Only facts will lead us to COVID-19 origin

ProHealth healthcare workers conduct coronavirus testing at the testing site in Riverhead on May 3, 2020. Determining how this particular coronavirus got started could help stop the next one before it begins. Credit: James Carbone
There are very good reasons for wanting to nail down the origin of the deadly coronavirus sweeping the globe. Unfortunately, good reasons are not what Americans are hearing.
Instead, the quest has been fueled by politics, not the demands of scientists to find a way to prevent another outbreak.
What’s certain is that the virus that causes COVID-19 began in Wuhan, China. There is less clarity on how it started. Scientists who have studied the virus say it probably leapt from a bat to a human through some other animal outside of a lab setting, as happened with precursors like HIV, Ebola and SARS. Speculation centers on this transfer happening at a live-animal market in Wuhan, one of many in China.
President Donald Trump and some members of his administration speculate that the virus escaped from a biological laboratory in Wuhan that does potentially dangerous research on bat viruses and has had safety issues; Trump has further suggested without proof that such a leak was intentional. Other officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said that the virus was man-made, a theory with no evidence and one roundly rejected by scientists globally and by the U.S. intelligence community.
Trump’s claims must be seen in the context of ongoing hostilities on many fronts between the United States and China, which has countercharged that the U.S. military created the virus. Trump’s comments also are campaign fodder; Trump intends to run for reelection by blaming China for the virus, deflecting from his own inadequate response to the pandemic.
All of which obscures the importance of a real investigation into the origins of this novel coronavirus.
If the virus did escape from a Wuhan lab, then security protocols must be tightened and the world political and scientific communities must pressure China to do so. That also would have important implications for other Biosafety Level-4 labs around the world, like the 13 in the United States that are operating or planned.
If the virus, instead, did come from a live-animal market in Wuhan at which wild or exotic animals are sold, that’s more evidence that these markets, also linked to the SARS pandemic in 2002-03, should be closed. The risk simply is too great. Similar safety measures would have to considered if it turns out the virus was transmitted at a farm that raises wild animals, or during the hunting or transport of such animals.
China has clamped down on information about the severity and extent of the virus and silenced whistleblowers since the outbreak began in December, and refuses to give outside investigators access to its lab. Trump and his administration are desperate to avoid any blame for mismanagement of the virus. Meanwhile, the official American death toll has passed 70,000 and global fatalities top a quarter-million.
What the world needs now is facts. Determining how this particular coronavirus got started could help stop the next one before it begins.
— The editorial board