| CORONAVIRUS: As Americans return to active lives with (and without) COVID-19 inoculations, including travel, office work and in-person school schedules ahead, scientists are still trying to figure out how a novel coronavirus moved into Wuhan’s population and started a pandemic. Some think the answer will never be clear because of China’s opaque policies. Others believe an answer can and should be found because knowing how a pandemic begins can help shut down the next one. The scientific community predicts it will not be long before another deadly pathogen will try to outwit the human immune system. The question of COVID-19’s origins emerged with the first reported cases of mysterious and fatal infections in China. More than a year later, the quest for answers has become a scientific whodunit, fodder for hypotheses and myths, a target for political finger-pointing, and a puzzle inside government intelligence agencies. In Congress, Republicans are demanding that Democrats launch investigations into China’s actions, including the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, seizing on recent comments from public health officials and scientists that a viral leak from the Chinese lab could still turn out to be responsible for COVID-19’s leap into humans (The Hill). Another explanation based on the scientific world’s experience with coronaviruses is that COVID-19 moved from bats to small mammals and eventually adapted to infect humans in Wuhan. It’s an assumption the National Institutes of Health’s Anthony Fauci embraced last year in the White House briefing room, but he now says more investigation is needed. “I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” he said during a recent PolitiFact event. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in a prerecorded message on Tuesday also called for continued international investigation (The Washington Post). CNN: Chinese state media this week turned against Fauci in response to his remarks, assailing him for “fanning a huge lie against China.” The continuing search for the origin of the virus has become a political irritant for conservatives because they believe the hypothesis was unfairly dismissed by the scientific world and by the news media simply because former President Trump asserted (without evidence or explanation) that he believed China’s lab was a likely culprit. The “lab leak” theory recently moved back into U.S. conversations. The Washington Post published a timeline explaining how a hypothesis drifted from conjecture to dismissal to circumstantial evidence and then to second thoughts and credibility. U.S. intelligence agencies want to know more about workers from the Wuhan lab who were sick enough to be hospitalized in the fall of 2019 (denied by the lab director). The Wall Street Journal reported again on Monday that in April 2012, six miners in the mountains of Southwest China contracted a mysterious illness after entering a mine to clear bat guano. Three of them died. Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists investigated and, after taking samples from bats in the mine, identified several new coronaviruses. Is there a connection? Shi Zhengli, a virologist known as China’s “bat woman” because of her study of coronaviruses found in bats (she’s pictured below), was seized with initial fears, recounted during an interview with Scientific American published in March 2020, that the virus could have leaked from the Wuhan lab she heads. “If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, ‘Could they have come from our lab?’” Through genomic testing, Shi said she determined that none of the samples from people infected with the mysterious Wuhan pathogen late in 2019 matched the viral sequences her team had sampled from bat caves. 
© Getty Images A year ago, The Washington Post fact-checked the lab leak theory and the search for information by intelligence agencies with help from public health and scientific experts and labeled the theory “doubtful” as an explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. “The balance of the scientific evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the new coronavirus emerged from nature — be it the Wuhan market or somewhere else,” the Post reported after lengthy explanations about what was known and still unknown. In February, The New York Times reported efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to secure China’s cooperation to investigate Wuhan and the virology lab to try to learn how the pandemic began. Experts and U.S. officials told the Times that evidence pointing to a lab accident was mainly circumstantial. Along the way, some Republicans credited Trump and blamed news outlets for “bias” in focusing on the scientific world’s uncertainty as the hunt for the origin of COVID-19 continues. The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes that the news media face hard questions. Liberal journalist Jonathan Chait, writing for New York magazine, published a piece on Monday titled “How the liberal media dismissed the lab-leak theory and smeared its supporters.” The Biden administration early this year shut down an internal federal investigation launched under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department. Sources recently told CNN the new administration backs WHO’s continued probe into COVID-19’s origins but found the former administration’s internal assessment to be faulty. > Vaccines: Moderna said on Tuesday it will seek an expansion of emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents, pointing to effectiveness in trials with teens (The Associated Press and CNBC). Pfizer’s vaccine is the only one currently approved for emergency use in adolescents. … The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday that more than 10,000 fully vaccinated Americans were nonetheless infected with COVID-19 from Jan. 1 through April 30, despite their inoculations (a result considered much better than the usual track record with annual influenza). The government said its figures for COVID-19 over four months are likely an underestimate. Two percent, or 160 vaccinated people, died, according to the CDC. About a quarter of those who were infected but vaccinated exhibited no symptoms (Medscape). The quarterly data mean the CDC will no longer investigate mild cases of COVID-19 infections in Americans (only hospitalization cases and/or deaths) (The New York Times). … The WHO is pushing for more data from Sinovac as it considers whether to approve its CoronaVac shot with the hopes of doling out more shots to poor nations (The Wall Street Journal). > U.S. vaccination record: This week, 50 percent of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated, a fact celebrated in the White House. Biden has been shooting for 70 percent as a goal by July (The Hill). ***** POLITICS: The Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday convened a grand jury expected to weigh potential criminal evidence against Trump, the Trump Organization and company executives. The move indicates that prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. Vance’s term ends next year (The Washington Post). > A federal judge on Monday dismissed a fraud case pending against former White House senior adviser Stephen Bannon, who received a pardon from Trump on Jan. 20. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, citing examples of other cases being dismissed following a presidential reprieve, granted Bannon’s application — saying in a seven-page ruling that Trump’s pardon was valid and that “dismissal of the Indictment is the proper course.” Bannon was charged with fraud last year alongside three others in what prosecutors described as a massive fundraising scam targeting the donors of a private campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border (The Washington Post). Politico: Trump is starting to put together his own Contract with America. And he’s teaming up with Newt Gingrich. > Grand Canyon politics: In an interview with The Hill’s Reid Wilson, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) raised fresh concerns about the way auditors hired by the Republican-controlled state Senate have handled more than 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election, panning the probe as “highly partisan” and a “fringe” effort. The auditors, overseen by a Florida firm with zero experience auditing elections, earlier this month left ballots cast in November in Maricopa County inside a trailer blocks from the state capital after their count took longer than expected. During that time, temperatures neared 100 degrees as auditors paused the count to allow previously scheduled high school graduation ceremonies to take place at the location. Hobbs also criticized the hyper partisan nature of the audit, describing it as a faux effort that isn’t “based in reality.” “If they were conducting a real audit, there would be willingness for bipartisan participation, but they’re not. Now that they’re blatantly recruiting partisans, there’s no confidence in this at all. It is not independent, it is completely biased, being run by people who have already said that Donald Trump won Arizona with no evidence to back that up,” Hobbs said. “These are folks with a highly partisan agenda who aren’t based in reality.” The Hill: Tech company backs out of Arizona election audit. Elsewhere in the state, Arizona Republicans are preparing to pass a massive tax overhaul that would cut tax rates and implement a flat income tax just months after voters approved a new, higher excise tax on high-income earners aimed at funding schools. Gov. Doug Ducey (R) and state lawmakers have proposed implementing a 2.5 percent flat income tax that would amount to a $1.5 billion cut in state tax revenues. A vote on a final budget in the state House and Senate are expected in the coming days (The Hill). The Hill: Environmental issues at center of New Mexico special election. Roll Call: Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) rules out a Senate bid. The Hill and The Wall Street Journal: CNN’s President Jeff Zucker said Tuesday that anchor Chris Cuomo made a “mistake” in advising his embattled brother, the New York governor, during calls with aides about how Andrew Cuomo could respond to a series of sexual harassment accusations and the resulting media coverage. | 
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