Based on new intelligence, the Department Energy has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.
Initially, the agency was undecided on how the virus emerged but the new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
Add more confusion to the mix, the Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report.
The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with “moderate confidence” and still holds to this view.
From Newsweek:
Sars-CoV-2—first discovered in Wuhan, China, in December 2019—has spread across the globe ever since, killing more than 6.8 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University, (NOT THE ECONOMICS DEPT.) and having life-altering effects on many others. From the onset of the pandemic, questions emerged about the virus’ origins with two leading theories typically dominating the scientific community.
Most scientists initially believed the virus was likely transmitted to “patient zero” via a bat in an open-air market in Wuhan. However, a second theory that the virus could have been man-made and leaked from a nearby lab has also gained traction, though U.S. government agencies largely remain divided about the origins of the disease.
Note to MAGAts:
The report did not confirm or show evidence of conspiracy theories that have spread on social media amid the pandemic, including that the virus was made as a biological weapon or that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was involved in the leak.
