At National Review Online, Jim Geraghty reports,

… the conclusion of two-year investigation by a House panel concluded, as you likely suspected, “The weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab-leak hypothesis.” …

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Covid-19 panel issued its final report on the Covid pandemic. You can read the 557 pages, including indexes, here.

“A House Investigation Supports the Lab-Leak Theory. Now What Will Trump Do about It?”, December 3, 2024

From the Report:

Four years after the onset of the worst pandemic in 100 years, the weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis. Since the Select Subcommittee commenced its work in February 2023, more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that COVID-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research related accident …

“The WIV [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses.”

The June 2023 ODNI Assessment supported this conclusion and went further, stating, “[s]cientists at the WIV have created chimeras, or combinations of SARS-like coronaviruses through genetic engineering, attempted to clone other unrelated viruses, and used reverse genetic cloning techniques on SARS-like coronaviruses.” The June 2023 ODNI Assessment continued, “[s]ome of the WIV’s genetic engineering projects on coronaviruses involved techniques that could make it difficult to detect intentional changes.”

Most of Geraghty’s article focuses on what we should do with the dismaying information:

As I noted in February, those of us who find the lab leak the most plausible explanation “won the argument in the realm of public opinion” in the United States and then “nothing happened. There have still been few real consequences for the Chinese government, and certainly no consequences commensurate to unleashing a plague.”

“Do about It?”

Here at Mind Matters News, we have long favored the lab leak theory — even back in 2021 when powerful legacy media like the New York Times were smearing it as a racist conspiracy theory. A lab origin just made too much sense to be dismissed that way.

Something some of us noticed during the COVID lockdown…

In most public emergencies, authorities attempt to stem the panic. Think of emergency forest fire evacuations, for example. The cause and extent of the emergency and the risks of ignoring it are all “known knowns.” The main goal is to get vehicles carrying all the humans and their pets in an orderly row moving out of town, just as the firefighting equipment moves in on the other lane. No turning back. And no panic, please.

But with COVID, it so often seemed that the panic was coming from the top. That’s consistent with — though it does not prove — the hypothesis that top authorities knew something about the origin of the mysterious disease. If they were troubled, it may have been because they had themselves helped to fund gain-of-function research, including at the Wuhan lab. Geraghty says that the DOJ investigation of the details has been slow-walked, which, if the hypothesis is correct, should cause no surprise.

Here’s a synopsis of some of our coverage:

May 28, 2021: Covid-19 lab leak theory upgraded from conspiracy theory to plausible. Many scientists were discouraged from openly discussing the possibility of a lab leak, which hindered serious investigation. Ironically, with COVID-19, the same groups that decry the spread of misinformation conspiracy theories, judged by their own standards, have been found wanting. (Heather Zeiger)

June 10, 2021: Lab leak theory vindicated: What that means for fighting COVID-19 What was the U.S. government’s role in downplaying the lab leak theory? Several articles have been published showing why a lab leak is a possible explanation for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
(Heather Zeiger)

August 2, 2021: Why did the New York Times discredit the lab leak theory? The Times led the way in zealously discrediting the quite reasonable COVID-19 lab leak theory. But what underlay its zeal? David Rindsberg, author of The Gray Lady Winked, reveals some eye-opening financial ties between the Chinese Communist Party and the Times. (News)

November 8, 2022: Lab leak theory: A biohazard was first noted in 2019. The dispatches indicate a “grave and complex situation” prompting an emergency visit from the director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. If the outbreak had happened anywhere that a BSL-3/4 laboratory was located — EXCEPT China — external experts would investigate as a matter of due diligence. (Heather Zeiger)

and, most recently,

September 12, 2024: COVID: A lab leak — the most likely cause — is not discussible. Although COVID killed approximately 28 million people, the Chinese government makes discussion of its origin very difficult, says Matt Ridley. The science world has come to depend on China a great deal — for money, among other things — and dare not risk giving offense by unwanted discussion. (News)

At least now we know what has happened to trust in science

Geraghty quotes poll analyst Nate Silver:

In a much-discussed lambasting of “the expert class of academics, journalists and like-minded types” that he calls “the Village,” polling and risk guru Nate Silver laid out the hideous record of our elite leaders over the past two decades, and noted, “What was supposed to be a triumph of management for a technocratic elite instead wound up as a worst-of-all-worlds scenario with prolonged restrictions and school closures and 7 million dead — from a virus possibly caused by sloppy scientific research practices.”

“Do about It?”

Obedience can be commanded but trust must be earned.