A liberal New York Times columnist admitted Tuesday that those in the media and public health sphere were initially 'too dismissive' of the COVID-19 lab leak theory. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof commented on an X post by Alina Chan, a scientific advisor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She offered further commentary on her recent Times guest piece, in which she suggested COVID-19 was likely caused by a lab accident in Wuhan, China.
Kristof, responding to Chan's online comment, said he doesn't know what caused COVID-19, but believes she made a 'strong case' for the lab leak theory. 'In retrospect, many of us in the journalistic and public health worlds were too dismissive of that possibility when she and others were making the argument in 2020,' he added. Kristof's comments follow Monday's statements by Dr.
He testified that on Jan. 31, 2020, he 'was informed through phone calls with Jeremy Farrar, then director of the Wellcome Trust in the UK, and then with Kristian Anderson, a highly regarded scientist at Scripps Research Institute, that they and Eddie Holmes, a world-class evolutionary biologist from Australia, were concerned that the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 suggested that the virus could have been manipulated in a lab.
Many prominent media outlets downplayed or outright rebuked the COVID-19 lab leak theory during the early days of the pandemic. Some claimed it was a racist conspiracy theory. Over time, many outlets have slowly begun to accept the theory as a legitimate possibility. The Times did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment. Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.