Energy Department confirms ‘conspiracy theory’ COVID-19 lab origin

The US Energy Department has confirmed that the coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Sunday.

The official shift from the “wet market theory” was noted in an updated report by the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ office and is based on undisclosed intelligence. The Energy Department joins the FBI in rejecting the notion that the virus was transmitted from bats to humans in a Chinese wet market.

Two federal agencies are still undecided about the virus’ origin and four other agencies still believe in the wet market theory. 

One of those agencies is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose Acting Director Dr. Lawrence Tabak insisted to Congress this month that the coronavirus could not have possibly been created in a laboratory and was instead passed from bats to humans in a Wuhan wet market.

Tabak’s remarks came despite his own previous admission that the coronavirus was being used to infect mice in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to COVID-19 as part of a US government grant. The grant was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, the organization which oversaw the gain-of-function coronavirus research at the lab.

Dr. Andrew Huff, the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, confirmed in his book The Truth About Wuhan published in December that the virus was indeed leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lab.

“EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Huff wrote.

Last month, a Pfizer executive was caught on hidden camera saying the wet market theory is “bullsh*t”.

"You have to be very controlled to make sure that this [COVID] virus that you mutate doesn’t create something that just goes everywhere,” he said. “Which, I suspect, is the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. It makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere. It’s bullsh*t."

Yet still, government officials such as Tabak and former National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci continue to claim the virus was transferred to humans from bats. The government’s wet market theory is defended by media operatives, who label any dissenters “conspiracy theorists,” and social media companies, who have removed posts and users for spreading “misinformation” by suggesting a lab leak.

In February 2020 Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) became the target of mainstream media for suggesting the virus originated in a lab.

“Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” headlined an article from the New York Times, which added, “Scientists have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it’s the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat.”

The Washington Post repeated the Times’ claim: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.”

They were echoed by the Daily Beast: “Sen. Tom Cotton Flogs Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Dismissed by Actual Scientists.”

Vanity Fair called it a “conspiracy theory”.

Fact-checker PolitiFact — which is funded by George Soros, Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — said in September 2020, “Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab.”

In March 2021 Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth praised CNN for “debunking” the “conspiracy theory”:

On CNN, former CDC director Robert Redfield shared the conspiracy theory that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. Epidemiologists and virologists are doing heroic and urgent work on social media debunking everything he said. Thanks so much to them.

In February 2020 a group of federal scientists published a letter in The Lancet also calling the lab leak a “conspiracy theory”:

We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.