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The Sunday Read: ‘The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin’

The Sunday Read: ‘The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin’

The Daily vor 3 Jahren

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Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic
with untold millions of people dead, that question about the
origin of Covid-19 remains widely disputed and fraught, with
facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like
Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of
thought holds that the virus, known to science as SARS-CoV-2,
spread to humans from a nonhuman animal, probably in the Huanan
Seafood Wholesale Market, an emporium brimming with fish, meats
and wildlife on sale as food in Wuhan, China.

Another school argues that the virus was laboratory-engineered as
a bioweapon to infect humans and cause them harm, and was
possibly devised in a “shadow project” sponsored by the People’s
Liberation Army of China. A third school, more moderate than the
second but also implicating laboratory work, suggests that the
virus got into its first human victim by accident at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, a research complex on the eastern side of
the city, maybe after undergoing well-meaning but reckless
genetic manipulation that made it more dangerous to people.

If you feel confused by these possibilities, undecided,
suspicious of overconfident assertions — or just tired of the
whole subject of the pandemic and whatever little bug has caused
it — be assured that you aren’t the only one.

This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more
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Times, download Audm for
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