Virologists Defend Paper on COVID-19 Origins at Contentious House Hearing

A 2020 paper studying the early origins of the COVID-19 outbreak was the focus of an often contentious July 11 House hearing investigating the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” the paper reads.
Those words, written by five virologists in the 2020 paper, prompted many officials to repeatedly dismiss the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a lab.
Two of the paper’s authors, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry Jr., testified at the hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. House GOP members contend that the paper was part of a coverup by former National Institutes of Health figures Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins….