The Pentagon’s top general, Mark Milley, cast doubt on the lab theory earlier this week, saying that US intelligence has looked into the possibility but that the “weight of evidence” thus far pointed towards “natural” origins.
Since the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan in December, more extreme conspiracy theories have suggested that it was engineered as a bioweapon. There is no evidence for this. The scientific journal the Lancet has stated the virus appears to have come from wildlife. An analysis by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology suggests that the virus’s genome is 96% similar to a coronavirus found in bats.
