The lingering mystery of the origin of Covid

Where does it come from? More than three years into the pandemic and millions of untold deaths, this question about the Covid-19 coronavirus remains controversial and weighty, with facts gleaming amid a tangle of analyzes and assumptions like Christmas lights hanging from a dark, thorny tree. One school of thought argues that the virus, known to science as SARS-CoV-2, spread to humans from a non-human animal, likely at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a messy store in Wuhan, China, full of fish, meats and wild animals for sale as food. Another school argues the virus was engineered in the lab to infect and harm humans - a biological weapon - and may have been engineered as part of a "shadow project" sponsored by the People's Liberation Army of China. A third school, more moderate than the second but also involving laboratory work, suggests that the virus entered its first human victim through an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (W.I.V.), a research complex east of the city, possibly after well-intentioned but reckless genetic manipulation that made it more dangerous for people.

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If you feel confused by these possibilities, indecisive, overconfident claims — or just plain tired of the whole pandemic thing and the little bug that caused it — rest assured you're not the only one. What matters, they say, is how we deal with the disaster it caused, and the disease and death it continues to cause. These opposites are wrong. It is important. Research priorities, global pandemic preparedness, health policies, and public opinion toward science itself will be lastingly affected by the answer to the original question – if we ever get a definitive answer.

But much of the evidence that could provide this answer has been lost or is still unavailable - lost due to the inability to quickly gather the relevant information; unavailable due to intransigence and cover-up, especially by the multi-level Chinese administration.

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