In the early days of the pandemic, scientists reported a reassuring trait in the new coronavirus: It appeared to be very stable. The virus was not mutating very rapidly, making it an easier target for treatments and vaccines.
In last year’s paper, Chan and her colleagues speculated that perhaps the virus had crossed over into humans and been circulating undetected for months while accumulating mutations. A Chinese news outlet accused her of “filthy behavior and a lack of basic academic ethics,” and readers piled on that she was a “race-traitor,” because of her Chinese ancestry.
It is an acrid debate. In May, 18 scientists, including Chan, published a letter calling for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. In July, a group of 21 virus experts — including one who had signed the May letter — posted a paper compiling the evidence for an animal source, saying there was “no evidence” of a laboratory origin.
But Chan’s boss, Benjamin E. Deverman, who was a co-author on the paper, refused to accept her resignation, saying only that they had been naive not to anticipate the heated reaction. As she sipped unsweetened ice tea and chatted about her ideas recently, Chan seemed an unlikely provocateur. She insisted that she was still on the fence about the virus’s origins, torn “50-50” between the natural route and lab accident hypotheses.
Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology said in early 2020 that they had found a virus in their database whose genome sequence was 96.2% similar to that of SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus. “People were dying of SARS, and it was nonstop on TV,” she recalled. “I was 15, and it really stuck with me. There were pictures of body bags in hospital hallways.”
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