Thunder Out Of China: The Lab-Leak Theory Strengthens

ON AUGUST 27, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a summary of the US Intelligence Community’s assessment on the origins of COVID-19.¹ Four of the agencies involved and the National Intelligence Council assessed “with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.”²

One of the agencies—later reported as the FBI³—assessed “with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“These analysts,” the summary continued, “give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.”⁴

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have now been more than 360 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in over 5.6 million deaths worldwide.⁵