(CN) — A new intelligence report ordered by the Biden administration has failed to definitively answer many of the questions surrounding the origins of the Covid-19 virus and the pandemic that has claimed over 4.4 million lives worldwide.
The unclassified section of the report was made public on Friday, and states that the novel coronavirus most likely infected humans through an exposure that took place no later than November 2019.
While the U.S. intelligence community continues to back the idea that the initial Covid-19 exposure happened either through contact with an infected animal or via a laboratory accident, it could not say with certainty which incident was more plausible.
“The IC judges…will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of Covid-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before Covid-19 emerged,” the report states.
While the report is inconclusive regarding the specifics of that exposure, it says the intelligence community believes the virus was not developed as a biological weapon, and that China’s officials appeared to have no foreknowledge of the virus prior to the first outbreak.
Another takeaway from the report was that most intelligence agencies believe that Covid-19 was probably not genetically engineered, but that was not a consensus take, as two agencies found that there was not sufficient evidence to support either conclusion.
Friday’s report comes after President Joe Biden gave intelligence agencies a 90-day window to create a report that would shed light on the origins of the Covid-19 virus and help explain the pandemic that has infected over 215 million people worldwide.
Prior to the report, the scientific and intelligence communities had coalesced around the theories that Covid-19 came from human contact with an infected animal or that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, where it was first detected.
The lab theory has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who as recently as June promoted it.
“I said it comes out of Wuhan, it comes out of the lab,” Trump said at a June rally in Cleveland, Ohio.
From the early onset of the virus, Trump has been pointing the finger at China, calling the virus names such as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus.”
Proponents of this theory point to reports that three unknown workers at the lab went to the hospital with flu-like symptoms in November 2019. This on its own means little, as it’s common for people to seek medical attention for illness.
In May, 18 scientists wrote a letter to the journal Science saying that all possible theories, including that the virus leaked from a lab, need to be investigated equally and that a World Health Organization report did not provide sufficient answers regarding the origin of Covid-19.
“Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident,” the letter states.
However, the letter far from endorses the theory, only stating that it should be investigated and fairly considered.
“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest,” the letter stated.
The other theory about Covid-19’s origin is that the virus transferred from animals to humans. Viruses have a long historical track record of behaving in that manner, which led many in the science community to back that theory.
The so-called zoonosis theory received support from a June 7 report published in the journal Nature that documented 38 species of animals that were sold in markets in Wuhan between May 2017 to November 2019, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The report also says that the wild animals were kept in poor conditions.
However, while the report points to several types of animals sold at the market as the type that can carry zoonotic diseases, the authors reiterated the actual origin of Covid-19 is still unknown.
“We should therefore not be complacent, because the original source of Covid-19 does not seem to have been established. This is doubly important because false attribution can lead to extreme and irresponsible animal persecution,” the report stated.
Despite consensus in several areas, the lack of clear answers about the origin of Covid-19 denies scientists and researchers valuable information that could be used to fight back against the ongoing pandemic.
The urgency of this search was emphasized by the scientists who wrote the original WHO report in the early days of the pandemic. In a new entry in the journal Nature, they urged immediacy in the search for Covid-19’s origin.
“The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible. Understanding the origins of a devastating pandemic is a global priority, grounded in science,” the scientists wrote.
Biden released a statement Friday vowing to continue the search into the events that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Since taking office, my administration has renewed U.S. leadership in the World Health Organization and rallied allies and partners to renew focus on this critical question. The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them,” he said. “Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all must better understand how Covid-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics.”
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
San Francisco sues Oakland over plan to change airport name April 18, 2024
