Between January 14 and February 10, 2021, the WHO sent a team of researchers to Wuhan — the epicentre of the outbreak — to arrive at a conclusion. Representative photo: iStock.

Devil in the details: Focus on US energy department’s ‘low confidence’ in COVID lab-leak theory is must

A low confidence level generally indicates that the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the data

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01 Mar 2023, 4:13 am

On February 26, 2023, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an exclusive story on a classified intelligence report by the United States’ Energy Department, which concluded that COVID-19 was most likely the result of a laboratory leak.

These findings triggered a domino effect across media outlets, but what remained amiss is that the US department itself made the judgement with “low confidence”, a detail buried in the fifth paragraph of the WSJ story and therefore missing from most headlines.

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The US energy department is somewhat echoing the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, which argued the same theory with “moderate confidence” in 2021.

Disagreements persist since “four other (US) agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission and two are undecided,” WSJ reported.

The US government has reportedly refused to give any details on the new intelligence, which caused the energy department to change its stance from being ‘undecided’ on the origins of the pandemic until now.

A “low confidence level generally indicates that the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information, or that the intelligence community (IC) has significant concerns or problems with the information sources,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — the body that coordinates the 18 US IC agencies.

In comparison, a moderate confidence level points towards the possibility of the information being interpreted in multiple ways since it is “credible and plausible” but not sufficient. Finally, a high confidence level indicates grounds for a “solid judgement”.

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Investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is a critical but precarious practice. So, between January 14 and February 10, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of researchers to Wuhan — the epicentre of the outbreak — to arrive at a conclusion.

Their findings, although plagued by insufficient data-sharing from China, detailed three possibilities and their likelihood; “introduction (of the virus) through an intermediate host” is a “likely to very likely pathway”, a zoonotic spill-over was deemed a “possible-to-likely pathway”, while a laboratory incident was termed an “extremely unlikely” possibility.

Two companion studies published in July 2022, in the journal Science, argued similarly — that the COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan’s Huanan wholesale seafood market.

The first study argued with evidence why the Huanan wholesale seafood market in Wuhan is the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It indicates the role of the live wildlife trade in China — to be behind the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans,” Down To Earth had reported earlier last year.

The second study illustrated how the two early lineages of SARS-CoV-2 — lineage A and B — had been circulating. Lineage B cases were directly related to the market and lineage A cases, while not visited the market, were residing in close proximity, according to the findings.

“This is a clear indication that they were infected as the virus moved from the market into the local community surrounding the market,” Michael Worobey, professor and head of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and one of the authors, wrote on Twitter.

While it is important to assess all possibilities of how the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, there is overwhelming evidence that it was a zoonotic event. This isn’t exactly surprising since natural zoonoses causes more than 70 per cent of all natural outbreaks, according to the WHO.

With a warming climate, cross-species transmission of some 4,000 viruses by 2070 is expected, a 2022 Nature study found. A One Health approach is critical to mitigate this emerging crisis.

Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, argued on Twitter:

Unless DOE is sitting on unique classified data, which is possible, but I tend to doubt it given the ‘low confidence’ assessment, this may not advance anything new: Covid like SARS-MERS, originated from bats and infected humans following passage from a second intermediate animal host.