'Lab leak' theory unsubstantiated: media

While the "lab leak" theory makes for a good TV plot, there's not much else going for it. The theory of animal-to-human transmission, while less dramatic and perhaps less emotionally satisfying, is the likelier one, Salon.com reported.

Earlier, an Australian scientist who until November 2019 worked at the virology lab in Wuhan, said "it was a regular lab that worked in the same way as any other high-containment lab."

The scientific evidence points in the same direction that it did a year ago, Lindsay Beyerstein argued in a piece for the New Republic: "20 years of post-SARS research into the origins and spread of bat coronaviruses point to a natural origin for Covid-19," and the supposed lab-leak evidence "is neither new nor compelling."

Some irresponsible media hype the "lab leak" theory, the report added.