Source of Origin

It seems like a million years ago yet back in the very earliest of days as the pandemic was unfolding the term Kung Flu was bandied-about as a pejorative name for Covid-19.  There were some in the intelligence community that harbored suspicions that China wasn't coming clean with us and the rest of the world about Covid.  Ostensibly, coronavirus sample were destroyed in the name of public health.  Or was it a cover-up of a lab leak?

Last year polio virus was found in wastewater in the Netherlands.  Anthrax was leaked from Fort Detrick in 2001.  Foot-and-mouth disease escaped at Plum Island in 2004  The influenza outbreak of 1977 likely was the result of a leak from a Soviet laboratory.  It's been known to happen and the list of biosecurity incidents is quite extensive.

Both the Department of Energy and the FBI have concluded that sloppy safety practices at the Wuhan lab was the most plausible explanation for the origin of Covid.

Sure, I know that in the beginning of the pandemic there were divisions in our intelligence community about the origins of the disease.  Partisan politics complicated it further.  And no small amount of social media speculation and fixation over bizarre conspiracies from the Face Book cesspool of public health contributed to the mess.

Nevertheless, the lab leak theory got a toe-hold in the Trump administration and got a foot-hold under the Biden administration.

There is a declassified report that has deflected evidence to support the hypothesis of a lab leak; therefore, advancing the notion of natural transmission of the disease.

Regrettably, the Chinese have destroyed the evidence so there is no way to definitively prove that the virus came from the Wuhan lab.  Which could explain why a bunch of intelligence departments and the scientific community lean in the direction of a natural transmission theory. 

Lab leaks are bad for a county's reputation so I figure the Chinese are never going to come clean.  And if the spooks in our intelligence community have notice and knowledge of the source I figure they're not interested in revealing sources and methods.

So I suppose you can believe whatever you want and even embrace the most recent conspiracy theory du jour.