In late February, The Wall Street Journal published a shocking report. Investigators at the US Energy Department had concluded with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.
The finding seemed to fly in the face of measured assurances from scientists and government officials who insisted the disease, like all other pandemics before it, originated when an animal virus crossed over into humans sometime in the fall of 2019 in China. The conclusion, in a space of days, seemed to validate claims from Republican politicos and China hawks alike, which had previously been dismissed as conspiracy theories and over-heated partisan attacks.
