ALL CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE A FUNCTION OF TERROR AT UNCERTAINTY:

"It's natural to want to know the origin of an outbreak, especially a pandemic, so I don't think that particular interest is uncommon or unexpected," said University of Arizona epidemiologist Saskia Popescu in an email. But plotting the course of a virus in reverse is time-consuming with an unclear payoff: Notably, several decades of research has still not yielded an answer to the question of which bat species serves as Ebola's natural reservoir. Even if, in 2020, we have the technical capability to sequence the virus hundreds of thousands of times over, without more access to the much-debated labs in China, some experts say we may never answer lingering questions about Covid-19's beginnings. Outsized attention to various origin theories, Popescu said, "frankly distracts from the realities that we were entirely ill-prepared for a pandemic and that we continue to struggle with basic public health interventions."

Origin story fixation can also lead to a false sense of security--a belief that we are far enough from danger to make a complete assessment of it. Last week, for example, CNN packaged a slate of interviews by Dr. Sanjay Gupta with six of the country's leading health officials as an "autopsy" of the pandemic. But the pandemic is not even on its deathbed yet. Several countries in Europe have reinstated lockdowns to try and control rising case numbers. In the U.S., more transmissible versions of the virus continue to spread across the country. Vaccine hoarding by richer countries could allow the virus to circulate unchecked in poorer countries, which could lead to the development of new variants that existing vaccines are worse at protecting against. And even the U.S.'s daily death count from Covid-19 is still hovering around an unacceptably high toll of 1,000 lives lost each day.

Why are we so eager to conduct an autopsy on a body that's still blinking and wiggling its fingers, threatening to sit back up?

On Monday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky became emotional during a White House Covid-19 briefing, ditching her prepared remarks and telling the public that a recent uptick in cases and hospitalizations has left her with an sense of "impending doom." "I so badly want to be done," she said. "I know you all so badly want to be done.  We are just almost there but not quite yet."

Why are we so eager to conduct an autopsy on a body that's still blinking and wiggling its fingers, threatening to sit back up? And what makes us think that knowing how that body was born will tell us something useful?

Early on, pinpointing the source of an outbreak can guide the immediate efforts to contain it, Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, told me. If you identify the site where a pathogen originated and multiplied (whether that's a wet market or a research facility) you can close it down, contact trace and extensively test and quarantine any potential human vectors, she said. For Covid-19, that time has come and gone, of course. Instead, uncertainty about SARS-CoV-2--where it came from, what it does to the human body and how to combat it--has plagued us from the beginning.

Some fact-finding, clearly, is warranted. "In the wake of the COVID-19 disaster--the greatest disaster the world has faced since since World War II--an investigation of the causes of the disaster and policy changes to reduce the risk and impact of similar future disasters are urgently needed," said Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebrighs over email. "However, no such investigation has occurred."

A productive investigation doesn't need to resolve the lab-versus-nature debate. Even in the absence of a conclusive Covid-19 origin story, it is still possible to prepare better for the next pandemic.

Tweet   @brothersjudd