Dresden wrote:"A team of World Health Organization scientists said on Tuesday in China that the coronavirus had probably first spread to humans through an animal and was “extremely unlikely” to have been the result of a lab accident.
The findings, delivered after 12 days of field work by the team visiting Wuhan, China, were the first step in a painstaking process to trace the pandemic’s origins, a question that is critical to helping prevent a recurrence.
“All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the W.H.O. who is leading the team of experts. He was speaking at a news conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered late in 2019."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus
This would be a good time for Mike Pompeo to come forth with the "enormous evidence" he claimed he had that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Or was that just another lie told by the US govt for political purposes? The problem when govt. continually lies to its people (see reasons for going to war with Iraq) is that it produces cynicism and mistrust.
There isn't even a consensus on where the 1918 flu pandemic started, I doubt they'll find anything definitive about the origins of covid anytime soon. Only 12 days of field work, a year after it started, in China of all places, doesn't seem super reliable. My bet is that the administration was presented more than one possibility for its origins, and Pompeo/Trump picked the one they liked the most politically and ran with it.