The debate over whether ChiCom Virus escaped from a lab or originated naturally is fast becoming tiresome. Why? Because one scenario makes sense, and the other one doesn’t.

As Nicholas Wade, who for 30 years covered science for the New York Times, put it during a recent Fox News interview, “It’s very hard on the natural emergence scenario to imagine how the virus broke out someplace else, built itself up into a real good human pathogen, and, without infecting anyone else, the guy who was infected jumped on a train to Wuhan, didn’t infect anyone on the train, and it was only when he got to Wuhan that he started spreading. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Wade also notes that the origins of the two other prominent respiratory viruses of recent years, SARS1 and MERS, left telltale traces that allowed their natural hosts to be identified in short order – SARS1 within four months and MERS within nine months. And yet 15 months after the SARS2 (COVID-19) pandemic began, the Chinese have provided the world with zero evidence of natural occurrence. As Wade puts it, “Natural emergence remained a conjecture which, however plausible to begin with, had gained not a shred of supporting evidence in over a year.”

On the other hand, as Wade writes, “The evidence that it may have been manipulated comes on several fronts. One, I think, is that, from the very start, it was very well adapted to humans, but most other viruses of this type, when they spill over, they take a long time, they take many mutations to get themselves into a really good pathogen. This one was there from the start.”

Wade, in a lengthy paper he published on April 30, suspects that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting “gain-of-function” research to enhance viral capabilities so as to better understand their danger to humans. This is dangerous stuff. And he blames four parties:

• The Chinese virologists who performed such experiments under security conditions that were far too lax for containing a virus of this lethality.

• Chinese authorities, who appear to have done their utmost to obstruct worldwide efforts to get to the bottom of this pandemic. As he writes, “They suppressed all records at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and closed down its virus databases. They released a trickle of information, much of which may have been outright false or designed to misdirect and mislead. They did their best to manipulate the WHO’s inquiry into the virus’s origins, and led the commission’s members on a fruitless run-around. So far they have proved far more interested in deflecting blame than in taking the steps necessary to prevent a second pandemic.”

• The worldwide virology community, which Wade says has “barricaded itself behind a Chinese wall of silence.” Why? To protect both its ability to conduct this dangerous research and to protect the research funding pipeline from which so much money flows. “Professions that cannot regulate themselves,” he writes, “deserve to get regulated by others.”

• The U.S., for its part in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here, he places blame on a nonprofit called the EcoHealth Alliance, which used a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the National Institutes of Health) to conduct gain-of-function research with coronaviruses.

Yes, we supplied funding to the Wuhan lab that appears to be responsible for this pandemic and its more than three million deaths worldwide. And is it any wonder that Dr. Anthony Fauci has been so dismissive of the lab-escape theory? After all, he’s been the director of the funding entity, the NIAID, since 1984.

One day soon, hopefully, the whole truth will come out. As columnist Josh Rogin writes in the Washington Post, “More than one year after the outbreak of covid-19 in Wuhan, China, the virus’s origin remains a mystery, imperiling chances of preventing the next pandemic. Now, several members of Congress are responding to Chinese government obfuscation, World Health Organization incompetence and Biden administration neglect by moving to launch their own investigations. And these lawmakers insist on exploring the theory that the outbreak might be connected to an accident at a Wuhan lab.”

Even the Biden administration is starting to cave, after having long run interference for the ChiComs. As Rogin continues, “The calls for more information come after the White House, last month, said it believes that China has ‘not been transparent’ in releasing its findings on the origins of COVID-19, as part of a report it wrote in collaboration with the World Health Organization. … The White House said the WHO’s China report lacks crucial information and provides just a ‘partial, incomplete picture’ of the virus’ origin.”

You’re telling us. But talk is cheap. And time will tell whether Joe Biden intends to hold China accountable for its documented malfeasance or help Xi Jinping sweep this under the rug.

“For over a year, anyone asking questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been branded as a conspiracy theorist,” said Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley last month. “The world needs to know if this pandemic was the product of negligence at the Wuhan lab but the CCP has done everything it can to block a credible investigation … the Biden administration must declassify what it knows about the Wuhan lab and Beijing’s attempts to cover up the origin of the pandemic.”

Updated to include a comparison of host traceability among SARS1, MERS, and COVID-19.