We are unlikely to ever know the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus. We’ll have more or less likely scenarios, but hard evidence will be tough to come by given the potential for embarrassment or worse for Chinese authorities if they did the full monty for international inspectors. To be fair, no other government would allow that level of transparency either.
That failure must not stop science and health authorities from setting better and more stringent standards to reduce the likelihood of a laboratory release of a pathogen. It also demands a more serious conversation about the types of research done in such facilities. If the COVID-19 outbreak forces that discussion, then some good may come from this horrific crisis after all.
First things first: For all the headlines, there is no new evidence about what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that substantiates claims that the coronavirus originated there. Questions persist and disputes over confidence levels within the intelligence community have been made public, but there is no new information about what happened in that lab to allow a definitive judgment.