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The mystery of the pandemic’s origins (and what it means for Biden)

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The Washington Post

News, True Crime, Politics

4.14.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What are the geopolitical implications of the intelligence community"redoubling its efforts" to identify the pandemic's origins? And what are the political challenges for President Biden in acknowledging a theory once touted by the Trump administration?

Transcript

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0:00.0

The coronavirus pandemic has taken the lives of millions of people around the world, and

0:06.3

still, more than a year and a half since the first known case, the world has little knowledge

0:11.5

about its origins.

0:13.3

For many months, the leading belief among scientists and other experts was that coronavirus

0:18.0

likely jumped from animals, likely bats, to humans.

0:22.1

But one other theory surfaced that has recently gained more traction.

0:26.1

A growing course of experts are questioning the possibility of the virus leaking from

0:30.3

the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that researches coronaviruses to defend

0:35.8

against outbreaks like the SARS epidemic, or this recent coronavirus pandemic.

0:40.6

This theory, once dismissed as conspiracy or conjecture, was acknowledged by the Biden

0:45.1

administration last week.

0:47.5

Many of us feel that it is more likely that this is a natural occurrence as has happened

0:53.7

with SARS, Covey-1, where it goes from an animal reservoir to a human.

0:59.1

But we don't know 100% the answer to that.

1:02.2

And since this is a question that keeps being asked, we feel strongly all of us that we

1:07.6

should continue with the investigation and go to the next phase of the investigation that

1:12.6

the WHO has done.

1:14.1

So...

1:15.1

In a statement, President Biden acknowledged that both the animal to human transmission

1:18.6

theory and the hypothesis that this started from an accidental leak from the lab in

1:23.1

Wuhan are both possible origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

1:27.0

He asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to uncover evidence of what

...

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