The "Fog of Biowarfare"

More nuance-mongering on the "infectious clones" vs. "GOF bad!" schism

Warning: The following is a (not-so-) meandering, philosophical post.

In an hour, I’ll be joining Nick Hudson (of the post I shared last week) on a Zoom. I don’t know in particular where the conversation will go, but I was contemplating Kevin McCairn’s recent, frustrating stream and this led to the impromptu formation of a slide deck presentation on certainty, openness and nihilism.

The gist of the presentation is that this simple epistemic framework offers insights into both the “not a virus” schism and the much more niche “biowarfare baby” schism. I may do a standalone video narrating the presentation, but for now, perhaps the reader can make sense of and derive some value from these core slides.

Background

As previously nuance-mongered, I have critiques of both the standard “Lab leak,” “GOF bad!” narrative of the origin and proliferation of SARS-CoV-2, and of the novel “Infectious Clones™” model fashioned by JJ Couey which I feel goes too far (and depends on bald theoretical assertions that are not supported by evidence).

On Tuesday, Kevin McCairn streamed a response to JJ Couey’s then-most-recent stream. Even though I lean toward accepting SARS-CoV-2 as a mostly transmission-sustained virus (i.e. single outbreak → X transmissions and mutations → present), I don’t feel it important to rule out more outlandish scenarios.

What I as a viewer found disappointing about McCairn’s video was that in ruling out the same (which isn’t hard to offer a convincing case for) he mounted a full-scale defense of the official “Lab leak,” “GOF bad!” narrative. The “biowarfare baby” must belong to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and DEFUSE alone. Don’t mind that “Lab leak” was from the start an op on the part of the US government.

The irony is that McCairn’s stream was titled “purity test gatekeeper edition,” presumably as an accusation against Couey. Yet McCairn’s own version of “biowarfare” was itself, at least due to using Couey’s theories as a template, insistent on ideological purity. I.e., if you don’t agree with “Lab leak,” you must be denying that SARS-CoV-2 is a rather nasty bug, etc. It seemed in McCairn’s vision only possible to believe the positive or the negative of the combined entirety of Couey’s claims; no build-a-dish at this Denny’s.

This led to my ruminating on the tendency for basic expert consensus in modern Science to default to certainty rather than open-mindedness, and the way this paradigm shapes both the “not a virus” reaction and counter-reaction and the debate over the origins and proliferation of SARS-CoV-2 as a biowarfare agent.

It leads unsurprisingly to nothing but purity tests on both sides. My slides offer an almost certainly overly cute, simplistic account for why. Pdf, if one wants the full slide-deck experience:

Authority Trap

1.44MB ∙ PDF file

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Comments and slide highlights:

Certainty vs. Openness vs. Nihilism

Openmindedness incorporates both empiricism (observations), theory, and skepticism. These three things together ought to be the basis of what humans call “science;” but in practice, in the modern era, when “science” comes into contact with the common man (including individual scientists) it transforms instantly into Authority. No admission of skepticism can be permitted; no doubt of the Authority may be entertained. Thus, modern “science” and scientific Authority, despite claims to the contrary, operate as a cult of certainty.

The common man naturally takes a reactionary stance, attacking the conclusions established by the Authority to date with the same forbidden skepticism. This creates the cult of nihilism.

Both sides are now trapped; because all three forms of thought must be derived from each other (hence the teal arrows). For an example, exactly what are the Virus Truther’s theories inevitably based on? Naturally, prior observations; and yet now the Virus Truther has insulated himself against future observations that contradict the theory.

Theory, like a rowboat, must thrust on the oars of both observation and skepticism to make any progress forward. The expert and the nihilist are thus both doomed to spin in circles around prior conclusions; there is no way forward without both oars.

This problem aptly describes the “debate” (though obviously debate would imply dialogue, of which in this case there is none) surrounding virology.

And it can likewise be applied to the more niche “splitting the biowarfare baby” problem. We can see, once again, that “Lab-leak” absolutism suffers from rejection of skepticism; whereas Infectious Clones™ suffers from rejection of observation.

What, precisely, are the differences between Infectious Clones™ and my “Fog of Biowarfare” model? Besides allowing for observations which contradict theory, there is an important difference in emphasis on SARS-CoV-2 as an infectious-clone-developed “bespoke virus product” and “clones” as some sort of vague illness-spray. Meanwhile, there are similar implications in the “biowarfare context,” but different weaknesses as models of explaining and predicting observations.

Here, I would like to again highlight the rhetorical importance surrounding the use of “infectious clone” vs. my preference (before JJ Couey’s theory was even advanced) of using “DNA<>virus platform.” The latter still emphasizes intentional and rather trivially easy lab development (and storage, update, etc.), akin to a “master copy” on a hard drive; but makes unambiguous that “real viruses” still result from these platforms.

There is no diminishment of “virus-ness” at play “because clones”; if SARS-CoV-2 originates from a DNA<>virus platform it by definition is a >virus.

Both models can therefore share implications in the context of biowarfare which contrast sharply with the implications of the “Lab leak” model:

But the weaknesses are entirely different. Infectious Clones™, absent major theoretical remodeling, is trapped in a reactionary circle which demands the rejection of all contrary evidence. It is not different in this way from Virus Trutherism or any other form of epistemic nihilism:

Of course, as shown, my model is no less plagued by weaknesses. My attempt to “prove” that the 2020 VOCs were lab-generated updates, though the case seemed promising at first, was a flop. However, my model allows for both skepticism and observation; it hopes thereby to eventually lead to progress.

If you derived value from this post, please drop a few coins in your fact-barista’s tip jar.

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