When former US President Donald Trump talked about the possibility that the pandemic was hatched in a lab in Wuhan, it was generally dismissed as a conspiracy theory tinged with racism. Now President Joe Biden is asking his intelligence agencies to look into it seriously.

Johns Hopkins University immunologist Gigi Gronvall says the “lab accident” hypothesis is much weaker than the “natural introduction” theory, which holds that the virus jumped from animals to humans.

Technology and healthcare futurist Jamie Metzl says China should not be afraid to open up and allow researchers to explore every possible scenario without quashing the debate.

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