Covid-Hearing Witness Lays Out Overwhelming Case for Lab-Leak Theory in Blockbuster Opening Statement

An independent scientist and accomplished businessman delivered testimony before the Senate Tuesday morning going into detail on why he believes the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Dr. Steven Quay, a scientist who authored a widely viewed Bayesian analysis concluding that the virus originated from a lab, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and read a detailed opening statement dissecting the data backing up his belief that the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

Quay, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and was on the faculty at the Stanford University School of Medicine, described “six approaches” that inform his view that the virus emerged from a lab: the timing of the virus’s emergence around Wuhan, data from the wet market at the center of the natural-origin theory, research activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the lack of evidence consistent with a natural origin, the genomic sequence of the coronavirus, and specific features of the early genomes of the coronavirus.

After introducing each approach, Quay quickly rattled off significant details from his written testimony to substantiate his claim that the existing fact set is incompatible with the natural-origin theory.

“These fourteen observations provide evidence the virus was spreading in Wuhan and outside Wuhan in the early fall of 2019, two to four months before the first case in the Hunan Seafood Market. All market cases have onset in December 2019, and thus are well after the outbreak began. This establishes the market is not the origin,” Quay said upon describing the virus’s apparent spread before it was discovered at a wet market in Wuhan.

Quay proceeded to describe the extensive evidence that the virus could not have jumped from a bat to another animal before infecting humans at the wet market, pointing out that the virus has not yet been found in any animal in the wild despite extensive efforts to do so. He also emphasized Beijing’s efforts to conceal vital information from investigators — the Wuhan lab’s virus database was taken offline in September 2019 and government officials refused to make it available — in a way that suggests culpability.

“Fifth, the genome of SARS-CoV-2 has seven features that would be expected to be found in a virus constructed in a laboratory and which are not found in viruses from nature. The statistical probability of finding each feature in nature can be determined and the combined probability that SARS2 came from nature is less than one in a billion,” Quay emphasized, before explaining the genome characteristics.

He ended his opening statement with a warning about alleged dangerous research at the Wuhan lab related to a MERS virus.

Dr. Richard Ebright, a well-known proponent of the lab-leak theory, also gave testimony on Tuesday outlining four key facts to support his conclusion that the coronavirus originated from a lab.

In contrast, Dr. Gregory Koblentz and Dr. Robert Garry testified about their inclination toward the natural-origin theory and the need to continue investigating coronavirus origins to settle the scientific debate. Koblentz tried to focus more on the future of pandemic preparedness than relitigating debates over coronavirus origins and the public-health establishment’s handling of the pandemic.

Garry co-authored the controversial “Proximal Origin” paper published by Nature at the beginning of the pandemic that discredited the lab-leak theory and prompted social-media platforms to censor discussions of the subject. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records later revealed that the scientists behind the paper privately expressed more openness to the lab leak than their public statements suggested, a subject mentioned by Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) early in the hearing.

Ebright noted at the hearing that the paper was not an actual scientific analysis but rather a piece of commentary that appeared to make a scientific conclusion about the virus’s origins. He suggested the paper was a “fraud” and an instance of major scientific misconduct.

Former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci have both admitted the lab leak is not a conspiracy theory, and the origins of the coronavirus are still up for debate.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is continuing to investigate apparent efforts by Dr. Fauci’s associates to evade federal records requests related to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. An investigation by the subcommittee into the Nature paper appeared to show a concerted effort by Fauci and Collins to discredit the lab-leak theory early in the pandemic.

Garry similarly conceded the lab leak is not a conspiracy theory in response to questioning from Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), a proponent of the lab-leak hypothesis.

Garry made his case for the natural-origin theory based on the virus supposedly spilling over twice and raccoon DNA apparently co-mingling with the virus. Data thus fair have failed to demonstrate whether animals were infected with the coronavirus and brought it to the wet market, according to a paper published in December. A paper published in March 2024 also showed that it remains unclear how the virus might have jumped from animals to humans.

Garry also argued the earliest cases of coronavirus clustered around the wet market early in the pandemic.

Although the scientists disagreed on the origins of the coronavirus, all of them appeared to agree on the lack of transparency from the Chinese government and the WIV over the origins of the pandemic.