses every single day, but almost none of them lead to a virus that is more contagious in humans. That's why we don't think about them. But as soon as it happens by chance and we get a pandemic, it suddenly becomes suspicious that a virus should have such a furin cleavage site.
It's simply intellectual laziness at the level of young earth creationism.
The Great Conspiracy
What They Don't Want You To Know
Bratlie is a molecular biologist and has previously said that the main reason she now believes that a lab leak is the most likely origin of SARS-2 is not so much the science, but rather all the suspicious things that the key researchers were involved in at the start of the pandemic. And this is some of what she writes most about in the book.
It's about leaked emails, leaked conversations on Slack, and things that have come to light during the hearings in 2023.
What strikes me as odd is that she finds it so extremely suspicious and strange that some of the key players write in emails that they choose to use private email and delete emails on an ongoing basis to prevent journalists and others from accessing the conversations through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
This is something she spends a lot of time in her book systematically reviewing examples of, and presents it as clear evidence that they had something to hide.
To me, this just seems exceptionally ignorant of history on her part. Where Bratlie reads this as malicious cover-ups, i.e. conspiracies, I read it as completely understandable if you have a basic knowledge of research history and human psychology.
You don't have to have read much about previous controversial issues such as the climate debate, the GMO controversies or the vaccine debate to understand why these people are not so comfortable with internal conversations being leaked. Time and again, we have seen FOIA being used as a weapon by conspiracy theorists. They demand access to email and chat logs, which they then comb through and pick out isolated sentences and messages that, taken out of context, may seem suspicious.
Special interests are increasingly using broad open records requests to intimidate scientists, and researchers and universities need to be prepared to respond to these demands, according to a new report that comes as the debate over transparency heats up in Congress.
The report, “Freedom to Bully: How Laws Intended to Free Information Are Used to Harass Researchers,” issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), finds that the practice of using open records requests to intimidate scientists emerged with the growing use of electronic communication over the past 2 decades.
The key researchers and actors in this case were of course aware of this. They have seen how fellow researchers have had their lives destroyed after conspiracy theorists have managed to unfairly portray them as malicious scientists trying to deceive the world.
They know that collegial conversations in chat rooms and emails can easily be twisted and turned to appear “sinister” if you don't see the whole picture or are not part of the group.
Fascinatingly, Bratlie does not seem to see the irony in the fact that she has now written an entire book that largely demonstrates that they were right in their strategy and in their justified fear that internal communications would be misused. She does exactly what you would expect from someone with a conspiratorial mind. She takes quotes out of context, fails to tell the whole truth, and interprets everything in the worst possible light.
She criticizes them for taking precautions to avoid precisely the unfair situation she is now helping to put them in.
CSLDF
Why did the scientists change their minds?
A key point for Bratlie is that Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, and others were clear from the outset that they believed the virus could have been created in a lab. The reason for this was that they saw that the virus had a furin cleavage site (FCS) and a receptor binding domain (RBD) that were very well suited to attaching to the ACE2 receptor in humans. They had not seen this before in this type of virus.
In internal communications, they therefore talked a lot about the possibility of a lab leak in the first days of February 2020, but when the “Proximal Origin” article came out a few weeks later, they had changed their minds. At that point, zoonosis was the prevailing hypothesis.
Bratlie finds this very mysterious and believes it indicates external pressure to cover up a lab leak.
But here, the researchers have been completely open, and this is clearly evident from the leaked emails and messages between them. There were several things that caused them to change their minds, which Bratlie never mentions in the book, even though it is public information:
- Yes, the virus had a furin cleavage site, but when they studied this more closely, they saw that it did not appear to be genetically manipulated. I have described the reasons for this earlier, but in short, the furin cleavage site was quite ineffective compared to other furin cleavage sites we know of and which the researchers would more likely have used if they were to “splice” such a furin cleavage site into an existing virus. Many details of the genetics indicated that this was evolution or random recombination, rather than something that had happened in a lab.
- They received information that a virus had been found in Malaysia that had an RBD that was virtually identical to that in SARS2. Ergo, they knew that these already exist in similar viruses in nature and therefore do not require genetic manipulation to arise in such a coronavirus.
- They received information from the lab and published research articles from WIV showing that there was no virus there that could serve as a backbone for SARS2.
It is strange that Bratlie believes that when they had this information, which scientifically points clearly in the direction of a natural virus being highly plausible, they would still go out internationally and claim that this was a lab leak.
There was exactly zero evidence of a lab leak or genetic manipulation, but a lot of preliminary evidence that, taken together, pointed to natural evolution.
No one with their head on straight can argue that the researchers did anything wrong in following the best available data and changing their minds.
What I didn't get to say...
In the debate with Bratlie in Stavanger, Jemteland asked how we could read the same information and come to such different conclusions. I never got a chance to answer because time ran out. But here is what I wanted to say.
It does not seem as if Bratlie is very well informed about the history of internet debates and the skepticism movement in general.
She is an academic who has lived a bit in her bubble, a person who is academically strong but does not fully understand how things work. I mean, in her book she writes about how shocked she was by the toxic debates on Twitter/X in 2024, after she was exposed as a “lableaker.” In 2024! Has she been living under a rock?
I don't have her professional expertise, but I've been part of these debates since I started discussing things on the internet in around 1995. I've seen that when I've written about, for example, aspartame, conspiracy theorists come forward and point out that through FOIA requests, some documents from those who originally patented aspartame in 1981 have emerged that clearly prove that aspartame is a poison that the authorities are forcing on us to keep us in check!!1!11´´´ Or something like that.
Maybe they are right, but it is still not very relevant when 40 years of research on one of the most scrutinized food ingredients we have in our diet shows that it is safe.
Similarly, what was written in some emails in February 2020 is not terribly relevant when, in 2025, we have gathered ample scientific evidence published in peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals that clearly point to zoonosis and the wet market.
So this is nothing new. I have seen the same arguments and the same methods used over and over again in various debates over many years.
That is why I read these leaked emails and Slack messages very differently from Bratlie. I would dare to say that I “get it,” while Bratlie does not. Where she sees a cover-up, I see sensible self-preservation, wise from experience. Where she sees evil, I see the honesty and sincerity that can exist between people who trust each other.
The worst thing of all is that this also comes across quite clearly in the leaked conversations. Bratlie constantly highlights the worst aspects of the messages, but deliberately omits anything that explains the context and background.
Had she been a little more honest about this, she would have included messages showing how researchers went from initially suspecting a leak as a highly plausible explanation to losing faith in it as new evidence emerged. She would have been honest in showing how they quite clearly explain in their messages to each other why they chose to focus so heavily on zoonosis in the initial studies, even though they may have been somewhat less confident about this internally than they expressed publicly.
For example, she never mentions that on January 31, 2020, when the first conversations between the researchers and Fauci were initiated and they presented the idea that this could be a lab leak, Fauci's first response was: “If this is true, we have to notify the FBI.”
Fauci had his phone call with Andersen that night, and what he heard clearly disturbed him. In an e-mail to Farrar after the call, he wrote the following: “I told [Andersen] that as soon as possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary biologists together to examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are validated. He should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5.”
Why does she never mention this in the book? She includes everything else from the same emails, but she fails to tell her readers that Fauci himself believed that a lab leak should be reported to the authorities if they thought it was likely.
I don't find this communication suspicious. It's a combination of politics and psychology. It's a bit like deciding to give clear advice on, for example, mask use early in the pandemic, even though the evidence may not have been clear enough. But when you're communicating potentially life-saving advice to millions of people, there's not always room for nuance and uncertainty. You have to be clear and unambiguous, even if you may know internally that things are a little murkier.
All of this would have come across more clearly in the book if Bratlie had included more context. But she doesn't, because she didn't write the book to try to find out the origin of SARS2. She wrote the book to convince you, the reader, that it must have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to a lab leak.
She is convinced that both Chinese and American authorities and researchers know this, but are keeping it hidden from us.
Conspiracy thinking 101
“What They Don't Want You to Know,” is a classic in conspiracy thinking. And even though Bratlie doesn't like to be called a conspiracy theorist, it is the very core of her argument. “They" know, but they're fooling the rest of us. And Bratlie is there to reveal the Truth.
This is a conspiracy rhetoric 101.
Especially because while Bratlie constantly talks about how all the ‘evidence’ for zoonosis comes from a ”handful of researchers" who have been allowed to control the narrative. But all the studies they have published, studies that have been peer-reviewed and reviewed by experts around the world, include at least 40 other researchers. Hundreds if you include all the studies that support them and confirm their findings.
Bratlie believes that all these researchers, all the peers who have reviewed their articles, and all the competent people who have read the studies and support their conclusions, have conspired to lie to the world. They know that zoonosis is not plausible and that all these studies are just rubbish, but they are keeping the truth hidden. On top of these are also many government officials, laboratory employees, and others who are also part of the cover-up.
These are the actual implications of Bratlie's argument, and if that is not the very definition of a conspiracy theory, then nothing is. She even calls one of her chapters “Shadow Play.”
After all, we are not talking about just a handful of researchers (Andersen, Worobey, Pekar, Holmes, Garry and co), but a fairly large number of highly competent scientists whom Bratlie accuses of lying, corruption and fraud. And when we see that the number is much larger than Bratlie likes to give the impression, it weakens the likelihood that this is just the Boys' Club lying to us, as she portrays it.
It has been over five years since the pandemic broke out, and none of these many key professionals have said anything about the official narrative not being true. No “whistleblowers” who put their professional integrity first, in other words. Perhaps they simply have not lied or covered anything up after all, as Bratlie claims?
Not only that, but several of the most central figures have continued in 2021 and beyond to write that lab leak is still a possibility, and have attempted to gather more data to find the answer.
It is therefore not the case, as Bratlie claims, that all discussion was shut down in February 2020. The researchers have continued to do what they are supposed to do as scientists: they have been open to all possibilities, collected data, and published analyses assessing the likelihood of both scenarios. But every time, they find that the wet market hypothesis is the most likely.
This is not a conspiracy. It is simply scientific method.
Bratlie chooses a different path. She does not bother to conduct research, something she has not done for many years. She would rather talk on podcasts and write books. Those she criticizes spend months and years collecting data, which they systematically analyze and write articles about, which are then criticized by their peers, forcing them to correct and try again before they are finally published.
Bratlie sits at home under a wool blanket with a cup of tea and writes a book that is published without any peer review, yet she is bold enough to accuse them of dishonesty.
They argue with scientific data, in scientific journals, among peers. Bratlie chooses to spread gossip on Wolfgang Wees and her friend Sunniva Rose's podcasts, where she can be sure she won't get a single critical question.
That doesn't make for a very good case.
When Bratlie chooses to ignore science because she finds it so suspicious that something has been kept secret, that some people have changed their minds along the way, and that there are a few things that could have been handled better in the research conducted by Peter Dazsak and others, she is on the wrong track.
It seems as if the fact that something has been kept secret in itself is proof that something untoward was going on. But that is not a rational conclusion. Much of what was “secret” was not really secret, it just had not been made public because it was not relevant before 2020. Such things only become suspicious in hindsight. When it actually became a global pandemic, people did not like simple answers to big problems.
The real conspiracy
The most ironic thing here is that while Bratlie tries to portray the researchers and Fauci's roles in this case as some kind of conspiracy to cover up the truth, there is no evidence for that. All publicly available material shows that they acted in accordance with standard scientific method. They changed their minds as better data became available.
On the other hand, it is quite obvious that Bratlie, and many journalists, allowed themselves to be seduced by a conspiracy to promote the lab leak hypothesis. That conspiracy was initiated by the Trump administration.
Both the anonymous sources who claimed that there were reports of immediate danger and serious security breaches at the WIV, and reports about the three sick employees at the WIV, came from the Trump administration. And we know that Steve Bannon, perhaps Trump's most important supporter, was one of those who started to “push” the lab leak hypothesis by financing the spread of deliberate disinformation about it.
Journalists overcompensated in taking the lab leak seriously, ashamed of having perhaps dismissed the hypothesis a little too quickly at the outset. They willingly reported from anonymous sources and hearsay, without bothering to check with researchers and experts and base their reporting on solid sources. They fell right into the trap and swallowed Trump's narrative uncritically.
In her book, Bratlie argues that Trump's connection to the lab leak narrative led many, especially on the left, to dismiss it as nonsense – perhaps without sufficient grounds. I think she is right about that. But that was then. Now it's 2025, and we have access to a lot of information that shows that the initial Trump-driven skepticism was correct.
Trump was not the only one pushing the idea of lab leak. There was evidence of a fairly extensive conspiracy within the administration to spread disinformation to support that narrative, involving key figures such as Mike Pompeo and Steve Bannon.
Many people understand this today, but Bratlie is stuck in 2021 and still believes that Trump should not color our view of the lab leak hypothesis. This is ignorant and naive.
Gregory Green
The dangers of lab leak
In my first blog post about Bratlie's Langsikt memo, I said something to the effect that it was irresponsible of VG to publish such an article. I still believe that.
Bratlie receives endless attention for her opinions and is almost never asked a single critical question by the press. Those of us who fact-check her are not mentioned with a single word. The press is completely uninterested. Nevertheless, she feels silenced, in a world where contrarianism sells, understand that if you can.
The consequences of spreading the lab leak hypothesis, which clearly appears to be wrong if one actually looks at the data rather than wild speculation, are many:
- We are losing important research on the coronavirus. EcoHealth Alliance was shut down due to the debate about allegedly dangerous GoF research early in the pandemic. With that, we lost one of the most important research groups working to collect and map coronaviruses in bats in Asia. This research is absolutely critical to preventing a new pandemic and to being able to develop vaccines quickly if such viruses were to start a new epidemic.
- Trump cut public funding for GoF research. But we need GoF research precisely to study viruses, prevent pandemics, develop vaccines, and not least for a wide range of other research, such as developing important cancer treatments. Shutting down important research based on lies, rumors, and a political agenda is shockingly stupid and harmful.
- It promotes conspiratorial thinking in society. Bratlie has been a standard-bearer for conspiratorial argumentation and thinking over the past year. She has spread misinformation, including in podcasts and in her book, and fuels the idea that “it must be okay to speculate.” I accused her in a previous blog post of engaging in JAQing Off, i.e. Just Asking Questions, which is very typical of conspiracy arguments. You have no evidence, but you just want to ask questions, and even when you get answers, you continue to ask the same questions because you appear “smart and critical” by doubting the official narrative. When Bratlie, herself a recognized professional, legitimizes this way of arguing, it is harmful to the debate. When she herself shows that for her, it is not science that is important, but rumors and mysterious anonymous sources, she undermines the scientific method.
- This harms researchers. Researchers like Kristian Andersen have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers to defend themselves against malicious and baseless attacks. He has received numerous death threats. Several other researchers have had to move, go into hiding, change their field of research, leave social media, and struggle with mental health issues as a result of the harassment directed at them. And let's not forget the hell Anthony Fauci has had to go through. Bratlie thinks it's sad, but necessary to uncover “the truth,” and she ironically believes that she is doing science a service. She even said on the Wee podcast that Fauci should perhaps be imprisoned, even though nothing he has done wrong or illegal has been uncovered. There is a kind of narcissism in this that is quite shocking.
- It makes us more vulnerable. The focus that is now being placed on lab leaks is completely wrong. We live in a time of climate change that is bringing wild animals closer and closer to humans, and the risk of viruses jumping from animals to humans is increasing every day. Recent studies have shown that there are many dangerous viruses in these animals. This is exactly what we saw with SARS2, i.e. zoonosis, which is the real risk of a new pandemic. But when you shut down research, harass virus researchers, scare students away from entering this type of research, and trick people into believing that lab leaks and corrupt researchers are what we really should be wary of, we weaken everyone's safety.
This is about responsibility of speech. About having the humility to realize that if you are in total conflict with scientific consensus, then the most likely explanation is that you yourself are wrong.
Bratlie is no Einstein. But if she really believes she can argue convincingly for a conspiracy and research fraud, she needs to serve up something better than a regurgitation of arguments we have been hearing since March 2020, which have failed to convince many of those who have taken the trouble to look into the matter.
Nevertheless, it appeals to many, because contrarianism is the lazy person's way of appearing smart.
In the US, two out of three people today believe that lab leaks are most likely. But that is just another example of how “vibe”-based, or how emotion-based, such debates are. As a scientist, Bratlie should rise above that. She should follow the science. Instead, she dismisses—on weak grounds—research that does not support her, contrary to people who are significantly more competent than her.
That is arrogant and harmful.
So where does that leave us? Bratlie is convinced that major revelations will soon emerge that will prove her right. Conspiracy theorists always do. The Big Reveal is always just around the corner, so just wait and see!
I don't think so. Very little fruitful or explosive came out of the hearings and leaked messages in the US. There is no good reason to believe that there will be so much more that will suddenly be a flash in the pan. More likely, data will eventually emerge showing that viruses similar to SARS2 have been found in nature, and perhaps we will eventually find a fairly certain precursor to SARS2 in bats somewhere in China.
In the meantime, I hope this debate has not damaged important pandemic prevention research so badly that we are left defenseless the next time such a virus spreads from animals to humans. Because it will happen.
And conspiracy theories do not help us.
Further reading
If you want to read more about this, with even more details, maps, and analysis, I recommend reading this: The case against the lab leak theory by Peter Miller.
Read also the short version where I list arguments for and against lab leak, and go through Bratlie's own hypothesis about the origin of the pandemic.
Feel free to listen to this recent podcast episode:
This PDF (e-book) by Philipp Markolin on how SARS-CoV-2 emerged in nature is also useful reading.
