Recently, claims have gained strength that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a virus research lab in Wuhan, China. The 'Wuhan lab origin theory' is broadly divided into two: the 'manipulation theory', which suggests COVID-19 was artificially created in the Wuhan lab, and the 'leak theory', which posits that the virus spread due to mismanagement of the lab.
The COVID-19 virus is a human coronavirus variant first discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Until now, the prevailing opinion has been that it emerged from a wildlife market in Wuhan. For this reason, those who raised the Wuhan lab origin theory over the past five years have been dismissed as eccentrics or conspiracy theorists.
The atmosphere changed as research results supporting the Wuhan lab origin theory began to be released since late last year. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported in December of last year that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the direction of then-President Joe Biden, concluded three years ago that the virus was artificially created in the Wuhan lab.
At the time, Dr. Bannon, who had researched biological weapons at the FBI for over 20 years, claimed in an interview with the WSJ that the FBI had assessed the potential for the virus to have leaked from the lab and attempted to report this to then-President Biden, but was excluded from the briefing by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
The FBI is not the only entity to raise the Wuhan lab origin theory. The WSJ reported that three scientists from the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) also concluded through genetic analysis that the virus was created in a lab, but their research findings were also excluded from the White House briefing.
Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also stated that it is highly likely that the COVID-19 virus originated from the Wuhan lab. This information was contained in a report prepared by CIA Director William Burns and delivered to former President Biden, which was made public following an order from President Donald Trump to declassify it after taking office.
A CIA spokesperson stated in a statement on January 25 that "the reliability of this assessment is still at a low level," but noted that "the origin of COVID-19 is more likely related to the lab than natural occurrence." However, the CIA added that both the lab origin theory and the natural occurrence theory remain plausible claims.
Moreover, a paper supporting the lab origin theory was introduced on the 20th in the international scientific journal Cell. Many of the researchers in this paper were scientists who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan researchers claimed they experimented to see if the virus samples taken from bats could infect human cells and assessed the pandemic risk.
In particular, they stated that the research was conducted under 'BSL-2 plus' conditions. The Wuhan lab performs research according to biosafety levels (BSL), with BSL-2 plus being a relatively lower level among the four levels. Research on viruses with pandemic potential should be conducted under the highest safety standards, but the Wuhan lab did not meet these standards.
Earlier this month, Professor Ian Lipkin, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University, and Professor Ralph Baric of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina, noted in an op-ed for the New York Times (NYT) that "BSL standards are not standardized and are inadequate for handling potentially dangerous respiratory viruses."
Earlier, on the 13th, reports emerged that the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, expressed 80-90% confidence that the COVID-19 virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. The BND has been investigating the origins of COVID-19 since 2020 and is reported to have identified instances of the lab violating safety regulations during this process.
Jaynep Tupeki, a sociology professor at Princeton University, pointed out in an NYT op-ed that "it seemed there was a clear 'consensus' that the Wuhan research was entirely safe and that the pandemic occurred through natural transmission, but now we know that some officials and scientists concealed or downplayed key facts to give the impression that such 'consensus' was true, and they even coordinated their communication methods to keep the public from knowing the full story."