EDITORIAL: Wuhan lab leak theory gaining traction

The Observer, La Grande, Ore.
·2 min read

Mar. 7—The theory that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan, China, rather than in nature has always been plausible.

You needn't be a harebrained conspiracy theorist to be somewhat skeptical of anyone who insists it's pure coincidence that the virus was first confirmed in the same city where scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were working with viruses in the same family as the one responsible for the pandemic.

Wondering about the connection is common sense.

Yet speculation about the disease originating in that lab, or possibly another, almost from the start of the pandemic has been ridiculed by some — including, sadly, journalists who ought to have recognized that their reaction to the theory might have been influenced by their disdain for one of its chief proponents, President Trump.

The lab leak theory has not been proved, to be sure.

But recent statements by multiple federal agencies lend considerable credence to the idea — more than enough to move the theory out of the figurative corner into which it had been placed along with legitimately loony claims about the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, to cite a prominent, pandemic-related example.

Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that agency "has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in (central China's) Wuhan."

"Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab," Wray said.

Wray's statement doesn't represent a consensus in the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy's conclusion about the lab leak theory was "low confidence," according to the agency.

Officially, the FBI's position about the lab leak is "moderate confidence."

We might never be able to definitively pinpoint the virus' origin.

Besides the scientific complexities, the Chinese government, with its history of obfuscation and outright lying — regarding the pandemic and other matters — is unlikely to aid in the search for the truth.

But federal agencies certainly ought to continue their quest.

If the cause was human-made, whether accident or intentional, it behooves America, and the rest of the world, to know.

A pandemic resulting from someone dropping a petri dish might seem like the plot of a novel or a movie, but such a thing is not absolutely confined to fiction.