I read this reporting with great interest this morning, but on first read it does not contain any new information beyond naming a source within the FBI that believes in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak theory of Covid-19 origins. It also, I feel, conflates a ‘lab leak’ with the more pernicious idea that WIV researchers were conducting gain of function research through intentional genetic engineering of the spike protein.
All evidence I have seen points to disease release through and from the wet market. I feel like the peer-reviewed epidemiology data show this pretty clearly. I also believe that a lab leak would have several smoking guns — they would have had the virus sequenced and on ice long before the outbreak, and there would be plenty of similar sequences in publicly-available databases that the Chinese government could not easily ‘cover up.’ In short, a lab leak to me is an exceptional claim that requires exceptional evidence. I have been extremely disappointed that congressional inquiries and public intel drop over the summer (I don’t recall how redacted this information was) has failed to produce any evidence. And I’m concerned that the overwhelmingly popular viewpoint among the public and punditry is that Covid-19 must have originated at WIV simply because the federal government walked back its level of certainty in the zoonotic transmission pathway.
Perhaps the Trump administration will make this evidence public, but it probably does not have any incentive to if everybody is eager to believe anti-Chinese and anti-science innuendo without it.
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