China is pushing back against the US Energy Department's conclusion that the COVID pandemic likely started in a Chinese lab. "The origin of the novel coronavirus is a scientific issue and should not be politicized," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on Monday. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Energy Department made use of unspecified new intelligence to shift its thinking on the origins of the virus. It now sides with the FBI in suspecting a lab leak, though other US intelligence agencies—notably the CIA—remain unconvinced. The other main theory is that the virus originated with an animal.
The Energy Department conclusion comes with a major caveat—it reportedly was made with "low confidence," per the New York Times. A report at CNN explains that such assessments are made with either low, medium, or high confidence. If it's low, that "generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion," writes Paul LeBlanc in an analysis.
Even so, the development has quickly taken on political overtones. GOP lawmakers demanded that the White House immediately declassify all related evidence. Sens. Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Mike Braun were among those speaking up on Monday, per the Journal and the Hill. Rep. Michael McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a report in 2021 that came to a similar conclusion. "While I wish it had happened sooner, I’m pleased the Department of Energy has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to," he said. (More COVID-19 stories.)
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