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

A 2020 paper studying the early origins of the COVID-19 outbreak was the subject 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 states.
Those words, written by five virologists in the 2020 paper, prompted many officials to repeatedly dismiss the possibility that the pandemic started in a lab.
Two of the paper’s authors, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry Jr., testified at the hearing. House Republicans contend that the paper was part of a cover-up by former National Institutes of Health figures Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins….}