Senior Biden officials now say COVID lab leak theory just as plausible as natural origins explanation: report

Top Biden administration officials now view the lab leak theory just as plausible as the natural origin explanation, according to a new report.

"Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory," CNN reported.

The report stated that even President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, views the accidental COVID lab leak theory as "as equally plausible to the natural origins theory."

"Intelligence agencies that were skeptical of the lab leak theory a year ago, like the CIA, also now view it as a credible line of inquiry," a source told CNN.

This is a stark contrast to a year ago when corporate media lambasted anyone simply broaching the lab leak theory as a "conspiracy theorist" and when big tech social media platforms censored users for questioning the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The early narrative in the COVID-19 pandemic was that novel coronavirus emerged from a wet market in Wuhan, China. As more details emerged, many people, including former President Donald Trump, hypothesized that the coronavirus may have originated from a lab, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic was a product of gain-of-function research that may have accidentally leaked coronavirus from the Wuhan lab.

Facebook previously prohibited users from writing posts suggesting that COVID-19 was man-made, but reversed the decision to ban those types of posts in May. Twitter banned a user for suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from the now-infamous Wuhan lab.

The Washington Post labeled the lab leak theory a "conspiracy theory," and maligned Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for asking questions about the Wuhan Lab. Then 15 months after WaPo said the lab leak theory was "debunked," the outlet edited its article to say the theory is "disputed."

In February, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 leaking from the Wuhan lab was "extremely unlikely." However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted this week that the health agency was wrong to prematurely dismiss the lab leak theory.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the Biden administration's chief medical adviser and part of his COVID-19 response team, dismissed theories that COVID-19 could have originated from a lab, but then walked back the claims last month.

In May, Biden's administration reportedly shut down a Trump-era State Department investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leaked State Department cables revealed that U.S. officials who visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018, two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, had concerns about inadequate safety measures and risky research being conducted at China's only biosafety-level 4 lab.