Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation
Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation
By Natasha Bertrand, Pamela Brown, Katie Bo Williams and Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 6:18 PM ET, Fri July 16, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html
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Washington (CNN)Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory.
Still, more than halfway into President Joe Biden's renewed 90-day push to find answers, the intelligence community remains firmly divided over whether the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab or jumped naturally from animals to humans in the wild, multiple sources familiar with the probe told CNN.
Little new evidence has emerged to move the needle in one direction or another, these people said. But the fact that the lab leak theory is being seriously considered by top Biden officials is noteworthy and comes amid a growing openness to the idea even though most scientists who study coronaviruses and who have investigated the origins of the pandemic say the evidence strongly supports a natural origin.
Current intelligence reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated naturally, from animal-human contact and was not deliberately engineered, the sources said. But that does not preclude the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats -- although many scientists familiar with the research say such a leak is unlikely.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
That Tucker Carlson, et al will eat this up.
