Nature, or nurtured? A politicised virus-origin hunt

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Both America and Europe are trying to prop up their small businesses, repeatedly handing out piles of cash. We ask why they're going about it in different ways, why success is elusive on both sides of the Atlantic and whether any of it will be enough. And listen to this. Ad hoc radio stations are popping up all over the world. Some are providing crucial public health information or doing call ins with locked down listeners. We tune in and find that mostly it's about a sense of shared experience. But first, the origin of the novel coronavirus. Where and how it actually first infected a human has become more than a scientific question. Yesterday, President Donald Trump claimed he had seen evidence that the virus came from a laboratory in China.

We're looking at exactly where it came.

From, who it came from, how it.

Happened, where, separately and also scientifically. So we're going to be able to find it.

And my question is, have you seen anything at this point that gives you.

A high degree of confidence that the.

Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?

Yes, I have. That's not what Mr. Trump's own intelligence services have suggested. They say they've seen no evidence of genetic engineering. And that's what scientists are saying so far, too. But the story is nowhere near complete. Before the initial outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the trail goes cold. There's much more than a blame game at stake here. Finding out exactly how this latest coronavirus made the leap into humans is vital in putting a stop to future outbreaks.

Over the last 20 years, humans have been hit three times by coronaviruses that cause fatalities.

Natasha Loder is our Health Policy editor.

The first signs of Trouble were in 2002, when SARS entered the human population. The second of Trouble was in 2012, when MERS arrived somewhere in the Middle East. And now the question that everybody in virology and epidemiology wants answered is where exactly SARS CoV2, the virus that causes COVID19, came from?

What are the potential origins of this coronavirus?

Well, the main theory is that this virus jumped from an animal, probably in the city of Wuhan, towards the end of the last year. Another theory is that the spillover event, as they're called, happened somewhere else. And the virus actually has been spreading in humans unnoticed for some time. And it arrived in the food market and was simply kind of amplified in the unsanitary conditions there. The Wuhan market was a sort of warren of little shops. The animals are being gutted, they're kept in cages on top of each other. And it sounds really kind of unsanitary. The third theory, which is seen as less likely, is that it leaked from a laboratory that was handling bat viruses.

And why is it so important to address that question, specifically, the origin question?

Well, there's a number of reasons, the most important being that if there's a precursor virus that is circulating currently in an animal now in China, it could jump over into humans again and could cause another outbreak. If we can find out how this virus jumped over into humans, then maybe we can stop these kind of things happening again in the future.

Where does the research point so far? What's the current state of play in terms of an origin?

Most human Coronaviruses like SARS CoV2, have animal origins. Both SARS, the original SARS and MERS, their ancestral virus, was a bat. That bat virus then transferred into an intermediate animal and then jumped into humans. We already know that there is a bat virus that looks similar to SARS CoV2, so we have some clues that are pointing in that direction.

So why is the Hunt on four an intermediate animal? Why is it so certain that it hasn't come directly from bats?

Well, it is possible that it came directly from bats. But the fact is that humans don't have much contact with bats. And so the way that we have had viruses before that have ultimately owed their origin to bats is through an intermediate species. With mers, the bat virus jumped into camels. In the case of SARS CoV, we don't know what the intermediate species is. There's been a lot of speculation. People are wondering about pangolins. We know that the virus can transfer into cats. It could be any of a number of animals.

You keep saying jumping and transferring and so on. I mean, how exactly does that happen?

Viruses are changing all the time. And so if you imagine you've got a virus in a bat and every time it reproduces, there'll be an error, a genetic mutation. And so they change just slowly through random mutation. That's one way. But if there are two different viruses in the same animal, and bats do carry a number of different coronaviruses, what happens is that two different coronaviruses can exchange genetic information through something called recombination. And recombination allows. Allows for kind of bigger shifts in the way that a virus works. And so you can exchange a lot of genetic material between two different viruses.

Well, one of the sort of unavoidable questions here is the line of inquiry about it not having been a complete random event, about it being engineered in a lab. Some conspiracy theorists would suggest.

Scientists have looked at that theory fairly early on, and they dismissed it quite quickly and said it just doesn't look like it's been genetically engineered. If you were going to genetically engineer a virus, you would take bits of viruses that exist and you would bolt them together to create something new. And that isn't the case. This sequence is completely novel. It looks like it's the product of some sort of natural evolutionary process. So we can rule out genetic engineering. What we can't rule out is a laboratory release at all. There's no doubt that two laboratories in Wuhan were working with bat coronaviruses. But some people have pointed out that with lots of people handling bats in these laboratories, isn't it possible that the bat virus jumps straight from the bat into a human who was infected in some kind of laboratory accident and who then carried it into the city of Wuhan? First of all, it's very difficult to prove a negative. And so one of the sort of concerns about this hypothesis is while it's a completely reasonable question to ask, the question has become quite politicized in quite a nasty way. I'm not ready to Rule out the possibility of a laboratory origin, but I think it has to be one of the less likely options that we are pursuing. You know, if we're going to get distracted by essentially politicians trying to score points, we're going to lose sight of the science questions which are important for public health.

Well, permit me to be distracted, though. You say people are in these high security labs. That is to say these leaks don't happen. I mean, surely they do.

Yeah, I mean, we get leaks all the time. You have leaks from laboratories all around the world. The foot and mouth outbreak in Britain came from a laboratory. You've had SARS escape in China twice. You've had outbreaks in US laboratories. I mean, remember the DoD? It managed to send live anthrax in the post to over 200 laboratories around the world. I think you need to take a step back, Jason. When SARS broke out, when MERS broke out, when AIDS broke out, there were people ready with theories that these were genetically engineered viruses, and they all turned out not to be true. And so it is a very human thing to sort of speculate that that's where a novel virus comes from. But all I can turn back to is the science and say, well, it doesn't look like one.

Do you have a sense of whether the science will ever pin this down? Will we know what the intermediate animal was or indeed could be, or where we might expect to see future coronaviruses pop out and be able to control that in some way?

So I'm optimistic. I think we will get an answer to all of these questions. One thing we can do is we can start looking at blood samples from humans going back into November and figuring out if they have antibodies to SARS CoV and that would give us some idea of whether this virus really did start on that focal point of the Wuhan market, which it may not have done, or was circulating more widely in Wuhan or further beyond. What scientists also need to do is interview in detail the early cases. For that, some cooperation from the Chinese would be very useful. I do have concerns, though, that the charged nature of the debate is making it more difficult for the Chinese to be sort of open and welcoming to outside scientific inquiry. Exchange of information between scientists happened before this and it will happen after this. I would guess it would be happening a little bit more consistently and openly were it not for the fact that this has become such a sort of political hot potato.

Natasha, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you so much, Jason. It's always a pleasure.

For a lot more analysis like this. Subscribe to the economist. To get 12 issues for just $12 or $12, go to economist.com radio offer.

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The rise in Americans filing for first time unemployment benefits is nothing short of staggering. From six weeks ago to yesterday, more than 30 million most were employed by small and medium sized businesses, which have been hit particularly hard as pandemic measures have crimped America's economy.

Well, the small businesses that we work with, they're concerned.

Darren Williams is the boss of Southern Bancorp, a Mississippi Delta lender.

The Arkansas Mississippi Delta is one of the most persistently poor communities of all of the United States. So many of these communities that we serve were struggling even before the pandemic.

In America, the average small business has less than a month's worth of cash.

The one that comes to mind is a small floral shop. One person, sole proprietor. Of course, with the economy closed, not many customers, she just didn't have any revenue.

With Southern Bancorp's assistance, the owner managed to get a $600 loan through the Paycheck Protection Program that's part of the CARES act passed by Congress in March.

And so that was a lifeline for her as it is a lifeline for many of these businesses that we provide resources for.

If the business keeps its employees on the books for a year, that loan turns into a grant. In 13 days, Southern Bancorp paid out more than 500 of these loans, large and small. In total, more than $80 million. The firms that work with Southern Bancorp were lucky. Many small businesses were locked out of the program's first round. Other not so small businesses that succeeded have been made to return the funds. In Europe, too, governments are trying to work out how best to help small businesses, but they're going about it differently.

So governments on both sides of the Atlantic have quickly leapt into action and the aim for both is similar.

Alice Fullwood is the Economist's U.S. finance correspondent and is based in New York.

It's to cut expenses at small and medium sized businesses. So for example by delaying tax payments, postponing regulations and things of that nature, and then also to lend or grant enough cash so that they can make it through the lockdown. And the methods of doing this have been quite different in the US and in Europe.

So in America, they've got the paycheck protection programme and that's had all sorts of problems. How have European countries responded?

So all the EU countries, including Britain, have something called a temporary unemployment scheme, which allows firms to cut staff hours without actually laying them off. These schemes originated in Germany during the Great Recession, but have since spread continent wide. And the way they work is that workers will receive unemployment benefits in lieu of most of their salary, but as the situation improves, they can easily go back to their old jobs. And this is intended to limit the disruption to their lives and to the prospects of the firms that employ them.

The point seems to be the same, but the process somewhat different. Why are they so different on either side of the Atlantic?

So the approaches have had to be different because there are sort of fundamental differences in the starting point. In Europe, it's generally very hard to fire people. So without schemes like temporary unemployment, firms would find it difficult to lay off workers without incurring large expenses which might force them into bankruptcy anyway. And at the same time, European countries were in general starting with quite generous unemployment benefit to begin with. So by changing the way in which people could get access to those unemployment benefits, that is, by including temporary unemployment, that was a very effective safety net for workers. In America, the starting point was kind of entirely different. It's very easy to lay off workers and they were very quick to do so as a result. But the government schemes to help unemployed people were sort of fairly skimpy. And so that was putting a lot of the strain and the fallout from the crisis on workers that had been employed by small to medium businesses. So instead, the approach was, well, let's try and keep many of these employees on the payroll of the small businesses they were working for.

And how has the rollout of these two different approaches gone? I mean, how's the appetite for them?

So there's been lots of appetite on both sides. In both Europe And America, nearly 11 million French workers, or half the salaried workforce, are now temporarily unemployed. Over 800,000 firms in Germany have applied for the temporary unemployment scheme there. In the us, there have been a few teething problems, and this is kind of for two reasons. The first is that the scheme initially had a restricted pot of money. So Congress set aside around $350 billion for the payment Protection program initially, but that ran out in 13. There was sort of huge excess demand for that programme. Congress then passed an additional bill topping that up by $310 billion, and that launched on April 27. But the system has been sort of plagued by delays. Apparently, the demand for loans is sort of twice what the system can handle. So you're hearing a lot of stories of banks struggling to get loan applications through.

That system crashes daily, several times a day, sometimes hourly, and it slows down and it's cumbersome and really hard. You know, we had a team of people here throughout the night trying load. We try to load early morning or late at night when we're thinking that the volume may be down and we'll get through, but doesn't seem to work. So technology has been a real challenge.

And what impact does that have, that the system works differently for banks that are organized versus the ones that aren't?

So one study by economists at the University of Chicago found that if you looked at the catchment areas of banks, so where they have their networks, and then you also looked at the areas that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, the overlap of those two areas was actually less than you would hope. So about 30% of all small businesses managed to get some funding through the PPP scheme, but only 15% in the areas that were worst hit by the pandemic. So there wasn't enough money. And it also doesn't seem to have been distributed quite as well as one might have hoped.

And what about in Europe? Has the rollout there been smoother?

So, in Europe, there have also been problems dishing out cash through schemes that have been operated through the banking system. So In Spain, after five weeks, they set aside 100 billion euros for state guarantees for bank loans, and only 13 billion euros of that had actually been dished out. In Britain, for example, a similar scheme only managed to dish out a meager 3 billion pounds by April 23rd. And the reason for that is maybe that the governments aren't backing the full loan. So if banks still have to worry about 30% or 10% of the loan going bad, then they still have to do their sort of full credit underwriting process. There's been more success in these sort of firm lending schemes in Germany. And so next week, Britain is actually going to join Germany in completely underwriting loans for small businesses during this time, which should helpfully hope, sort of speed up the distribution from some of these lending schemes.

And so is it doing what it's supposed to do? Are These schemes working as intended.

It's very difficult to say whether these schemes will be enough, but some evidence that we're getting is from sort of surveys of small businesses. In particular, one survey done by economists at Yale, Oxford and Princeton found that at the end of March, so this was just as the CARES act was being passed in the US. About 70% of small businesses expected that they would recover from this shock within the next two years. And even as more cash has been doled out, as the PPP scheme has been working, that share has slumped to just 50%. Their sort of general sentiment about how this crisis is going to affect them seems to be deteriorating. So despite government's best intentions, despite some success with these schemes, it does seem inevitable that there'll be some long lasting damage to small businesses in both Europe and America.

Alice, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

As a listener to this show, we hope you know that audio can be a great companion. But it turns out we've got some new competition. The pandemic has brought about a boom in community radio stations that aim to help people through the lockdown.

These are very informal stations that are being recorded by people who don't really have any experience in radio for the most part.

India Stoughton writes about culture for the Economist.

They're really just broadcasting from their living rooms and their bedrooms all across the world, really from Ireland to Syria and from Italy to India. These stations are doing a mixture of live and pre recorded shows, but for the most part they're really running live programming from their homes. One of the first stations that was dedicated to broadcasting during the lockdown is Radio Zona Rossa, Radio Red Zone, which is based in Cordogno, the site of Italy's first locally transmitted coronavirus infection and one of the earliest places in Europe to go under lockdown. It's hosted by Pino Pagani, who's in his 80s and his co host and friend was killed by the virus in March. And he offers a very, very personal program where he encourages locals to call in if they're lonely and want to chat. He tells people where they can shop for essential items. One old lady even phoned in to say that she didn't have a thermometer and he contacted Civil Defence and they were able to deliver one to her home. In Ireland. Quarantine FM was set up by Anna Rose Charlton and Kate McKeown, who's an Irish actress. After all their work was cancell.

You're listening to the Passion project with Kate McKeown on Quarantine FM.

She told me that they really started the station as a way to cheer people up.

The idea is just to get away from the stereotypical media at the moment, because everywhere we felt we were going, there was just coronavirus everywhere. And that's all anyone could ever talk about. Even if you were talking to someone about something interesting, they would still talk about coronavirus. So we just wanted to give people something different to listen to and just brighten their day.

So in that regard, because it's sort of more pointedly about the shared experience of everybody who's on lockdown, that it fills a gap that commercial radio and already existing radio stations aren't filling.

I think so, yes. I think people feel almost like they're talking to a friend. The commercial radio stations obviously offer very polished and well prepared programming. These stations are much more ad hoc. So it's really a very different experience. It's much more about building a community, having interaction between listeners and hosts, and not worrying too much about formal programming that's very polished and well produced.

And I guess that's why they've gone with live pirate radio rather than, for example, podcasts.

Yes. I think that listening to podcasts or on demand radio is essentially a solo activity. You tune in when you're ready. You can pause it if you want to go get a cup of tea. But there's something about live radio knowing that you're listening to the same thing with hundreds or thousands of other listeners, that creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy. I think people are missing now that they are really limited in their social interactions.

And so all of these new stations are getting pretty good listener numbers.

The hosts I spoke to were all quite surprised by how many people had tuned in. They've grown their audiences by word of mouth for the most part, but they're attracting hundreds or thousands of listeners a day. They're not competing with the listenership of established media. But I think that these stations are not designed to attract huge audiences.

And so, having looked into this literally around the world, I'm curious which ones you've settled on. What's your lockdown radio?

Well, I've been dipping in and out. I've been really enjoying discovering new music that I hadn't heard before. So in Radio Quarantine Calcutta, they're playing a very eclectic mix of songs from around the world. And I've also been enjoying listening to radio from Beirut and from Palestine and from countries that. That we're no longer able to travel to during this period. But we can sort of virtually visit whenever we want.

Thanks to these stations, India, thank you very much for joining us. And happy onward listening.

Thank you so much, Jason.

To follow all of the economists wide ranging coverage of the COVID 19 pandemic and how it's swiftly reshaping the world, visit economist.com coronavirus. That's all from us on the Intelligence. See you back here on Monday.