WHO investigation into Covid-19 origins offers no quick answers

The press conference given by the World Health Organization’s investigative team in Wuhan is unlikely to silence the most conspiratorial of the conspiracy theorists who took their lead from the fever dreams of the former Trump administration. Indeed, the first and very partial findings in what was always going to be a long and drawn-out process have not told us much we did not already know about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Except, that is, to confirm what has long been a broadly held scientific consensus: that the virus did not escape from a Wuhan laboratory as suggested by Donald Trump’s allies and their cheerleaders.