Energized GOP touts ‘lab-leak’ COVID origin scenario
WASHINGTON — Emboldened by a new Energy Department analysis that concludes with low confidence that the pandemic likely began from an accidental lab leak in central China, Republicans on Capitol Hill are teeing up new demands for information and broadening their planned probes of the virus’s origins.
The classified report remains a minority view among the nine intelligence entities probing the pandemic’s origin, most of which still favor the theory that the virus naturally “spilled over” from animals to humans, likely in a Wuhan market near where the first cases of an unusual pneumonia were reported. None of the other agencies have changed their view after seeing the report, officials say, and peer-reviewed scientific papers published last year also bolster the natural spillover argument.
But the Energy Department analysis, first reported Sunday by the Wall Street Journal, arrived just as GOP congressional leaders had embarked on their covid oversight agenda. They have promised multiple probes into whether Chinese officials covered up a lab accident, and targeted scientists such as Anthony S. Fauci, the recently retired health official whose agency had supported virus research in China.
In interviews on Monday, Republican lawmakers touted the Energy Department’s conclusion, which bolsters long-standing GOP talking points, while acknowledging they had yet to read the classified report.
“It gives us momentum to expose the true origins of covid,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (RKan.), who supported Senate probes into Fauci and argued in favor of the lab-leak theory, citing the virus’s infectiousness and ability to evade human immune systems. “As a physician myself, a biochemistry major, I think that there’s just no way this virus could have come from nature. It’s just too perfect.”
The House select subcommittee probing the coronavirus response, meanwhile, sent letters to the Energy Department, State Department and the FBI on
Monday, seeking an array of new materials and broadening its investigation into the pandemic’s origins.
“Your documents and testimony are essential to informing the Select Subcomittee about what the U.S. government knew regarding the origins of COVID-19 and when the government knew it,” Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote to Energy Department Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Monday. Wenstrup chairs the covid panel and Comer, the House oversight committee.
The GOP-led covid panel in the House, which is holding its first roundtable on Tuesday afternoon, also announced a hearing next Wednesday to delve into the origins of the virus.
Senate Republicans pledged to continue their own oversight, with lawmakers such as Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday citing the Energy Department analysis as a reason to impose new transparency rules on the World Health Organization.
Many experts say they support further probes, arguing that understanding the origins of the virus is important to protect against future threats, including possible laboratory accidents. But they caution the cause of the outbreak remains unclear - and may never be conclusively proved since China destroyed animals sold at the Wuhan market when it shut it down. Chinese authorities have also refused to cooperate with international investigators demanding unfettered access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“In my view, we don’t have enough information to be highly confident in either a laboratory source or a natural source for the pandemic,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a former Biden administration official. “We need to continue to be in seek [answers] mode.”
Some scientists argued on Monday that GOP-led probes had become counterproductive, calling for lawmakers to instead focus on peer-reviewed research suggesting a natural origin for the virus. There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 was in any laboratory before the outbreak.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wondering whether this pandemic started with a lab leak,” said University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey, a specialist in viral epidemics, who noted he was among the earliest proponents of the lab-leak theory - before “a year of really intense research” prompted him to change his mind. Worobey has since published peer-reviewed findings suggesting the virus likely spread to humans from a Wuhan market where wild animals were sold and butchered, a theory also championed by other experts.
“This latest [Energy Department]-generated media cycle is just another reminder of how disjointed the discussion is from the scientific evidence,” Worobey said.
Four current and former administration officials, who have been briefed on the government’s classified investigations, also cautioned against relying solely on the Energy Department’s new report, noting that its conclusions are not shared by most agencies probing the virus.