HOW IT STARTED*: New York Times health reporter: Wuhan lab leak coronavirus theory has ‘racist roots,’ isn’t ‘plausible.’
“A theory can have racist roots and still gather reasonable supporters along the way,” she wrote to a critic of her original point. “Doesn’t make the roots any less racist or the theory any more convincing, though.”
She later wrote that the notion the virus escaped from a lab was “possible” but not “plausible.”
“And almost impossible to disprove, meaning it will probably not go away till people lose interest,” she wrote.
Reached for comment by Fox News, she wrote, “I deleted it because it unleashed some incredibly nasty tweets and DMs. So please don’t write about it.”
—David Rutz, Fox News, May 21st, 2021.
How It’s Going: C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins.
The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.
There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.
The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency’s work.
A spokeswoman for the agency said the other theory remains plausible and that the agency will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting.
Some American officials say the debate matters little: The Chinese government failed to either regulate its markets or oversee its labs. But others argue it is an important intelligence and scientific question.
John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations.
The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
—The New York Times today.
* Yes, we’re missing a crucial step in our “How It Started” headline: Don McNeil: Dean Baquet, Joe Kahn, Racist Slurs, Twitter and Mao: on Passing the Torch at The New York Times.