Beyond the pandemic origins debate - by Caitlin Rivers

The Department of Energy, home to the country’s network of national laboratories, recently [ in 2023] briefed lawmakers on a new intelligence assessment concluding that COVID-19 “most likely arose” from a laboratory leak. They have “low confidence” in this conclusion, perhaps due to sparse and poor-quality evidence. The report is not publicly available; news of its topline conclusions was leaked to media outlets.

The DOE report is the latest in a series of inquiries and investigations into the origins of the pandemic, which have been fraught, to say the least. Some of the scientific inquiries have been marred by unreported conflicts of interest, political interference, and unprofessional conduct. Inquiries by government leaders have suffered from partisan posturing and diplomatic stalemates.

I am not going to weigh in on the debate of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. I think it’s unlikely we will ever know with any certainty how the virus jumped into humans. The spillover event, in whatever form, was a spark that ignited the pandemic more than three years ago. It takes around five days for an infection progress to symptoms, so even the first victim may not have known when and where they became infected. Investigating the pandemic’s origins is worth undertaking, but we should not wait for it to yield a definitive answer.

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