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Column: A CIA 'assessment' revives the fact-free claim that COVID started in a Chinese lab
Benjamin Franklin was wrong, or at least premature, when he wrote in 1789 that nothing is certain in this world “except death and taxes.”
Were he writing today, he would have to add to this sacred duo another entry — that it’s also certain that the theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab will persist, despite the absence of any evidence to support it.
As I’ve written before, this fact-free claim periodically receives a shot of life-extending plasma from credulous news organizations, congressional Republicans, and former and current Trump acolytes.
Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.
—
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)
On Saturday, the lab-leak claim got another dose of plasma. This was the Central Intelligence Agency’s issuance of its purported “assessment” that a lab leak was more likely than zoonosis as the pandemic’s origin.
The agency issued its statement at the behest of John Ratcliffe, who was confirmed Friday as Donald Trump’s choice for director of the CIA.
The CIA’s assessment rocketed around the news and political worlds, spurring more heavy breathing from partisans who have long deployed the claim as part of a geopolitical contest with China.
The headline takeaway in many news articles was that the “CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory on Origins of Covid-19” (Wall Street Journal and New York Times).
Some also gave various degrees of prominence to the CIA’s admission that it made its judgment with “low confidence.” My colleagues at The Times placed that caveat in the headline of our publication of an Associated Press dispatch on the CIA statement.
Partisan commentary on the CIA statement ignored that caveat.
“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a veteran advocate of the lab-leak theory, told Politico.
In an interview with the conservative news site Breitbart on Friday, the day of his confirmation, Ratcliffe made no secret of his intention to pursue the issue as an issue for national security.
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts,” he said, “and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID.”
Among the political warriors who seized promptly on the CIA statement was Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has emerged as a leading critic of the left. In an article posted Monday on his personal web page, Turley originally wrote that the CIA statement “details how it views the lab theory as the most likely explanation for the virus.”
Therefore, it’s important to take a close look at what the CIA said, how it might have differed from its previous judgments, and just what it means to issue a conclusion with “low confidence.”
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” read the statement by a CIA spokesman. The statement added that the agency would keep evaluating “any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”
To begin with, there were no “details” in the CIA statement explaining the basis for its conclusion. The CIA didn’t offer any evidence or explain what prompted its assessment, or reassessment.
It’s unclear even how new its assessment is. In June 2023, at then-President Biden’s directive, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report summarizing the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community. The office oversees the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
The report stated that five intelligence agencies assessed that “natural exposure to an infected animal” caused the pandemic; two — the FBI and the Department of Energy — came down on the lab-leak side; and the CIA and another unnamed agency were “unable to determine the precise origin” of the pandemic. It didn’t give assessments by other agencies.
The ODNI report left lab-leak proponents crestfallen. They had been certain that it would validate their position; instead, it specifically refuted several core claims made by the lab-leak camp.
Then there’s the “low confidence” qualification. This is not a casual judgment about information, but a term of art with a specific meaning in the intelligence community.
According to a definition published in 2017 by ODNI, it “generally means that the information’s credibility and/or plausibility is uncertain, that the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytical inferences, or that reliability of the sources is questionable.”
To put it in plain language, the CIA “assessment” is based, at best, on unreliable sources and that it’s too uncertain and unverified to “make solid analytical inferences.” That hasn’t stopped people like Ratcliffe and Cotton from aggressively coming to their own conclusions and making threats against another country.
Turley, for his part, added a paragraph to his original post acknowledging that the CIA considered the evidence for a lab leak “fragmented and fluid.” He didn’t tell me when he made the change, but the link to the definition of “low confidence” he embedded in his post was one that I had posted online and referred him to.
Turley told me by email that his goal had not been to argue that “one theory is clearly correct,” but that “there was a legitimate debate on the issue that was being suppressed by the attacks and the coverage…. The issue is not which theory is correct but the fact that either could be true and, as shown by other reports, the lab theory is actually favored by some agencies and offices today.”
Is that so, however?
Let’s be clear about something: No scientifically valid evidence has ever been produced to support the theory that the COVID virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory. All that exists is conjecture, innuendo and speculation, most of it based on the circumstance that the first COVID cases were identified at a wildlife market in Wuhan, miles from a government virology lab.
But no evidence has ever emerged of an outbreak in that lab or its vicinity, while copious epidemiological evidence exists for its outbreak at the Huanan market, where people bought and sold critters known to be susceptible to COVID.
If there were a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal setting forth evidence for a lab leak, it would be prominently cited in every news article about the origins debate. There doesn’t appear to be any.
John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College who assiduously tracks technical papers about COVID for a weekly digest, told me he “does not know of any such papers — only speculative articles.”
The Chinese government has been accused, mostly by the lab-leak camp, of suppressing evidence of the role of the Wuhan lab out of embarrassment or fear of international repercussions. But that’s highly misleading. The truth is that China is no happier about evidence that the pandemic originated in one of its wildlife markets. It has also been criticized by the World Health Organization for a lack of transparency.
The Chinese government has long promised to regulate the wildlife trade within its borders, but its efforts have been spotty, with many markets continuing to operate. After the initial outbreak of COVID in Wuhan, the government shut down the Wuhan market, where 30 species of wild animals were part of the inventory and some 10,000 visitors a day strolled its alleyways.
The shutdown complicated efforts to pinpoint the outbreak’s origin, but research conducted before the shutdown documented the presence of COVID-infected animals on the premises.
The uncritical retailing of the CIA assessment underscores the perils of scientific misinformation and disinformation for public health. The Trump administration’s evidence-free focus on the Chinese laboratories ranks as anti-science propaganda.
As 41 biologists, immunologists, virologists and physicians observed in August in the Journal of Virology, the unfounded lab-leak hypothesis “stokes the flames of an anti-science, conspiracy-driven agenda, which targets science and scientists even beyond those investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID.
“The inevitable outcome is an undermining of the broader missions of science and public health and the misdirecting of resources and effort,” they wrote. “The consequence is to leave the world more vulnerable to future pandemics, as well as current infectious disease threats.”
Their warning could not have been more stark.
The luxury shopping center in Pacific Palisades will reopen next month after more than $100 million in renovations forced by the January 2025 wildfire that devastated the Los Angeles neighborhood.
Palisades Village will reopen Aug. 15, owner Rick Caruso announced Wednesday. The outdoor center survived the blaze that destroyed homes and other businesses but needed refurbishment to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread.
Crews are putting finishing touches on mall buildings after tearing them down to the studs, treating the wood and rebuilding the walls, Caruso said.
“Everybody’s working, and stores are moving their products in,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling that people have really locked arms and are working together.”
An electrician installs lighting for a restaurant at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pacific Palisades resident Allison Polhill, who is rebuilding the home of 30 years that her family lost in the blaze, said she is “thrilled” at the prospect of returning to the mall she used to frequent. Its comeback is a boost for the community, she said.
“Every single step that we make to reopen our commercial corridors is going to bring more people back into the Palisades,” said Polhill, who expects to move back into her home at the end of August.
A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction.
The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon, which may be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood when it opens.
Caruso’s company was able to fill the mall with tenants despite the long shutdown.
Palisades Village is 99% leased, with the majority of tenants returning, said Jackie Levy, chief financial and revenue officer. Nearly one-third of the shops and restaurants are new to the property.
A firefighter carries a hose back to his rig while walking through a destroyed home from the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street to the inferno.
Other neighborhood shops destroyed in the fire that are reopening at the mall include K Bakery and Loomey’s Toys, which caters to children up to age 12 and used to be across the street from Palisades Elementary Charter School.
“It’s been a journey and I’m excited because I wasn’t sure that there was going to be a place to come back to,” said toy store owner Amanda Rastegar. “Hopefully we can bring some of that magic back.”
Rastegar’s home in the Palisades survived but was damaged by the fire. The family returned about eight weeks ago. Her last memory of the fire was a burning supermarket.
“I just couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening,” she said. “By the time I left, Gelson’s was on fire.”
Among the returning tenants is Angelini Ristorante & Bar. Well-known Los Angeles chef Gino Angelini said he will be in the kitchen next month for a return of the Italian restaurant.
“We won’t do a big celebrity open,” he said. “We want to have a very soft opening and see our customers come back.”
Construction takes place at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
An elaborate celebration would not feel “correct for me,” Angelini said, because the devastation has been “very sad” for so many.
Other new tenants include local chef Nancy Silverton, who has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto. Women’s activewear retailer LESET will open its first West Coast location.
Caruso said he is optimistic that customers will return to the center, even though many Pacific Palisades residents are still dispersed. One tracking system estimated that about 30% of the Village’s customer base was impacted by the fire, he said.
“That means 70% did not get impacted, so there’s a lot of customers still left out there,” Caruso said. Historically, the center drew customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, as well as Malibu, Brentwood and Santa Monica.
He also hopes many will be inspired to visit the revived mall.
“I believe in the goodness of people and I believe that people are going to want to support the Palisades,” he said. “They’re going to want to be there and support the businesses that have had the courage and the heart to reopen.”
Walmart is rapidly expanding its network of electric vehicle chargers designed for customers to use while they shop.
The network could help fill gaps in EV infrastructure in states with greater need for chargers. Walmart, which has more than 5,000 locations in the U.S. and hundreds in California, says more than 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.
The chargers also offer an incentive for customers to choose Walmart — Walmart Plus members will receive a 10% discount off an average price of $0.46 per kilowatt-hour of energy at the company’s chargers.
Walmart chargers are already available at more than 75 locations in 17 states, with Texas boasting the most charging stations, followed by Florida and Arizona.
Matthew Nelson, Walmart’s director of energy policy, said last week on LinkedIn that the network will soon reach 29 states, including California.
“We are delivering on the promise of affordable, reliable and convenient charging,” Nelson said in his post.
According to Walmart’s website, six charging stations are coming to California soon, though the company did not offer a specific timeline.
The chargers will be installed at stores in Antelope, Brea, Fresno, Stockton, Suisun City and Vallejo.
Most charging sites in California will include eight to 16 fast-charging stalls, said Walmart spokesperson Kelsey Bohl.
The company first announced plans in April 2023 to install its own EV chargers at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, with a goal of installing thousands of chargers by 2030. Partnering with ABB E-Mobility and Alpitronic, it added 25 new charging sites this past May and six more in June.
“Walmart is building a leading retail-integrated EV fast-charging network, focused on delivering an affordable, reliable and convenient charging experience where customers already shop,” Bohl said in an emailed statement. “Customers can charge while they shop, access stations through the Walmart app they already use, and benefit from affordable pricing.”
The charging stations already available include 612 individual charging stalls using 400-kilowatt chargers. Each stall has a dual charging cord with both Combined Charging System and North American Charging Standard connectors. The standard connectors, designed by Tesla, are smaller and lighter than the combined systems.
The primary way to pay for the chargers is through the Walmart app, but the company is also experimenting with built-in credit card readers to allow those without the app to use the stations.
Customers can check charger availability on the Walmart app. The company said the chargers will be available 24 hours a day.
Robotaxis could be turning into robocops.
A self-driving Waymo reported two teens to San Mateo, Calif., police on Monday after they were found drinking alcohol and shooting toy guns in the back of the vehicle.
According to a social media post from the San Mateo Police Department, officers detained two 15-year-olds after the Waymo they were riding in contacted the department and stopped in a parking lot until law enforcement arrived.
“Parents do you know where your teens are?” the San Mateo Police Department wrote on Facebook following the incident. “Waymo does!”
Officers removed both teens from the vehicle and determined they were using toy guns to shoot Orbeez out the windows. Orbeez are small, water-absorbing beads sold at toy stores.
“Toy guns, water guns, and BB guns all pose real dangers, especially to an untrained eye,” the Police Department said. “The simple handling of them can cause fear in [passersby].” “
A video posted on Facebook shows at least five officers and a police dog responding to the scene and approaching the Waymo with their weapons raised.
Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Waymo vehicles have internal cameras and microphones that may be used in an emergency or to “promote safety and security,” according to Waymo’s online support page.
The cameras are also used to ensure the vehicles are clean and to help find lost items, according to the support page.
The company said it does not use facial recognition or other biometric identification technologies to identify individuals.
“In more urgent circumstances, support may access live video during a trip,” the Waymo page said.
The San Mateo Police Department’s Facebook post has garnered nearly 60 comments, with one user accusing Waymo of “snitching.”
“At least they got a designated driver?!” one user commented.
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