The CIA report concluding that Covid most likely originated from a laboratory leak of a man-made, or man-enhanced, virus raises an awkward and glaring question: why on Earth isn’t Britain’s own Covid inquiry even considering the possibility of a laboratory leak?
The inquiry, which still grinds on even if most people have lost interest in it, has examined the inner workings of Downing Street in great detail, listened to evidence on lockdowns, the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme and so on, yet continues to ignore the single most important matter: where the virus came from.
When Michael Gove – now editor of The Spectator – did try to raise the matter before the inquiry in November 2023, he was quickly closed down by the KC interrogating him.
There remains a remarkable reluctance among the UK scientific establishment even to countenance the theory. On the day Gove appeared at the inquiry, the Science Media Centre – a charity which is supposed to offer unbiased information to the press – rushed out a statement from two scientists casting scepticism on the lab leak theory.
Anyone who continues to dismiss the possibility, or likelihood, that Covid came from a lab is now at odds with the CIA, and FBI director Christopher Wray. They are dismissing a pile of evidence put together by Matt Ridley and others. They are also at odds with a lot of circumstantial evidence; the natural emergence theory relies on the virus having been spread by animals over a thousand miles until it just happened to mutate in a city which had a laboratory carrying out gain-of-function research with viruses. A lab leak, on the other hand, would hardly have been unprecedented; the original Sars virus is known to have escaped from Chinese laboratories on at least two occasions, one of them leading to two deaths in 2004. That was confirmed by the World Health Organisation, which at that time was less in hock to China than it later became.
The CIA admits it has ‘low confidence’ in its assessment of the origins of Covid we may never know because China has obstructed investigation into this issue. Yet no authority in Britain seems to consider the matter even worthy of further investigation. This is bizarre. If Covid really did begin with a man-made virus, it would have very serious implications for future research into pathogens. It would surely amount to the most expensive accident in history – by a considerable margin. It would be a case not of the cure being worse than the disease but of the ‘cure’ actually causing the disease in the first place.
I am not a virologist and do not feel qualified to say whether gain-of-function research, say, should be banned or whether it is too useful for that. But clearly, if the lab leak theory is correct, things cannot carry on as they were doing in Wuhan. There has to be serious consideration of what risks can and cannot be tolerated. To fail to have that discussion would be like an inquest into a road accident which, say, obsessed with road markings and street lighting but refused to examine whether the driver was drunk or not.
By ruling out the lab leak theory, the Covid inquiry – along with much of the UK science establishment – has made itself look like a puppet of the Chinese state. Our government must urgently extend the remit of the inquiry to include the most important question: where Covid came from.
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