Original subtitles

Right out of that hole.

All these other holes are sample ports, so we can measure

the air quality in real time. See you in a few minutes.

Let's face it, there are so many government conspiracies,

it can be hard to tell what's real and what's not.

My name is Andrew Bustamante and I am a former

covert CIA intelligence officer.

And I'm going to pressure test the most sensational

ripped-from-the-headlines conspiracy theories out there

to help you separate fact from fiction.

March 2020.

The world shuts down almost overnight.

Like a sci-fi movie, except no one's leaving the theater.

Body bags, empty streets, isolation.

Tonight, the stark new coronavirus warning,

The WHO saying word-- a new and dangerous phase

in the pandemic is accelorating.

As the virus spread, so did questions

about where it came from.

Was it nature?

An animal virus that made the leap to humans?

A lab leak? A bioweapon?

Or part of a nefarious planned scheme?

On this episode, I'll be using CIA tradecraft,

up-to-the-minute political insights, real-world demos,

and interviews with key experts to test scientific claims...

Was this let out on purpose or by accident?

...expose potential motives...

China is exporting vaccines

and personal protective equipment around the world.

It was a huge win for Beijing.

...and pressure test fringe theories...

I have to say this-- don't try this at home.

...to investigate where COVID-19,

the deadliest pandemic in the past 100 years,

actually came from.

And what I end up discovering...

is shocking.

That is absolutely terrifying to hear you say that.

The COVID-19 pandemic may be over,

but the fallout sure isn't.

A recent poll shows that the majority of Americans

believe that COVID split our country in two.

Why? Because people didn't trust

the information they were getting,

and the origin story became one of

the biggest flashpoints of distrust.

The initial explanation was that the virus originated in

animals and jumped to humans.

It's a process called natural spillover.

And since many of the first COVID 19 patients were traced

to a wet market in Wuhan, China,

where live exotic animals were sold for meat,

many scientists believe this is where the pandemic started.

That virus was brought there with those live animals

and it spilled over.

Let's start by looking at what a wet market actually is.

It sounds dark and exotic, but the idea is simple.

It's an open-air market that is called "wet" because everything

in it needs water.

Washing, rinsing, keeping things cold.

But somewhere along the way, "wet market" became shorthand

for a place full of strange animals and stranger tastes.

The perspective shifts only when you zoom in a darker time

in a specific slice of southern China.

From 1959 to 1961, China went through one of

the worst famines in history.

A combination of failed government policies

and environmental pressures

left tens of millions of people dead.

In the decades that followed, food security became

a national priority.

Beginning in the late 1970s, China introduced market reforms

that allowed farmers more control over what

they produced and sold.

Over time, that shift helped fuel a growing industry in

animal farming, including the breeding and sale

of wild species.

By the 2000s, some of these animals were classified as

agricultural products and sold in markets across China,

bringing humans into closer contact with wildlife

than ever before.

At CIA, we assess theories based on a level of

probability, based on the reliability of the source

and the reliability of the information.

I'm going to use this probability matrix

throughout my investigation to help us assess

each theory as we explore.

So, with natural spillover being a possibility,

how do we know if COVID really did come from nature?

We don't just ask what's possible, we ask what

the evidence supports.

So what does the evidence from Wuhan actually tell us?

To dig into the question, I'm reaching out to

Lia Eustachewich, managing news editor at the New York Post,

because in 2020, she and her team reported on

intriguing from Harvard University that injects doubt

into the spillover theory.

Lia, we all know the commonly accepted theory of the origin

of COVID-19-- what happened to that wet market

after Chinese authorities basically told the world

it was the cause of COVID?

It was shut down. So it all gave credence

to this notion that the wet market

was ground zero for COVID.

How did the World Health Organization

handle it at the start?

They did send a team over pretty early on when we first

learned that COVID was spreading.

But they were very in what they could investigate.

They were unable to talk to the right people, you know,

go into the market.

They were stymied by the Chinese authorities.

They were very limited in what they could find.

What I'd like to do is actually build a timeline

and see if that doesn't paint a picture for us.

- Yep. - All right.

You were saying that everything started in December of 2019,

Chinese authorities reporting pneumonia of unknown cause.

Correct-- it was known as "novel coronavirus"

at the time.

And January 11th is when China reported its first death.

Yes, and then January 13th, it finds its way to Thailand.

And January 15th, to Japan.

By January 20th, 21st, it looks like that's when

the World Health Organization first visited Wuhan.

Right. And this also coincided with

the first case being confirmed in the United States,

in Washington state.

In March, it's a pandemic officially

declared by the World Health Organization.

And then, shutdowns start happening all over the world.

Tell me about the satellite images you found

and the other story they tell.

This report came out in June 2020.

Harvard researchers analyzed this satellite data from

the hospital parking lots in Wuhan, and it clearly showed

that there was an uptick in people coming in and out of

the hospitals much earlier than Chinese authorities said.

So there is that six-month gap of when the public first

started learning about COVID

to when symptoms really started in China.

After it escaped, one-and-a-half months,

China did not put any restrictions whatsoever,

and by that, China allowed the virus to spread.

Hang on.

Could it just be an early flu season?

There would have to be other data besides just an uptick in

hospital traffic data. - Correct.

At the same time, there's an increase in searches

from the Wuhan area for COVID symptoms, cough, and diarrhea.

And we're seeing now there's an inconsistency when the first

reports were coming in to the hospitals in Wuhan versus

when the public was made aware of the existence of

a new virus. - Correct.

When people tried to discuss an alternate theory of

where COVID came from, they were cast aside.

They were, you know, told they were

conspiracy theorists. They were treated as pariahs.

And I feel like the divisiveness could have been mitigated

if we had gotten clear answers from the get-go.

It also suggests why there have been so many conspiracies

that have grown out of the coronavirus pandemic.

Absolutely-- I think when people

don't get straight answers, they fill those gaps themselves

and they come up with other theories.

Lia's reporting raises some real questions about

the timeline and about how much we were told.

But inconsistencies don't tell me where the virus came from.

To study that, I need to understand how a virus like

this actually jumps from animals to humans.

I have to test the spillover theory for myself.

So I've come here to the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Center

to put myself in the zone where viruses can jump from animals

to humans and see just how probable that risk is.

First, we have to make sure we are fully, from head-to-toe,

suited up in protective gear.

- Let's do it. - All right.

So we're going to get you some gloves,

a gown, and a mask. - OK.

We, of course, can get sick from our patients through mucus

The owl is the informal mascot

for intelligence services worldwide.

So it's really exciting to me that I get to handle

a wild owl.

The Wildlife Center confirmed something important.

Spillover from animals that can carry dangerous viruses,

even owls and bird flu,

isn't rare-- it's common.

A crowded market, infected wildlife,

and sloppy handlers are very much ground-zero

for a pandemic.

But if COVID-19 was a natural outbreak, what explains

the contradictions in the timeline?

And why was the official narrative locked down so fast?

So my next question in this investigation is this.

If this didn't happen in the wild,

where else could it have started?

When you look at Wuhan, just across the river 10 miles

from the wet market, what do you find there?

It's almost beyond belief.

2 As soon as the world learned of a new virus in Wuhan,

the Chinese government claimed it came from wild animals at

the wet market and spilled into humans.

But the outbreak happened in the in the same city as

the highly secure Wuhan Institute of Virology,

where bat coronaviruses had been studied for years.

That's a coincidence that's too hard to ignore.

It fueled speculation that perhaps COVID-19 had leaked

from a lab where nothing was supposed to ever escape.

But is such a scenario even possible?

Most people don't realize this, but in 1977, a strain of

influenza known as the Russian flu

spread around the world.

Some scientists believe it may have originated from

a lab accident after a version of the virus

thought to be extinct suddenly reappeared.

A decade earlier, a deadly virus later named

Marburg infected lab workers handling imported monkeys.

Seven people died.

And in the early 2000s, the SARS virus,

a close relative of COVID-19, escaped from labs

multiple times, infecting researchers

and triggering new outbreaks.

These incidents are rare, but they're real.

So the question isn't just, could a virus leak from a lab?

It's, how probable is it today?

So I am here at the Aerobiology Laboratory

at the University of Colorado in Boulder

to learn how viruses are safely contained.

And more importantly, if it gives us any clues to

the reality of a Wuhan lab leak of COVID-19.

What kind of a lab is this?

Most of our mission is to kill bad things in the air

that you breathe.

Our lab is the seatbelt for lungs.

So we're about to go into an active lab.

Kindergarten rule, keep your hands to yourself.

What we grow in our lab is pretty much a rogue's gallery

of the things that make us and animals sick.

Flu, whooping cough, different flavors of

tuberculosis, and we store these cryogenically.

So myself or any of our researchers

can pull it out.

We've got vials and vials of anything that you want.

E. coli, SARS-CoV-2, hepatitis virus.

Wow! Unbelievable!

Within a week, I can have live virus, live bacteria,

live fungi, whatever you want.

That'll give you pneumonia if you inhale it.

- Oh, my gosh! This is so crazy. - Yeah.

Everything about this door says...

Don't go in.

It says don't go in, absolutely.

- Right. - But we're going in.

- ... Yeah. - I'm excited.

OK, nervous, but excited.

What is the danger of the experiment that we're

running right now? - The danger is you get sick.

- OK. - OK?

With this first task, I want to experience how viruses are

handled and how a dangerous spill could occur.

Take a big breath. Take your coronavirus,

open it up, and pour her into the trough.

Now the hands of a surgeon come in.

- Ooh... - You're gonna pick up eight of those, push down

until they're kind of secured in a row.

That takes a little practice.

Eh...

Now you're gonna go over, pick up your virus,

and now you're gonna add them to the brain cells.

Precision, care, and attention to detail.

Dr. Hernandez wasn't kidding. This takes surgical precision.

One small slip and I could spill a contagious virus.

This lab has strict containment protocols with

multiple safeguards to prevent anything from escaping.

At CIA, we'd consider the probability of

an accidental leak here as extremely low.

But leaks can and do happen if rules aren't followed.

OK, audio check. Mark.

Good copy, Dr. Hernandez.

For a first-hand demonstration

of how containment protocols work and air is cleaned,

I'm about to do something crazy.

I'm putting myself in a room where an airborne virus is

actively circulating.

If COVID came from a lab,

it likely spread through the air.

So to test that idea, I need to understand how airborne viruses

behave and how easily they can escape containment.

So I'm going into an aerosol chamber.

Yes, sir.

The purpose of these experiments is to figure out

how long airborne pathogens like flu, coronavirus,

RSV survive in the air in classrooms and offices

and so on.

And then how do we kill it without harming us?

What do I need to do to do this safely?

Well, let's get you suited up.

How are you feeling in there?

So I'm going to take you in the chamber.

You'll see a little pink cloud come in.

Right out of that hole. See you in a few minutes.

Three, two, one-- here she comes.

And now it's starting to take off.

Yeah.

So, Andy, the instrumentation is telling us

we've got quite a bit of particles in there.

We're going to start the filters now.

There's two filters on the floor

to remove the aerosol.

One last intervention we want to engage in--

it's right above your head.

That's a UV light that'll inactivate any virus that's in

the air pretty rapidly, and it's safe for

skin and eyes.

- Wow. - How was the ride?

Wow. Wow.

So this helps to tell us what

the total biological load in the air is.

A biological load is essentially germs.

Yeah-- and you actually started up at about 4,000.

And then within about two minutes, that HEPA filter in

there with you dropped the particles down by 75%.

- So HEPA filters-- - In just two minutes.

In just two minutes.

Seeing the process up close makes it clear that labs like

this are designed to contain viruses.

But even the best systems rely on people,

and people make mistakes.

What made coronavirus so different than some of

the other outbreaks that have happened in our generation?

If you remember the term about the coronavirus,

"novel" coronavirus, there was something about

the biochemistry of that little floating particle that

most people had never seen before.

And that's where the issue comes to,

hey, was this engineered?

Was this let out on purpose or by accident as part of

the genetic engineering process?

And we don't have the answer to those questions yet.

Though a lab leak is possible, what I saw suggests

the protocols in Wuhan wouldn't be all that different from

the ones at this lab.

So if I can't prove a leak from the outside, maybe I need to

look at the virus itself.

Dr. Hernandez left me with an intriguing thread to follow.

COVID-19 was a virus with novel biochemistry.

The question is, are those features we'd expect to see

in nature, or do they point to something else?

2 Dr. Hernandez pointed me to something I can't ignore,

COVID-19's unusual biochemistry.

Maybe the virus itself might hold clues about

where it came from.

So I want to talk to molecular biologist Dr. Alina Chan.

With a background in medical genetics and vector

engineering, Dr. Chan has written a book exploring

the origins of COVID-19.

So I've been in a BSL-2 lab, and the scientist that

hosted me specifically said... - Mm-hmm.

...there's an element inside the SARS-CoV-2 virus

that they hadn't seen before.

What is that? And can it tell us something

about where COVID-19 came from?

SARS-CoV-2 is unique amongst all SARS-like viruses.

It has a special feature called a furin cleavage site.

And this feature is what makes it really effective at

infecting human cells.

In 2018, the Wuhan scientists, together with

their U.S. partners, were trying to test different mutations,

and they had plans to put these furin cleavage sites into

SARS-like viruses.

It was intended at predicting and preventing pandemics.

And there's this really striking coincidence, of all of

the viruses in the world,

this SARS-CoV-2 virus with the unique fearing cleavage site

that appeared in Wuhan.

I mean, when I look at this through a lens of probability,

the coincidence is glaringly strong.

But strong coincidences can point to patterns or pull

you to conclusions that aren't fully supported yet.

These plans were leaked

from inside the U.S. government in 2021.

In March 2020, influential scientists said

that there was no plausible lab origin scenario for COVID 19.

But since then,

the private emails and messages of these scientists

have been subpoenaed.

And now we see that they were actually looking at

a lab origin scenario.

When you start talking about the likelihood that it came

from a lab, what did that do to you and your reputation?

Yeah, people were attacking us,

saying that we were conspiracy theorists.

I received many very unpleasant tweets.

But many top viroligists started sending me mail saying that

we agree with you, but none of them made their stance public

because the harm to their reputation

can be really strong.

But does that exclude the possibility of

natural spillover?

No-- the favorite natural origin hypothesis,

which cannot be ruled out, is that the bats

down in the southern regions

infected an intermediate host, so some other kind of animal,

or infected a person in Wuhan and caused an outbreak there.

Why do you think so many conspiracy theories still

surround the origin of COVID-19?

20 million people died because of COVID 19.

How can you just brush that aside?

People need to know the truth.

In 2023, there was already a COVID Origins Act that was

passed unanimously saying declassify the data linking

the Wuhan lab to the origin of COVID 19.

But the intelligence community over two administrations

refused to declassify the data.

I am, I'm kind of overwhelmed.

I'm gonna turn off my camera for a second.

- Yep. - OK.

I am on the verge of tears.

Hearing how avoidable this could have been,

and there are 20 million dead people.

But we're not any safer.

And I was on the side that kept secrets like this.

And the people who have been crying "conspiracy,"

they're closer to right than they are to wrong on this.

Thank you. I just needed a second to

myself, Alina, to kind of...

process what you're talking about.

And a lot of what you were saying was new information

and emotional for me.

I can't thank you enough for the work that you've done.

Thank you, Andy.

Dr. Chan makes a compelling case for the lab leak theory.

But compelling doesn't mean conclusive.

It means there are still questions that

haven't been answered.

Many continue to stand by the natural spillover theory to

explain where COVID came from.

Three evolutionary biologists, Michael Worobey, Chris Andersen,

and Eddie Holmes-- they go through all the data.

Could not be clearer.

Animal to human spillover event that occurred

in the western section of the Wunan market.

So why is it that two-thirds of the American public think it

was a lab leak?

Again, I think it's easier to conceive that, and it's nice to

be able to blame somebody. And so it became political.

And let's not forget, scientists around the world

have been researching the virus, and they mostly

agree that it could have come from natural origins.

But there's catch, because the sequences that

scientists are working from

have largely been controlled by China.

These aren't coming from independent sources that have

collected samples from Wuhan or early areas of infection.

So while scientists may be in agreement, they are in

agreement on limited information.

And anytime there is missing data,

there's always room for doubt.

And that got people wondering if the virus's origin story was

a lot darker.

Could COVID-19 be a product of biological weapons research?

2 I've looked at the possibility that COVID came from nature,

and I've tested how an accident inside a lab could happen.

But there's one more possibility I need to consider.

What if it wasn't an accident at all?

In the ongoing quest for geopolitical dominance,

global superpowers go to great lengths to gain an edge.

China follows a strategy called civil-military fusion,

and the idea is pretty simple.

Use science and technology to offset

the West's military power.

So understanding that science is central to China's military

ambitions, does that include biological weapons research?

Could COVID-19 be a product of this military project?

It's a theory that took hold early on in the pandemic,

especially among China's rivals like India.

Was the Wuhan virus a bioweapon?

Was the aim to create the deadliest coronavirus ever?

And with China determined to be the only superpower in all

of Asia, it's not that far-fetched of an idea.

So I've invited China expert Henrietta Levin,

a former senior U.S. official

at the State Department and current senior fellow

at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,

to discuss that question.

Could China have intentionally created a biological weapon

that led to the release of COVID?

The Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally about control

over everything that happens in the country.

China fears instability in China more than anything else.

And you can see even in the Chinese government's

response to COVID, the amount

of societal control was incredible.

I mean, whether you could leave your house was dependent on

what a government-sponsored app told you you could do.

You would see drones coming up to your window.

And this really shocked a lot of Chinese citizens.

So COVID actually brought organized protests...

...onto the street in China for the first time

in years and years.

That alone would say to me that

COVID is not working out for China.

Were there benefits that might suggest that China

deliberately released COVID?

Well, remember early in the pandemic,

Italy was hit very hard. - Yes.

China made a pretty big show of donating

medical equipment to Italy.

So you saw a huge outpouring of gratitude.

Italy is a G7 country, so this was a pretty big political

success for Beijing.

And later in the pandemic, there's a critical six-month

period where China is exporting massive amounts of vaccines

and personal protective equipment around the world.

- Health diplomacy. - Yes.

And the U.S. isn't sharing vaccines with anyone.

A huge win for China's popularity in the global south.

Now, did they take advantage of a crisis to try

and bolster influence? Yes.

But just the chaos inside of China that was unleashed by

this virus is something Beijing would never have intended.

It would seem seems silly to risk losing it all

because of a biological weapons effort.

Based on what we know, it doesn't appear that COVID 19

fits the description of a biological weapon.

But ruling that out doesn't end the investigation.

It just shifts the question.

If this wasn't about military power, what else

could have motivated it?

One answer some people point to is money.

Whoever makes the first successful

COVID-19 vaccine also stands to make a fortune.

We are talking billions of dollars in revenue.

Pfizer alone is set to make between $59 and $61 billion in

profits this year, $15 billion of which would be from

their COVID-19 vaccine alone.

I'm sorry, I just hallucinated.

What?

There's nothing unusual about companies making money from

a global medical breakthrough.

But when the stakes are this high and the profits this big,

it can start to raise questions.

And in a moment already defined by fear and uncertainty,

those questions can quickly turn into something else.

As coronavirus spread and the death toll mounted,

the fear and paranoia rose right along with it.

And conspiracies started to pop up that suggested that maybe

the vaccine wasn't a vaccine at all.

Maybe it was about tracking the population and expanding

government control.

In that version of events, the pandemic itself

wasn't an accident. It was the setup.

How probable is such an idea?

To find out, I'm on my way now to meet with somebody who found

themselves in the center of that very conspiracy.

Biohacker Emil Graafstra runs a medically safe RFID implant

company using radio wave technology for

wireless identification and authentication.

- I've got you at 1153 here. - OK-- I'll pay with tap.

- That's crazy. - That is some cyborg [bleep], dude.

Did it light up under your skin?

Yeah, I kind of forget where it's at.

So when I use it for pass keys on my phone, as I get closer,

it lights up.

When did you start hearing about the connection between

COVID and RFID?

That started almost immediately.

There was a company backed by Bill Gates manufacturing these

syringes that had RFID in the syringe.

And the purpose of that is to be able to track dosing

and usage distribution like a parcel tracking.

But tracking in terms of like real-time locating on a map,

no, that's not what it was doing.

It was tracking the supply chain.

But people were like, Bill Gates,

microchips, you know, and it all fits together.

It's almost hard to deny this stuff because it's so

stupid or strange.

It's really just the kind of combination of

a misunderstanding about the technology.

And, you know, there were people trying to

churn up this distrust.

And so anything becomes possible.

So now people who were already skeptical about being

vaccinated started thinking it has some nefarious intent.

And they'll kill millions, as they already have

with their vaccines.

Everywhere I go, everything is trying to connect to me,

man, like Bluetooth connectivity.

Does the COVID-19 vaccine make you magnetic?

It is magnetic there.

It really started to be a brewing ground

for conspiracy.

So I want to dig into this technology with you deeper.

Yeah.

And I don't think that doing it in a public restaurant is

gonna make anybody very comfortable.

- No. - Do you mind taking a ride with me?

- OK, sure. - Let's do it.

2 All right, man. Welcome to my little abode.

All right.

I've invited biohacker Emil Graafstra to show me

his RFID implant toolkit.

Now that we're in the final stages of our investigation,

I want to test one of the most interesting and out-there

conspiracies and see for myself if a chip can really be

injected into our bodies through a vaccine.

So this is our full actual kit.

This little needle is the actual

cylindrical-shaped implant. - So that's not a little needle.

I could make spaghetti with that.

Yeah, you could, yeah.

But this is the size that's required to fit

the technology inside.

Inversely, we have something that would be used for

a vaccination, right?

So this little guy is what we all get with any vaccine

that we can think of, really. - Yeah.

There is nothing similar about those two.

- No comparison. - That is a massive needle.

Yeah, it has to accommodate that LED, so it's even bigger.

I have to say this, don't try this at home.

Again, it's just under the skin, so it's really only

a couple millimeters deep.

Deposited and then we remove

just like that.

Where would that go on my hand?

Between the index and some metacarpal bones.

And the fascia.

So, you can feel there's a slight bump there.

Wow.

It's similar to this bump in my hand here.

That's not right.

- I'm accustomed to working with fobs that are about this size. - Yeah.

So, what's in this chip is encryption

and the authentication key that was previously in

something like this. - Yeah.

Both of these devices are just there for authenticating that

the user is, in fact,

giving permission for this scan.

It's not the same thing as a transmitter or any kind of

active tracking. - Right.

The conspiracy around the COVID vaccine was that

they may have been able to plant something into a person's

body without their permission... - Mm-hmm.

...so that could be tracked

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

- Is that what this is? - No.

The range of these things, even your fobs and cards which

are very big in comparison,

they have extremely limited range.

And that's because there's no power source, right?

They derive power from the magnetic field that

the reader generates.

So, this thing only reacts

when power is brought to it. - Yep, exactly.

Because of that, situations where governments

like China are monitoring their entire populace,

they didn't go for this because it's wholly impractical.

You wouldn't set up readers every five feet that people

have to go up to and actually present.

It doesn't work.

But also, putting a thing in a person,

they can just take it out.

So, how would you track a population?

If you're a nefarious actor, you look at what's in

the environment and give them a device that they keep charged

on their own, which is their phone.

How I how ironic it is that people who were reporting that

they believed they were being tracked by the government were

reporting that on social media using their phone. - Yeah.

Which is the best and easiest way

for the government to track you,

not some chip itself. - Yeah.

When I look at the evidence in front of me and I try to run it

up against the theory that the COVID vaccine was really

carrying some sort of microchip, you can literally

see how scientifically difficult it would be to

really do. - Yes, absolutely.

More than any other investigation that we have run

together, this one has been an absolute

emotional roller coaster.

And because it's been so emotional, so controversial,

we have to turn to a CIA tool and try to focus only

on the facts.

These are the four theories we have to explore in this

matrix to try to define which is the most likely explanation

and which are the least likely explanations

for the origin of COVID.

We tracked down some very credible experts.

And when you consider the probability matrix,

you have to consider the reliability of a source

before you consider anything else.

So, let's jump in first with the idea that COVID-19 was

somehow planned to track the population.

We had a conversation with somebody who literally knows

what it's like to plant microchips under their skin.

And we quickly learned you can can't hide a battery-powered

metal chip inside a vaccine.

So, we have to assign the idea as low probability.

Which takes us to the idea that there was a Chinese bioweapon.

We learn the purposeful release of a secret bioweapon works

against all of China's known intentions.

So, we have one of the lowest possible likelihood scores.

So let's get into our third theory, natural spillover.

We have some very strong sources confirming that viruses

do go through a natural evolutionary process that

ultimately makes them highly infectious among human beings.

But multiple experts explain to us that the virus had unique

biochemistry that suggests that

perhaps it didn't come from nature.

While it is possible that there's a natural explanation

for COVID, it may not be the most probable.

Now our fourth and final theory.

An accidental lab leak.

We learned of documentation that showed that this specific

virus could be traced back to

research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Does that mean that we know for certain it was a lab leak?

No, but we have multiple strong sources with demonstrable

evidence that point to this being a likely explanation.

And so when we look at our probability matrix,

this is the best assessment of where COVID-19 came from

based on public evidence today.

Nobody knows when or what the next pandemic

will look like, but we all have a to play in fighting it

early and fighting the misinformation,

the distrust, and the lies that can come with

during a global crisis.

COVID may have began as a biological contagion,

but what followed-- the disconnection,

the doubt, the fear, spread even faster than

the virus itself.

The good news is we're not powerless.

The same tools we use to track

the virus-- evidence, transparency,

curiosity, critical thinking, can also help us

fight misinformation.

Because maybe the real lesson behind COVID isn't just how

viruses spread, but how important it is that

the truth spreads faster.