That the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence now believes that the deadly plague we call COVID-19 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 1 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-19 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.
