News Analysis Until very recently, any suggestion of the possibility that a lab leak led to the COVID-19 pandemic would be overwhelmingly struck down by many media outlets as a “conspiracy theory.” This alternative to the natural origin hypothesis received more mainstream recognition after 18 prominent scientists, among them a member of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, published a letter in Science magazine on May 14, saying that the lab incident theory shouldn’t be ignored and that investigation into the virus’s origin should continue. The idea gained steam in mid-February after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus contradicted his own agency’s report on the origin of the virus. The report ruled that a lab origin was “extremely unlikely,” while Tedros said that further investigation was needed. WHO’s investigation was marred by a lack of transparency from Beijing and the reported China ties of some of the investigators. The month of May …