Fits and starts: SARS-CoV-2’s origin

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Long before he waded into politics, Britain's Prime Minister drove fast cars for GQ magazine. Now there's an environmental imperative to clamp down on non-electric vehicles and he faces a reckoning with the petrolheads aligned with his party. And the history of food is filled with both evolution and appropriation. Few foods, though, have conquered the globe as completely as fried chicken has. We look into how it got its start in America and how its first cooks have disappeared from the story. But first— The Delta strain of the coronavirus is completing its journey around the world. Today, cases in New Zealand spiked after it hitched a ride from Australia. But what about the original variant, the patient zero, what geneticists call the wild type, before mutations made it more infectious? Its origins are still a mystery. Probably it jumped from an animal to a human, but the alternatives simply haven't been ruled out. This week, the leader of the World Health Organization's mission to China said the answer could be research work gone wrong. The WHO has asked China for permission to examine 2 coronavirus labs in the city of Wuhan. China refused. It's a question that won't go away. And the answer isn't just about this pandemic. It's crucial for navigating or even avoiding the next one.

From our estimates, about 15 million people so far have died of COVID-19 around the world. And despite this, there has been no thorough international investigation of how this virus originated in China at the end of 2019.

Natasha Loder is The Economist's health policy editor.

A WHO-convened study that issued a report in March this year is really widely seen as being fatally flawed. And in fact, the team leader from the international scientist side, you know, recently recanted over some of its key conclusions.

When you say fatally flawed, what do you mean?

Well, fundamentally, the mission never had a broad investigation as part of its terms of reference. It was really focused on the idea of just a zoonotic origin, in other words, to try and find out what animals it may have jumped over from. And the Chinese always held most of the cards, whether it was in the terms of reference of the report or in what the team saw in terms of data when they went out there. The Chinese were very keen to push the idea that the virus could have emerged on frozen food, because that allows the Chinese to point to something that may have been imported from outside its borders. It's not very likely at all. And it very much underestimated the chances of this being a research-related accident, either from a laboratory or from just something as simple as a scientist working in the field getting infected.

But this was supposed to be the sort of the gold standard investigation, right? This is the World Health Organization.

This is a great misconception. Ultimately, the WHO assembled the scientists that went on the mission and sent them off, but they didn't control it. And it seems very clear now that Data was withheld from the team when they went out there. I mean, for example, there was no evidence presented of live animals being sold in Wuhan. And yet we now know that in fact tens of thousands of live animals were sold across that city over a certain period in the period before the outbreak. And that's just one example. There's lots of information that wasn't shared.

So essentially the report tells us not very much. I mean, what further efforts will there be to get to the bottom of this question?

Well, this is the big question. So on July 16th, the head of the WHO said he would like the WHO to take some more steps in the hunt for the origins. He wanted more work on the animal markets, human studies, and even audits of local laboratories. And we need information, direct information, on what the situation of these labs was before and at the start of the pandemic. Then if we get full information, we can exclude that. And they've also set up a new permanent group of pathogen hunters within the WHO called the International Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens. But Beijing is really unhappy about all this, and it's certainly not going to cooperate. It's very angry about the idea that there would be any kind of lab investigation. It's argued that this is politicization of the scientific inquiry. They've said they've had this investigation investigation done already, and they feel that the labs have been exonerated.

And, and what do we know now that we didn't know at the time of that March report that might shed some light, that might help the WHO as it presses ahead?

One of the key things I think that's becoming apparent is that there were cases, lots and lots of cases, prior to December of 2019. Italian researchers working in a laboratory in Lombardy have been looking at samples of patients who presented with a rash towards the end of 2019. They've gone through these samples and they've identified 13 people in the pre-pandemic period prior to December of 2019 who have evidence for SARS-CoV in these samples. And the earliest was in September 12th. And I think it's worth remembering when we think about Lombardy and the outbreak in Lombardy, you know, The capital city there is Milan, and Milan and Wuhan are actually quite closely tied through the clothing trade. And so if there was a virus circulating in Wuhan, it would have been carried to Milan. And this kind of work, which is to sort of look back at these samples that have been taken by researchers and hospitals, is only going to accumulate. More of this type of stuff is going to be done around the world, and we're going to start picking up more cases.

So COVID was circulating earlier, much earlier than we thought. I mean, what does that tell you?

What the Chinese are saying is that they see no cases prior to December 8th in China at all. And as this evidence accumulates—cases in France, cases in Brazil during this period, September, October, November—it becomes quite clear that there was circulation in Wuhan, and it's also extremely improbable that the Chinese don't know this. Now, it doesn't tell us, of course, whether it came from a lab or from an animal market or anything like that. Either way, China does not want to admit that this virus could have been circulating undetected in its population, potentially, or that it was at fault.

But that evident obfuscation on China's part is surely going to feed into the theory that the ultimate origin here was, was a laboratory leak.

I feel very strongly that, you know, as a society globally, we need to operate on the idea that a lab leak could have happened. It's just so plausible that we don't need to prove it in order for us to take the next step, which is to say that lab leaks are now a kind of major and serious threat for humanity. And this is a kind of wake-up call, because if this virus did leak from a laboratory and caused a pandemic, it wouldn't even be the first time this had happened. In fact, in 1977, a global pandemic of flu happened, and we now know that that leaked from a laboratory, maybe in Russia, maybe in China. And so we really need to start taking seriously the fact that in an age of biology, of synthetic biology, of tinkering in the lab, that it's no longer sufficient for us to just let these labs regulate themselves, which is what happens in many places.

Which suggests maybe this question about where SARS-CoV-2 started might simply never be answered?

Well, when the leaders of the G7 met in Cornwall in June, they called for a timely, transparent, and science-based follow-up study. And it doesn't look likely that that's going to happen in the borders of China. And, you know, as time goes on, the chances of getting an answer to this incredibly important question really diminish. And I believe there's a moral imperative for the relatives of the people who have been killed by this to try and answer that question, and also so that we can learn lessons so that we can avoid the next one.

Natasha, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much, Jason.

[Speaker:NARRATOR] As governments and politicians make pledge after pledge to address carbon emissions, the internal combustion engine is an increasing policy focus. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden decreed that by 2030, half of all new vehicle sales would be of electric cars, and he tightened pollution standards. Back in November, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson had already gone further, ending the sale of diesel and petrol cars altogether by 2030. For Mr. Johnson, who first made his name as a journalist, it was something of a gear shift.

I think for many Britons, he first came to their attention around 20 years ago, actually writing and talking about cars.

Matthew Holthouse is our British politics correspondent.

He was a motoring columnist for GQ, which is a magazine popular with young men, where he'd use lots of sort of lewd sexual metaphors as he was reviewing very fast cars. And as a young MP, he appeared a few times on the TV show Top Gear, in which he described crushing a tractor.

It had a great many very complicated gears, and at the crucial moment, I couldn't remember which gear was the one you use when you wanted to slow down. And I just— a sort of blankness descended, and I went out through the back of the barn and— Through the wall? Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, it was all right in the end.

They docked my pay. So his political career in many ways has often been fused with the motor car.

But that's an association that's changing?

I think it could come under strain. So the COP26 climate summit in November is coming fast. And as host, Boris Johnson will be front and centre. And one of his big focuses will be on reducing emissions from motor vehicles. Now, his government is very keen on electric cars. He's offered incentives to battery factory developers to set up shop here and expand charging infrastructure, which is at the moment pretty poor. And the most eye-catching promise is a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Now, the one thing that his government hasn't done is to increase the tax on driving. So the levy on fuel at the pump has been frozen since 2011. At some point, the government says, there's going to have to be a rethink about the taxation on motoring to encourage the uptake of electric cars and also you think about how you replace the revenue. If you're taxing fuel, people stop using petrol and diesel cars, and you need some form of replacement of that revenue. We don't really know what that's going to be. Hypothetically, you'd be thinking about options such as tolls on the use of roads, which apply equally to all sorts of vehicles.

Which might prove politically tricky for Mr.

Johnson? It could be a particularly difficult conversation for the Conservative Party. UK pollsters say that the gap between drivers, which is about three-quarters of households, and non-drivers, which is a quarter of households, is actually quite an important predictor of voting behaviour, and the Conservatives are firmly the party of the motorist. So if you look at the results of the last general election in 2019, the Tories had a 17-point lead amongst car owners, whilst the Labour Party, the main opposition party, had a 17-point lead amongst that minority without. What's really interesting is that these allegiances cut across social classes. So white and blue-collar workers split their party allegiance more along the lines of their driving habits. Now, this reflects many things. It's culture, it's identity, its policy choice, a big factor is geography. So the Labour Party does increasingly well in cities where public transport's better. The Tories are doing increasingly well in commuter towns where car ownership and reliance on the car is greater.

So when at last Mr. Johnson's hand is forced and taxes have to come in, it's going to be a real vote loser for him.

The point at which one would have to have that conversation about taxation could be quite difficult. We obsess about conversations on statues and Brexit and other cultural touchstones. Cars could become quite a similar issue. People spend a lot of money on their cars. It's around 10 of household expenditure. People who commute are spending maybe 2 or 3 hours a day in their cars. And so that's a huge amount of personal investment in a topic. And add to that, you might have an underlying sort of anti-city sentiment, the idea that people who aren't reliant on cars are telling voters in more suburban or rural areas what to do.

But this isn't legislation, this isn't taxation that would be anti-car, it's more pro-environment.

Yes, and it's really important to stress as well that there is not a huge strain of climate change scepticism in the UK. Car owners and non-car owners alike tell pollsters that they think climate change is a real issue that needs to be tackled. That said, unsurprisingly, drivers are much more likely than non-drivers to say that fuel duty is high. And this is the bit that is generating unrest within the Conservative Party. There is a new caucus, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which is warning the Prime Minister not to impose new costs on households. And its leader, Craig McKinlay, has previously called for Johnson to drop the 2030 ban on internal combustion engines.

So both within the Conservative Party and among the electorate, I suppose this could become as potent an issue as we've seen it become elsewhere.

So we know in the United States, there is a similar conversation about how to get people to transition to electric cars, that there is a risk of similar discontent. The most obvious example of where a motorist movement has really flared up is France, where the Gilets Jaunes protests, which are about a whole range of feelings and discontents and policies, actually were started as a reaction to a relatively modest increase in fuel taxes and also reduction in the national speed limit. Now, Britain's not there yet. There isn't a Gilet Jaune protest movement in the United Kingdom, but you can see how these issues around people feeling left behind really can fuse with any sense that their identity as motorists and their standard of living as motorists is under attack.

Matthew, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Plenty of cultures deep-fry chicken, from Korea, where it's paired with beer for chimek, to Guatemala, where you start with a citrus marinade. Yet it's America's, the American South's chicken, that's taken over the world. "KFC!" "Le Colonel Original Burger de KFC." Today, there are 25,000 KFC outlets in 145 countries, from Sudan to Kyrgyzstan. The KFC origin story of a secret blend of spices and a bearded Colonel has become the stuff of legend. But the true origin of American fried chicken wasn't down to the efforts of one man in a white suit. But to generations of Black cooks.

Fried chicken was brought to America by two groups.

Josie de Lappe is The Economist's international editor and writes about food for 1843, our sister magazine.

First, you have the half a million-odd slaves from West Africa who brought a tradition of braising and frying chicken in different ways from their countries. And then you also had 150,000 Scots who brought a tradition of battering and frying anything, really, including chicken.

So both those cultures bring a tradition of eating fried chicken. How does it sort of take hold in America?

What was interesting was that chicken wasn't a sort of common meat in the way that it is now. It's not something that you ate every day. It was very much a seasonal dish. And chickens weren't very highly valued at the time. And then in the middle of the 18th century, the Carolinas revised their slave code to specify that it was illegal for slaves to own pigs or cows or horses, but they didn't bother to include chickens. And when the rest of the South introduced similar laws, they also left chickens out. So they were kind of left to scratch around people's yards, to run a bit wild. And so they became increasingly important to slaves, some of whom were able to trade them and use them to kind of actually earn some money.

So chickens, in a sense, become kind of a commodity meat then, in particular in enslaved communities. But how did the fried chicken become such a widespread food?

Well, unsurprisingly, even though enslaved people were the ones who were doing the work and perfecting the art of frying chicken, they don't get the credit for it in terms of recipes. So the first recipe that we seem to have for fried chicken was written by someone called Mary Randolph, who was a white woman from a slaveholding family in Virginia, who was the author of the first regional American cookbook, The Virginia Housewife. She liked to fry her meat in a deep pot of bubbling lard, and that recipe came out in 1824. And then on the other side of the Potomac River in Maryland, cooks preferred to shallow fry the meat serving it with a white gravy. And so those are the two traditional methods of frying chicken that became established.

And the credit for it being taken away from slaves.

Even though these white cooks were beginning to sort of appropriate this tradition of frying chicken, it's something that very much was and is associated with African Americans. There's a town called Gordonsville in Virginia, which was a major stop on two railway lines in the 19th century. Newly freed African American women often sold fried chicken through the windows, which brought them a degree of economic independence and allowed them to establish new businesses. Some of them were able to buy homes. And so there is a more positive chapter of the story that emerges there.

And perhaps the perverse thing about it here is that the most famous person associated with fried chicken is a certain white colonel. Yes.

So it was this white man, Harlan Sanders, who really capitalized on fried chicken. In the form of Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the legend goes that in the 1930s, he took over a service station and began serving weary travelers the same fried chicken that he had supposedly grown up eating. But what's really striking was that he developed this way of pressure frying chicken, which allowed him to produce the stuff in vast quantities and set up this massive global business.

So that's why a white man has effectively taken over the story of this dish.

Yes, there are many, many African American-owned fried chicken businesses, although lots of them are quite small. And in the 1960s, Mahalia Jackson, who was an American gospel singer, set up a fried chicken chain that she hoped would challenge KFC. And she marketed the products to Black Americans, but she got Minnie Pearl, who was a white comedian, to sell that same chicken in white areas. But even that didn't really manage to displace KFC. So I think that business really did very definitively take hold of fried chicken.

Josie, thanks very much for joining us.

Jason, it's been a pleasure as always.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review, and you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/intelligenceoffer. The link is in the show notes. See you back here tomorrow.