at the end of the day, the origin of the pandemic is also a scientific question. Virologists who study pandemic origins are much less divided than the U.S. intelligence community. They say there is "
very convincing" data and "
overwhelming evidence" pointing to an animal origin.
In particular, scientists published two extensive, peer-reviewed
papers in Science in July 2022, offering the strongest evidence to date that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in animals at a market in Wuhan, China. Specifically, they conclude that the coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal into people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where a huge COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019.
Virologist
Angela Rasmussen, who contributed to one of the
Science papers, says the DOE's "low confident" conclusion doesn't "negate the affirmative evidence for zoonotic [or animal] origin nor do they add any new information in support of lab origin."
"Many other [news] outlets are presenting this as new conclusive proof that the lab origin hypothesis is equally as plausible as the zoonotic origin hypothesis," Rasmussen wrote in an email to NPR, "and that is a misrepresentation of the evidence for either."
So just what is the scientific evidence that the pandemic began at the seafood market?
Neither of the
Science papers provide the smoking gun — that is, an animal infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at a market.