The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic was most likely from a laboratory leak. It provided its new assessment in a classified intelligence report to the White House and leaders in Congress. It was a change from its own conclusion a year earlier that thought it most probably was the natural evolution of a virus.
My book about the drug industry, Pharma, was published in March 2020, as the world began locking down. In dozens of interviews that followed, whenever I was asked about the origins of Covid, I said I did not know. I could make a persuasive case either that it was from a natural transmission from an infected animal or from an unintended leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
No matter how much I was pressed for which one I thought was more likely, I never gave an opinion. That was because I had not done the reporting necessary to reach a conclusion. At one point in the late summer of 2020, I talked to my publisher about whether he might be interest…
