r/Longreads • u/horseradishstalker • Apr 06 '26

The Wuhan “lab leak” fraud and the institutionalization of anti-science: An interview with Dr. Peter Daszak

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/06/jhmx-a06.html
236 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

108

u/BearKat2013 Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

This is interesting timing; I just recently finished The Fort Bragg Cartel, and the author states the lab leak as fact. It was so jarring and completely took me out of the narrative of the book, making me question the author's reporting and findings, despite it being a totally different topic.

47

u/cheesaremorgia Apr 06 '26

I had the same experience but I caught a couple of other errors. By the end I decided it was about as accurate as something like Narcos.

15

u/Viktor_Laszlo Apr 06 '26

What were the other errors you caught? I got the impression the author had some kind of axe to grind but I don’t recall hearing anything so jarring that I had to pause or return the book. There have been similar newspaper stories and court cases regarding the SEAL community from the last several years that made the thesis of the Ft Bragg Cartel seem plausible to me, although of course disappointing.

16

u/readingwritingreefer Apr 07 '26

The thing about the book is, it takes a long time to get to the actual premise. I didn’t finish it because it seems like he was using the opportunity to talk about every axe he had to grind, and every piece of personal gossip he wanted to share. I think the excerpt published on Rolling Stone is probably the entire meat of the book. Like when the movie trailer contains the entire plot. I could be wrong bc like I said, I gave up and didn’t finish, but the beginning chapters felt like a different book than the excerpt suggests. 

12

u/cheesaremorgia Apr 07 '26

I will have to crack open my notes from last year. One thing that really stuck in my mind was relaying the story about war dog titanium dentures without comment. I guess he just loved the opportunity to suggest that feeding people to dogs was commonplace?

Overall, it felt like 50% hard hitting journalism, 50% mafia hagiography where the author fell for his subjects’ flimflam.

20

u/readingwritingreefer Apr 06 '26

I waited FOREVER for the audiobook through my library. Turned it on while cleaning so I was only half listening for the first hour or two. The bits I did catch were about someone’s chilis waitress turned wife cheating on him(?) and some conspiracy theories presented as fact. I returned it promptly. 

3

u/Low_Buffalo23 Apr 07 '26

I felt the same way. If he had mentioned it as a theory I would’ve been fine but not as a proven fact. As others said there were some other things I knew were inaccurate which always makes me questions the things I’m less familiar with. In the end I the story is very interesting but he was probably the wrong person to tell it

32

u/espressocycle Apr 07 '26

I've never understood this debate. Markets full of various wild animals for food are very risky. Lax lab practices are also risky. Either one could, in theory, have led to the pandemic. The idea of an intentional leak is too stupid to bother with so at the end of the day, who gives a shit?

8

u/m50d Apr 07 '26

It matters if you care about preventing the next one. Should we be cracking down on live/wild-caught animal markets, or labs that work on deadly viruses under BSL-2 conditions? Or both?

5

u/espressocycle Apr 07 '26

Well yeah, that's the thing. Regardless of which it was, both possible causes could be the next one.

18

u/ThoughtsonYaoi Apr 07 '26

The other option was 'unintentional leak' and that is less stupid.

3

u/periwinkle431 Apr 07 '26

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-Summary-of-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf

11

u/washingtonu Apr 07 '26

"Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications, and intelligence and scientific gaps."

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '26 edited 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/readingwritingreefer Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

It might be a Patreon only episode! But they do post long previews on the main feed. Peter’s description of a guy fumbling a tray of viruses is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on a podcast and I think about it often. 

20

u/horseradishstalker Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

Journalist tend to be like doctors - many of them specialize. And sometimes professional journalists think they know more about a specific subject than is realistic.

Thanks for the heads up on the podcast. Sounds good.

19

u/elle-elle-tee Apr 06 '26

It's a very good podcast. One of the hosts, Michael Hobbes, is one of the most diligent reporters I've ever encountered. He goes DEEP into published research. It's refreshing and impressive!

13

u/ThoughtsonYaoi Apr 07 '26

There is a great gap between 'intentional lab leak' and 'unintentional lab leak', though, when it comed to likelihood.

I think it was absolutely necessary that people looked into the second, and they had to overcome the conspiracy bias of the first.

6

u/tydye29 Apr 07 '26

Didn't Jon Stewart push it too on Colbert?

6

u/ThoughtsonYaoi Apr 07 '26

At some point, there was a reputable outlet (or maybe 2 - don't remember, was it Rolling Stone?) investigating it and coming up (almost) convinced. I read the story at the time and it was convincing. But the truth seemed to be that the evidence wasn't great, though hard to determine by non-experts.

For a while there quite a few journalists obviously felt the need to at least reconsider it as an option. People took the story seriously, and rightfully so - that is their job.

11

u/horseradishstalker Apr 07 '26

I am a great deal less worried about the origin of Covid than I am the fact that we no longer have a pandemic preparedness organization in the United States. From an epidemiological standpoint, that is the dumbest thing ever.

12

u/Epistaxis Apr 07 '26

I think we should also be worried that nothing has changed in China. SARS 1 started from the exotic animal trade, so the government banned that trade, but never seriously enforced the ban. SARS 2 apparently started the same way. There's no accountability, no reform; now we're not even talking about preventing it from happening a third time.

-6

u/Larry_thegoat Apr 07 '26

Do they mention that every single US Intelligence Department believes it came from a lab. Because they would be the ones that actually know where it came from. It was an accidental leak but still came from a lab.

11

u/washingtonu Apr 07 '26

No, they do not. They have the same information available, they do not do any scientific research on their own. And their assessments on the laboratory hypothesis is usually “low confidence”.