The theory that covid possibly “escaped” from a lab is gaining traction with scientists.
The United States’ top health official called Tuesday for a swift follow-up investigation into the coronavirus’s origins amid renewed questions about whether the virus jumped from an animal host into humans in a naturally occurring event or escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told an annual ministerial meeting of the World Health Organization that international experts should be given “the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak.”
Becerra’s remarks, which were prerecorded, signaled that the Biden administration would continue to press the WHO to expand its investigation to determine the virus’s origins.
As the coronavirus ravaged the United States and much of the world last year, an early theory was that it emerged from a market in Wuhan that sold meat from wild animals raised in captivity and then swiftly spread across the globe. Experts in viral genome evolution determined that it almost certainly was not engineered as a bioweapon because it has several naturally occurring features and is closely related to a 2014 coronavirus that came from a bat in a cave in China. But they also said they could not rule out that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab that studies coronaviruses.
While the lab leak theory was initially dismissed as unlikely, recent reports about the hospitalization of Wuhan lab researchers in November 2019 — weeks before the virus was identified in that city — have given it new traction. A WHO-led team concluded in February that a lab leak was extremely unlikely after visiting the Wuhan facility, but some international scientists and researchers said the findings were tainted by politics and called for further investigation.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s leading infectious-disease expert, said he believes it’s most likely the virus originated from a “natural occurrence.” But he said a deeper probe is warranted.
“Because we don’t know 100 percent what the origin is, it’s imperative that we look and we do an investigation,” Fauci said.
I doubt we will ever know for sure, but this is a big change of direction. Distrust of scientists, politicians, and media is already widespread this could be a potential tipping point.