A majority of Americans — 72 percent — believe the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, a new poll found.
According to the Ronald Raegan Institute’s 2021 National Defense Survey, the poll also discovered that 42 percent of Americans believe the pandemic resulted from a Chinese lab leak.
Since the pandemic started, there has been a difference of opinions between Democrats and Republicans regarding the outbreak. However, both parties agreed, with 86 percent of Republicans believing “it is likely that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab and 61 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of independents in agreement, the poll shows,” the national review reported.
In November, the survey was released after a declassified intelligence report discovered that the FBI culminated with “moderate confidence” that the pandemic began with a “laboratory accident” after a 90-day review instructed by President Biden earlier this year. While the report did not mention the specific agency that backed the lab-leak premise, the New York Times identified the agency as the FBI.
An outline of the 17-page report was issued in August, stating that intelligence agencies could not determine whether the coronavirus was through animal-human contact or exposed from a lab.
Several virology labs are located in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic started, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where bat coronaviruses were studied. In a documentary released in August, Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO food safety and animal diseases expert who conducted the organization’s investigation regarding the novel coronavirus, explained that Chinese researchers refused to hold the Wuhan Institute of Virology accountable for possibly exposing the virus to the public, the national review reported.
“In the beginning, they didn’t want anything about the lab [in the report] because it was impossible, so there was no need to waste time on that,” Ben Embarek said. “We insisted on including it because it was part of the whole issue about where the virus originated.”
