The ProPublica-Vanity Fair report on Covid-19’s origins is explosive. Is it reliable? | Matthew Yglesias

Critics say the article is flawed. But that shouldn't discredit the lab leak theory

I must confess that when a ProPublica-Vanity Fair collaboration detailing new revelations from a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation pointing toward a lab leak origin of the Covid-19 pandemic crossed my social media radar, I retweeted it after a brief skim.

After all, I already believed that many in the press had unfairly dismissed the lab leak theory in 2020. Indeed, before Covid was on the radar at all I already believed that lab leaks were an underrated threat to humanity and that the style of research that seeks to uncover new dangerous viruses in the wild or engineer them in labs is risky and should be halted. So I was sufficiently excited about the new blockbuster revelations found in Toy Reid's translations of previously unknown official Chinese documents that I didn't kick the tires on the piece rigorously. Which is too bad because as Max Tani details in Semafor, other Chinese speakers have raised grave questions about the veracity of the translations in the ProPublica story which is now reportedly being reviewed with the assistance of additional independent Mandarin translators. That's embarrassing for me and the whole affair is embarrassing to lab leak proponents generally.

Matthew Yglesias is a political commentator. He runs the SlowBoring substack