For all the human and economic damage that the novel coronavirus has caused, it remains a little-known enemy that continues to wreak havoc on countries across the world. There have been more questions than answers on practically every aspect of the crisis that it has unleashed but none that is more vexed perhaps as that regarding how it appeared suddenly on the scene.
There are two basic positions within the scientific community: the first, that it is undoubtedly the ‘spillover’ effect at work, the kind that occurs habitually, when an unknown pathogen lurking in nature finds the necessary genetic wherewithal to attack humans. Opposed to this view is the ‘lab leak’ argument that takes into account the clinical and physical circumstances surrounding the detection and spread of the novel coronavirus, or Sars-CoV-2, to say that the pandemic is a clear case of a man-made disaster.
In the early days of the pandemic, the second view was mostly considered to be a conspiracy theory…