Volcanic Virology
Way up at the edge of the Arctic Circle, a dot in the middle of nowhere, is the Nordisk Vulkanologisk Institut (NordVulk), one of the world’s most prestigious institutes of volcanology and related earth sciences. Oddly, this past March, just 50 kilometers away, a mountain named Fagradalsfjall erupted with spectacular lava flows that are still continuing today. Did the NordVulk Institute cause this eruption? No, of course not. In fact, it is exactly the other way around — the restless volcanoes of the neighborhood region caused the institute.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology exists in Central China’s Hubei province (think: America’s Midwest), and was originally founded in 1956 as the Microbiology Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Just as with NordVulk, this prestigious institute is where it is because of the unique confluence of people, nature, and industry. If you are going to study volcanoes, you go somewhere like Reykjavik. If you are going to study viruses, you go somewhere like Wuhan.
Twenty years ago, the Wuhan Institute set out to build China’s first Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, a global certification of the very highest standard of biosafety precautions. The Wuhan facility cost $44M and took 15 years to build. Per Wikipedia, “A number of safety precautions were taken into consideration when building the Wuhan lab. The lab was built far away from any flood plain. It was also built to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, even though the region has no history of earthquakes. The scientific community was also reassured that many Wuhan lab scientists were trained in safety procedures at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, France.”
These things aren’t taken lightly. There are only 52 such BSL-4 facilities in the world, many of them built within the last decade. They demand the highest standards achievable and work amongst themselves to make absolutely certain of it. This is not child’s play. The requirements are uncompromising. Access is limited to only the most highly trained personnel, equipment is of the highest quality, there are airlocks, air filtration in and out. Even the sewage is treated before leaving the building.
Inside a BSL-4 laboratory can be extraterrestrial samples taken from the Moon, asteroids, and eventually, Mars. Also, anthrax, Smallpox, Ebola, and, of course, SARS and the thousands of known coronavirus. These agents are not only lethal to the technicians but also potentially devastating to the entire world. These ain’t yahoos schlepping beakers. This is the real deal.
Conspiracy theorists are patting themselves on the back for supposedly “discovering” that COVID somehow “escaped” from the Wuhan Lab. But the conspiracy theorists did not “discover” anything because this potentiality was a serious concern since day one — the very first diagnosis of COVID way back in 2019. Chinese authorities dismissed the possibility almost immediately, in large part because of their confidence in the rigors of the BSL-4 facility, but also because they had the DNA of the live virus that had been captured in the wild, right at their doorstep. A comparison with laboratory samples would be straightforward and conclusive.
Now, of course, people who don’t necessarily trust the Chinese and scientists the world over will demand absolute verification of the findings of researchers at the epicenter of this pandemic. But these things take time. Every detail must be meticulous. DNA must be sifted through with a fine-toothed comb. This is not simply googled by rank amateurs in Anytown, USA.
Did the Wuhan Laboratory cause the COVID pandemic? Not likely. Infinitely more likely is that the COVID pandemic caused the Wuhan Laboratory. Viruses have been the bane of human existence since the beginning of time. Our interconnected world has accelerated this. The COVID pandemic was not only expected, but it was also long overdue. Just like the eruption of Mount Fagradalsfjall.
But we will find out either way — be it a lab accident or the expected jump between species — and besides, the aftermath is entirely on us. Regardless of how Patient Zero became infected, we could have been responsible and mitigated the spread, or we could have been dumb and selfish and allowed it to spread like wildfire. That would be nobody’s fault but our own, and it is.
