THE ORIGINS OF COVID: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lab-Leak Theory. Donald McNeil, who was the lead reporter on Covid for the New York Times until being forced out by a woke revolt in the newsroom, was long skeptical of the theory that Covid leaked out of a lab in Wuhan. But after considering a recent article by Nicholas Wade (another former Timesman), McNeil now says the evidence has gotten “considerably stronger.”