Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says

Couple of articles adding perspective and nuance ?

i news Stop blindly believing or dismissing the Covid lab-leak theory – focus on the evidence

Stuart Ritchie

"How do you make your mind up on controversial scientific questions? The debate around the origins of the Covid virus offers a nice lesson in how not to do it.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the US Department of Energy currently believes that it’s more likely that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, was leaked from a lab in China than that it evolved naturally. Three days later, the director of the FBI announced that his agency concurred.

For a lot of participants in the debate, this settled it. The establishment, they argued, had been lying to us: we were told that only conspiracy theorists believed in a lab-leak Covid origin, but now that had been spectacularly overturned."

npr What does the science say about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?

Michaeleen Doucleff

"Since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began three years ago, its origin has been a topic of much scientific — and political — debate. Two main theories exist: The virus spilled over from an animal into people, most likely in a market in Wuhan, China, or the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and spread due to some type of laboratory accident.

The Wall Street Journal added to that debate this week when they reported that the U.S. Department of Energy has shifted its stance on the origin of COVID. It now concludes, with "low confidence," that the pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.

The agency based its conclusion on classified evidence that isn't available to the public. According to the federal government, "low confidence" means "the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information."

Edit: first link now pointing to the right article !!