Did Covid jump from an animal to a person at a food market in Wuhan, China — or leak from a research lab there? — David LeonhardtIn the early days of the pandemic, I was speaking to a variety of U.S. intelligence officials who believed that China was hiding the truth of what happened with Covid. In the name of safety, Chinese officials ordered that coronavirus samples be destroyed. At best, this hampered the later investigation into Covid’s origins, and at worst it was a sign of a cover-up. In this context, some of those intelligence officials believed that people were not paying enough attention to the lab-leak theory.

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Persons: David Quammen, Julian Barnes, — David Leonhardt, Covid Organizations: Times Magazine Locations: Wuhan, China, Washington