Why would the German intelligence service cover up the origins of Covid?
Germany ‘buried’ spy report that Covid started in Wuhan lab
There is a considerable amount of nuance that is lost on most when it comes to intelligence reporting, to include the 'conclusions' and the associated probabilities. I have no idea what the German report contained but the public assessments by the US Intelligence Community of the origin of the virus are almost all 'low confidence', to include the three agencies that currently asses it was a leaked from a lab (interestingly enough, the two that ID a specific lab ID two different ones in Wuhan). 'Low confidence' means exactly what it appears to mean, there isn't a whole lot of proof for the experts to point to just what the origin was. So as of right now, and for the foreseeable future, things will likely remain as murky as they have been since almost the beginning.
I have long felt the rush to close ranks around the bat soup theory reeked of protectionism. Call me a crank, but I think Covid came out of that lab. Too many coincidences line up that aren’t easily dismissed outside of groupthink echo chambers.
I could also envision a possibility of a lab leak that was never identified as such. Something or someone got contaminated and never knew, so they made a false assumption about the meat market, and the CCP ran with it to lose as little face as possible.
Either way the dismissiveness toward dissenting thought makes me angry, considering the damage done and lives lost.
There are two distinct possibilities to the 'lab leak' theory, either an inadvertent or deliberate release. I think that experts were right to dismiss the deliberate release theory, it makes little sense even for a country like China. There was also a considerable amount of inflammatory rhetoric that accompanied that theory that was just plain ugly. That theory is the one to which I saw the most vehement pushback from experts, pushback that is often conflated with the other 'lab leak' theories.
The theory of an inadvertent release is more credible than a deliberate one, but there remains little evidence for it. Even an accidental release has two distinct possibilities, an accident involving of a deliberately altered virus or of a naturally occurring one. Experts have so far been unable to definitely point to anything indicating that it was altered by humans in any way, that of course doesn't discount that it was but there is no 'smoking gun' that it came from a lab. As for the accidental release of a naturally occurring virus, I think that would be almost impossible to pin down unless you had first-hand access to the suspect labs and scientists.
At the same time there remains little evidence where may have originated in 'the wild' either. The theory that it came from the 'wet market' has always been a pretty plausible origin, especially since many of the earliest known cases could be traced in some way to the market along with visual evidence of several wild animals that are known disease carriers were in close proximity to each other. That said, a public market is also a pretty natural place for disease to spread no matter the origin but the fact it had so many risk factors that line up with the spread of a new virus makes it more plausible to most experts than the other origin theories thus far.
I think people impart more significance to the origin than is really warranted, and it seems to be tied to the idea that "the left says I'm a racist for suggesting that China is responsible." I think the more relevant topic is whether the US or others were involved in gain of function research on COVID, and whether that entire premise isn't just an exercise in bad ORM.
I think people that don't even identify with the right, do question why the answer was "the origin is settled, the WHO said so in their Chinese approved report".
While trying to find the origin is important I also think it is a lot less significant than examining what China did in response to the virus and its spread. It is because of the Chinese government we will likely not figure out the origin with more confidence, and their coverup early on hindered the worldwide response to the spread of the virus as well. I think most of the focus should be on that aspect, which I think most folks outside China can agree was severely lacking and likely cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
