COVID originsCOVID Origins Probe Should Focus on Lab-Leak Theory, Analysts Say
Analysts say there is increasing interest in determining whether the coronavirus leaked from a research lab in Wuhan, China, where the deadly virus was first detected in humans, as the U.S. intelligence community acts on President Joe Biden’s directive to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Analysts say there is increasing interest in determining whether the coronavirus leaked from a research lab in Wuhan, China, where the deadly virus was first detected in humans, as the U.S. intelligence community acts on President Joe Biden’s directive to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Michael Pillsbury, director for Chinese strategy at the conservative Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said he expects U.S. intelligence agencies to integrate all available information before reporting to Biden, who set a 90-day deadline when he ordered the probe on 26 May.
Pillsbury suggested that investigators examine satellite imagery and interview researchers. “Frankly, part of the study I advocate should include asking Chinese officials and researchers, ‘What do you know?’” the former Trump adviser told VOA Mandarin.
China, however, has already blasted Biden’s investigation. The day after the U.S. president requested it, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, said in a regular press briefing that “the U.S., instead of examining its own behavior, attempted to scapegoat China. What are they up to?” The pandemic’s toll in the U.S. is the world’s worst, with slightly more than 33,334,000 million cases and 596,723 deaths as of Friday, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center.
VOA contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing on Friday for further comment but has received no responses.
Dan Garrett, a former Pentagon intelligence analyst, told VOA Mandarin that while the possibility of a lab leak had been dismissed in previous investigations, he expects the current probe will follow the scientific evidence rather than bend to political interests.
Or, as Rolling Stone put it, what has happened since then-President Donald Trump backed the lab-leak theory “has been an example of the complicated relationship between science and politics.”
According to the magazine, “What started as a science-based hypothesis, had, in Trump’s hands, morphed into an attempt to blame everything on China, firmly rooted in anti-Asian racism.”
The result was that those calling for a scientific investigation of the lab were lumped together with right-wing Trump conspiracy theorists, and both were discredited, then dismissed, according to the magazine.
Over the past two months, the lab-leak theory began its shift from a crackpot notion to a possibility worthy of consideration.
