On the Cover of New York Magazine: The Lab-Leak Hypothesis of Coronavirus

Welcome to On the Cover, our biweekly digest of stories from the latest issue of New York Magazine.

In our current cover story, Nicholson Baker explores the disturbing possibility that the coronavirus pandemic was the result of an unintentional lab accident in Wuhan, China.

“One of the great mysteries of this pandemic—where did it originate?—is twinned with a meta-mystery: Why has the question of its origin not been explored more vigorously?,” says New York editor-in-chief David Haskell. “Nicholson Baker’s piece does just that, surfacing and carefully evaluating the possibility that its origins were not purely natural, and forcing us to reckon with the bet the international scientific community has made around the dangers of ‘gain-of-function’ research. We may never know for certain where SARS-2 arose, but a lab leak is far from impossible, and it is valuable and responsible, Baker argues, to ask: What degree of risk should we be allowing these scientists to take?”

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• Highbrow despicable: Highly Instagrammable but ethically fraught wine faces its reckoning. View this issue’s Approval Matrix, our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies.

• Read our biweekly guide on the best new releases, including Dickinson, Pieces of a Woman, and Heaux Tales.

• 9 Across: “Entourage” role for Jeremy. Play this week’s Crossword Puzzle.

Check out nymag.com all week for more stories from our January 4, 2021 issue.

• Year in Review: New York and Vulture partnered with WNYC’s All of It to back at the best of the year in culture, including TV and film; podcasts and songs; and books and art. Also, don’t forget to read (or revisit) our 20 most-read stories of 2020.

• Merch for a Good Cause: Neighborhood Spot created a capsule collection of tote bags and prints based on New York’s 16th annual Reasons to Love New York issue. All proceeds go toward the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation’s COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund.

• Pod Drama: The Cut senior writer Anna Silman was on The Daily Dive podcast discussing her piece on learning pods during quarantine (“Panic! in the Pod”).