"Just Asking Questions"

 Since spring 2020 or thereabouts, everyone who has looked seriously into the matter has concluded that it is at least possible that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. Everyone also agrees, however, that it is equally possible the virus first made the leap to humans through some intermediate animal host—i.e., that it had a zoonotic origin. We just don't know yet which of these two it was. More than three years into the pandemic, with the formal emergency declarations behind us on both the global and domestic levels (even if the virus itself is still very much with us), we still do not have enough information before us to rule decisively either way.

Given this near-unanimity of opinion on the fundamental question of the virus's origins—namely, that it could have come from a lab leak, or it could have come from an animal spill-over, and we just don't know which it was—why then have we managed to have such vicious fights over the question? Given that everyone agrees, when pressed, that both leading hypotheses are still live options at this point, why have we not managed to simply accept the current state of uncertainty and peaceably wait for more information to arise, before pouncing on one another and digging in our nails? 

Yet, whatever the cause, we have not been able to wait. We keep attacking one another over the virus origins question, even when we all know full well the matter cannot yet be definitely resolved. We have managed to divide into camps and wage partisan campaigns, even when each side concedes the other might well be proven right in the end. David Wallace-Wells recently summarized the state of the debate in the following terms: "[P]andemic tribalism over [the virus's origins] has proved remarkably resilient. Any shred of new evidence, no matter how flimsy, is hailed as near-definitive proof by one side or the other."

We could seek for explanations of this sad circumstance in self-interested motives or geopolitics. Maybe some parties to the debate fear their own future funding for controversial gain-of-function research will be jeopardized if it were proved that similar experiments caused the pandemic. Perhaps some think that one theory or the other reflects better or worse on particular governments (though the PRC's early mismanagement of the outbreak and suppression of key information on the virus is certainly culpable either way, so it's not clear who politically would gain from plumping for the zoonotic explanation—unless it is the NIH). 

Ultimately, though, I think the suggestion might lie closer to home—in a basic tendency in human psychology to start to regard any hypothesis as true, as long as we have first convinced ourselves that it is possible. In its most disingenuous and unsophisticated incarnation, this tendency takes the form of the inveterate conspiracy theorist's ultimate cop-out line: "I'm just asking questions." Someone pushing the theory that, say, 9/11 was "an inside job" or that some recent national tragedy was "a false flag operation," will often be careful to frame their speculation as a question: could it be...? they say. 

Some people no doubt sincerely convince themselves that they are just exploring possibilities—and surely in the spirit of free inquiry, should not every hypothesis be given a fair hearing? Other people will use the "just asking questions" approach, though, out of sheer hypocrisy: they know full well what they are implying, and they choose to put it in question form merely to dodge the consequences that might stem from positively asserting it as true. One of the more blatant recent examples of this came when Trump wanted to seed some scurrilous sex crime rumors about his rival DeSantis: he posted a link to a tabloid story on the topic with a comment along the lines of: "Could this be true??"

It must be conceded, however, that this tendency to make anything that might be true seem like it therefore must be true is not limited to the realm of political dirty tricks or fringe conspiracy theorizing. It also occurs among people who consider themselves to be well-educated and disinterestedly motivated to seek the truth. It occurs, that is to say, even among the scientists, journalists, and pundits who continue to wage their inveterate wars over the pandemic origin question. 

I myself offer a case in point. In the early months of the pandemic—to the extent I paid attention to the matter at all—I accepted the early statements of virologists and journalists that the virus most likely emerged among humans due to a natural spill-over event from a wet market in Wuhan. About a year into the pandemic, however, the consensus had shifted. People began to express skepticism about the haste with which scientists involved in virology research in Wuhan leapt to impugn any lab origins hypothesis as a conspiracy theory. The more they examined it, the more convinced they became that it is indeed possible that the virus first came into contact with humans through a lab leak. 

And once I—from reading these arguments—became convinced that such a lab origin was possible, of course, I quickly started to believe that that is precisely what happened. My agnosticism on the question bled into outright atheism pretty quickly. Nor was I the only one: indeed, of course, I was merely following the lead of pundits like Matt Yglesias who were undergoing the same transformation in their views around this time. Many people who had at first dismissed the lab origins hypothesis as a bogus sci-fi conspiracy theory were starting to realize it had some points in its favor. It couldn't be ruled out. And—for whatever reason—it was a small step from there to conclude that actually, it must be true. 

Now, of course, I and the other participants in this debate know full well that neither hypothesis has been proved. If asked, we would admit that the virus could have had a zoonotic origin. But at the same time, I know on some deep level that I am on the lab leak "side" of the debate. Whenever new evidence is announced purporting to tip the scales in favor of zoonosis, I quickly hop on Twitter to try to find some way these data can be minimized or debunked. And when evidence appears to favor the lab origins theory, I inwardly gloat (and maybe even outwardly make a point of sharing it with a friend, who has often hotly contested me on this point in the past). 

Obviously, I hope I am not truly such a terrible person that I actually "want" it to be true—in my soul—that this virus came from human experimentation. But having invested time and intellectual and emotional capital into the issue, by this point, I would hate to have to concede that the lab origins theory was wrong from the start. I'm sure the zoonosis camp feels the exact same way about their side of the argument. And in order to explain this mutual perversity, we don't need to attribute malice to either side: we are simply all suffering from the same human failing: once we have convinced ourselves to entertain a hypothesis as possible, it starts to appear to us clothed in the garb of irrefutable truth. 

I came to this insight not from my own puzzling into the ways of the human mind and heart, by the way, but via Nikolai Gogol. In reading his Dead Souls this past week, I found a passage that all at once seemed to explain exactly why our viral origins debate has been so miserably intractable for the last three years, even as we have achieved near-universal consensus on the fundamental fact of our own current state of knowledge: namely, that we don't know. 

In Volume One of Gogol's comic masterpiece—the only volume to be completed and published in the author's lifetime—Gogol explains how rumors start to spread about the protagonist Chichikov's financial scheme to buy up legally-living-but physically-deceased serfs (the "dead souls" of the novel's title). One of the ladies of the provincial town where Chichikov comes to reside speculates to a friend that his true motive in purchasing these "dead souls" must have something to do with carrying off the governor's daughter (whom the townspeople saw him mooning over at a recent party, sparking the jealousy of the town's other women). 

After having proposed this abduction scheme as a possible explanation of the traveling agent's otherwise mysterious behavior, the two provincial women soon become convinced that it is actually true. Gogol editorializes at this point: 

That both ladies finally became decidedly convinced of what they had first supposed only as a supposition is in no way extraordinary. Our sort—intelligent folk, as we call ourselves—act in almost the same way, and our learned reasoning serves as proof of it. At first the scholar sidles up to it with extraordinary lowliness [...] starting from the most humble inquiry: "Can it be from there?" [... A]s soon as he sees some hint, he sets off at a trot and plucks up his courage [...] forgetting entirely that he started with a timid supposition; it already seems to him that he can see it, it is clear—and the reasoning concludes with the words, "This is how it was [...] this is the point of view to take on the subject!" Then, proclaimed publicly, from the podium, the newly discovered truth goes traveling all over the world, gathering followers and admirers. (Pevear/Volokhonsky trans.)

Ask yourselves honestly: is this not exactly how it proceeded with us, in our COVID origins debate? And is this not the true core and explanation of why we have managed to devolve into partisan warfare over a question that all parties to the debate concede cannot yet actually be resolved? Beginning in a suitably humble fashion, we persuaded ourselves: well, perhaps it could have come from a lab after all. And after having started from this lowly origin, the theory snowballed. New details were added and fresh evidence adduced. Eventually, we became persuaded that it must actually be the case—but not because it was actually proven—at least not decisively—but merely because we invested more of ourselves into it and made it our own. 

We can say that we are just proposing a hypothesis. We can defend ourselves—and rightly so—on the grounds of free inquiry. If something could be true, ought it not to be taken seriously and explored as one valid theory among several? We are surely correct to reason thus. But the other side has a point too when they question the sincerity of our questions. They may indeed have reason to doubt: are we really "just asking questions" at this point? Or, like the worst sort of conspiracy theorists, do our questions not disguise something that is more accurately described as a conviction?