The lab leak hypothesis is back baby! Well, there is no new scientific evidence. But the U.S. “intelligence community” has now reported that it is officially split on the issue, with some agencies favoring the hypothesis. Snopes has a good explainer. The intelligence agencies’ main argument seems to be that…there is no new scientific evidence. So do the scientists and intelligence community even disagree? Or is there a science communication problem here? The scientists may be saying a natural origin is more likely than not, but the evidence is not so strong that they are willing to completely reject other hypotheses. The intelligence agencies meanwhile may have a much lower bar in terms of uncertainty, and they have an axe to grind with China. I haven’t forgotten their “intelligence assessment” of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, on which there was unanimous agreement.

It seems to me there are some different flavors of the lab leak hypothesis though. We know the Wuhan lab was working with bat viruses. We know they at least applied for funding at some point for genetic engineering experiments on bat viruses, because a U.S. organization was a party to that and it has been made public. We know their safety standards have been criticized. So…a lab researcher or employee could have been exposed and infected by a naturally occurring virus that was being studied there. Or they could have been exposed and infected by a genetically engineered virus that was being studied there. If the latter happened, that genetically engineered virus could have been under study for legitimate medical and public health reasons, even safety standards were inadequate. Or, maybe this is a biowarfare laboratory run by Dr. Evil. Nobody does bioweapons research by international treaty, and I just assume everybody including the United States does it.

If the problem is not the existence of adequate safety standards, but their implementation and enforcement, there are fairly obvious things that could be done to minimize the risk of a future lab leak. Training, inspections, accountability. Something akin to the IAEA’s nuclear weapons inspection regime could work. It would be in everyone’s best interests to agree and follow this course of action, right?