Where COVID began

That the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence now believes that the deadly plague we call COVID escaped from a Chinese research lab in Wuhan more than three years ago only heightens the need to keep looking for the origin of the virus. With a worldwide death toll approaching 7 million, more than a million of them in the United States, the true answer must be found if at all possible.

The Beijing Communist government’s furious denial should not dissuade legitimate investigation by intelligence services. The U.S. intelligence community, of which the Energy Department is a component, itself is split. Energy puts its lab leak theory at “low confidence,” while the FBI agrees, but with “moderate confidence.”

However several other U.S. intelligence agencies (there are 18 of them in total), peg COVID to a natural transmission from a wild animal to humans, likely from one of the live “wet markets” in Wuhan, where the disease first emerged.

The World Health Organization review, ruling out any direct human cause to COVID’s beginning, was heavily influenced by China and must be viewed with appropriate skepticism. Furthermore, China’s secrecy from the first outbreak and since have hampered learning the truth.

Where the U.S. spies are united is that, according to their declassified report, “We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.” So, goes the thinking, if it was a lab mishap it stemmed from the studying of the virus, with most of the agencies concluding “that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered.” And they believe that “China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.”

What is certain is that COVID did first come from China, be it a wet market or a lab, and that’s where the answers are, if they haven’t been covered up or destroyed.

Millions of dead around the world can’t be saved. But there will be future pandemics and avoiding the next one is everyone’s responsibility, including President Xi Jinping and the Politburo.