The Lab Leak Possibility

 For what it's worth, which is nothing, my memory is that early on the theories of the origin of the virus were the wet markets in Wuhan and a weaponized virus from the Wuhan lab, a theory according to something I read this week which was being pushed by Bannon. 

So when I read the Vanity Fair article, this passage strikes me as off:

 But on April 30, 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out an ambiguous statement whose apparent goal was to suppress a growing furor around the lab-leak theory. It said that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified” but would continue to assess “whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Seems to me the ODNI was trying to suppress the Bannon--weaponized theory since they left open the lab-leak possibility.  And part of the push-back by US scientists was denying there was evidence in the virus genome of human manipulation, which would be a smoking gun for the lab leak. 

The other aspect was the determination by Trump and politicos after the virus hit the US to tie it to China--"Wuhan virus" etc. There's past precedent for using a location's name to identify a virus, but not for using it to attack the location.    So there were two triggers for Democrats to push back. The push back was perhaps as lacking in nuance as the Bannon/Trump positions.

Now I'll go back to reading the Vanity Fair article.