The origin of the Covid virus comes round full circle

Give or take a few weeks, possibly months, the Covid-19 virus hit the world around 18 months ago and here we are with a new report suggesting that, after all, it IS possible the spread of the deadly virus began from China's institute of virology in Wuhan. Talk about coming round full circle. When it was first mooted after it was revealed the virus had first shown itself in Wuhan, Beijing furiously denied the pandemic origins had anything to do with the institute and insisted there had been no leak. It came from bats and bats were being sold in the food market in Wuhan but the insitute of virology was clean as a whistle, the Chinese authorities said. Although it was tempting to blame the Chinese and in particular the Wuhan institute for starting it all off, it proved to be very difficult to be categorical abut anything. Donald Trump latched on to the China connection immediately and called it the Wuhan virus, much to the delight and support of his many fans in the Republican party. There was mostly a careful distinction between a deliberate leak of the virus from the institute and an accidental leak, although conspiracy theorists preferred the former idea, that it was some cunning plan to cause mayhem around the world. Most sensible people didn't believe it could have been deliberate. And when asked, top people in the US, including General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff who presumably sees all the intelligence going around Washington, publicly sided with those who said the virus had developed naturally, not from a laboratory. If Milley was so certain why is the Wall Street Journal now claiming in an article by my old colleage Michael Gordon, that an intelligene report was far more circumspect about the laboratory theory, pointing out that three of the institute's employees had been hospitalised with something nasty and serious towards the end of 2019. Did Milley and others know that when they were so adamant Covid-19 was just nature playing a dirty game, not the Chinese? Now the conspiracy theorists will be back en masse. This story ain't going away.