Libs Wrong Again: Energy Department Latest Government Agency to Bolster Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis for COVID Pandemic Origin

Yet another U.S. government agency has finally warmed up to the lab-leak theory for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The theory was previously prematurely rejected as a baseless “conspiracy theory” by the establishment, which had an army of so-called “fact-checkers” to back them up. As it turns out, so-called “experts” are mainly experts in getting it wrong.

The U.S. Energy Department has reportedly newly assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China. 

The Energy Department, which was previously undecided on the origin of the pandemic, now joins the FBI’s stance that the coronavirus likely spread due to a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies assess at "low confidence" that the COVID-19 pandemic originated due to natural transmission from an infected animal, while the CIA and another unnamed agency are undecided. The updated report maintains a consensus between all the intelligence agencies that the pandemic was not the result of a Chinese bioweapons program.

Those who read the classified report say that this is a “low confidence” conclusion from the Energy Department, while the FBI has “moderate confidence” in the lab leak origin. 

The lab leak coverup was the most important story of 2020, and every fact-checker was unified in getting it wrong - only to then later admit that perhaps they jumped the gun on that without any self-reflection. 

On September 16, 2020, PolitiFact gave a “Pants on Fire” rating to what they called the “conspiracy theory” that COVID-19 may have resulted from humans tampering with it in a lab, matter-of-factly claiming that “the genetic structure of the novel coronavirus rules out laboratory manipulation. Public health authorities have repeatedly said the coronavirus was not derived from a lab.”

That article has since been taken down and archived, and an editor’s note has been added: “Editor’s note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact’s sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review.” Still no word yet on how that thorough review panned out.

Over at Snopes, an article published in April 2020 aimed to address the “rumor” and expose the so-called “falsehoods and scientific realities that undermine” the lab leak theory. “It is factual to state that the Chinese government hid, downplayed, and misrepresented to its citizens and the world the threat posed by the novel coronavirus. It is speculative, however, to assert, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton did, that these actions were done to cover up a leak from a lab,” they wrote.  By June 2021, they were calling for the lab leak theory to be formally investigated.

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