It is official, the cause of COVID-19 was clearly and definitively a lab leak! How do we know? Well, the White House created an official website declaring as much. Topped with an obsequious image of President Trump emerging from pitch darkness (presumably to reveal the truth?), the site looks like something created by the satirical site “The Onion”. But it’s not. It’s absolutely real.
What is the evidence supporting this Lab Leak website?
It’s almost entirely political, not scientific. The main source is a special report by a Select Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But the admirable length of the report (a whopping 520 pages) and fancy title aside, much of the work of that Subcommittee has been pre-bunked and de-bunked as speculation and correlation. 
More obvious evidence for the Lab Leak theory is the involvement of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci was the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 and former advisor on COVID-19 to President Trump. He fell out of favor of President Trump and later received a preemptive pardon by former President Biden. The website implies that is an admission of wrongdoing.
What rationale does the website offer for a lab leak?
It boils down to five major claims, taken directly from the U.S. House Subcommittee special report.
- The virus possesses a biological characteristic not found in nature.
- Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
- Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
- Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers fell sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before the discovery of COVID-19 at the wet market.
- By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
Haven’t other expert branches of government found those claims lacking?
Yes. The COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, signed by President Biden, called for the U.S. intelligence community to declassify information relating to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting report by the Office of the National Director of National Intelligence directly addressed the above claims.
In short, the report says that natural and lab leak theories are both “plausible” but that:
- Most agencies found natural exposure to an infected animal that carried the virus or a close progenitor most likely led to COVID-19. Almost all agencies assessed it as not genetically engineered.
- The work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was for public health needs, not for bioweapons. And coronaviruses used at the Institute were too distantly related to create COVID-19.
- Some scientists at the Institute had genetically engineered coronaviruses using common laboratory practices. But there is no information indicating that any genetic engineering work involved a virus that is closely-related enough to COVID-19 to be the source of the pandemic.
- Before the pandemic, the Institute had been working to improve at least some biosafety conditions and training. There is no known specific biosafety incident that occurred around the time of the pandemic, and all training at the Institute appeared routine.
- Several Institute researchers were, indeed, ill in Fall 2019. Some of their symptoms were consistent with, but not diagnostic of, COVID-19. Most symptoms also align with the common cold or allergies, and other symptoms did not align at all with COVID-19.
Of course, debate will and should continue
There continue to be scientists, journalists and others exploring and debating the origins of COVID-19. As they should. In fact, here at The Medical Care Blog, we’ve explored many contours of the virus, the pandemic, and its impacts. But with the extensive federal threats to public health, we should not allow one website to amplify fear or distrust.
Let’s take it for what it is–kernels of truth, packaged in propaganda.
Gregory Stevens