"Let me be clear: Labs in Wuhan might not have played any role in the origin of the pandemic. But a year later, no source has been found, and the world deserves a thorough, unbiased investigation of all plausible theories that is conducted without fear or favor."
Okay. So basically this author has no evidence other than the fact that it's very difficult, maybe impossible to identify the site of first transmission. I don't know what progress would look like, but maybe sampling animals in the wild to find a carrier with a genetic signature that looks like an early version?
This is just speculative nonsense to try to hype the government's pivot to China. That's why its in the opinion section, the worst part of the newspaper.
Did you know the CCP arrested the first doctor sounding the alarm about COVID? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382
Did you know viruses have escaped from labs before? It is a known risk.
You can say the evidence is not conclusive and you would be right. But it's far from "speculative nonsense."
One wonders if you would be similarly skeptical of claims relating to COVID's cause being something much more speculative and vague... say, global anthropogenic climate change, for example. I'm sure you'd be pumping the brakes just as hard on any speculation to that effect, right? ;-)
Officials sent two warnings to Washington about the lab. The column says the officials were worried about safety and management weaknesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and called for more help." ... "What kinds of security failures were the cables describing?
The short answer is we don't know from the information provided in the Washington Post. But, generally speaking, there are multiple ways that safety measures can be breached at labs dealing with biological agents.
According to Dr Lentzos, these include: "Who has access to the lab, the training and refresher-training of scientists and technicians, procedures for record-keeping, signage, inventory lists of pathogens, accident notification practices, emergency procedures.""
In other words, all the information is non-public and coming from the entirely unreliable US Intelligence services whose job is to lie and make the US government look good. If these reports had been published (meaning in public documents) prior to the pandemic OR there was an admission by the Chinese government, this would be far more credible.