More than two years after the first cases of Covid-19, which caused 1.1 million deaths in the EU alone as of October 2022, mysteries remain about the virus, namely whether it started in an animal or in a laboratory. .
“There is no consensus in the US government on exactly how Covid-19 started,” admitted US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who reinforced that “there is simply no consensus in the Community of Intelligence” of the USA.
In 2021, officials released a summary of the intelligence report saying that four members of the US intelligence community believed with “low confidence” that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed “with little confidence” to “moderate confidence” that the first human infection was linked to a laboratory.
While some scientists are open to the laboratory leak theory, others continue to believe that the virus came from animals, mutated, and affected humans, as viruses have in the past.
Some experts, contacted by the Associated Press, argue that the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years, if ever.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, noting that she does not know what new information is in the report, said it “is reasonable to infer” that it relates to the activities of the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. .
The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses for years, partly out of concern that, going back to SARS-CoV, coronaviruses could be the source of the next pandemic.
“Lab accidents happen with surprising frequency. A lot of people don’t really hear about lab accidents because they aren’t talked about publicly,” said Chan, co-author of a book on finding the origins of Covid-19.
These accidents, in his opinion, “underline the need to make work with highly dangerous pathogens more transparent and accountable.”
For its part, China has deemed the theory that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory “unfounded.”
In support of the animal theory, many scientists believe that the coronavirus passed from animal to human.
“The scientific literature contains essentially nothing more than original research papers supporting the natural origin of this virus pandemic,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the origins of Covid.
Source: TSF
