The US Department of Energy’s assessment that covid-19 likely arose from a laboratory accident in China has reignited a fierce debate and refocused attention on the origin of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the determination that this is a “low confidence” assessment, made in a recently updated classified report, leaves open more questions than answers, as the department has not publicly provided new supporting evidence. It also drew fierce rejection from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe urge the United States to respect science and facts, stop politicizing this issue, stop intelligence- and politically-driven origin tracing,\u201d a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Energy assessment is part of a broader US effort in which President Joe Biden asked intelligence agencies \u2013 in 2021 \u2013 to investigate the origins of the new coronavirus, first detected in the city Wuhan China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That general assessment by the intelligence community was inconclusive, and then, as now, a decisive link between the virus and a specific animal or other option has yet to be established, as China continues to obstruct international investigations into its origins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Department of Energy’s assessment that covid-19 likely arose from a laboratory accident in China has reignited a fierce debate and refocused attention on the origin of the pandemic. But the determination that this is a “low confidence” assessment, made in a recently updated classified report, leaves open more questions than answers, as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[1870,1471,1927,1926],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-covid-19","tag-laboratory","tag-us-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5935,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions\/5935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}