NC Sen. Richard Burr’s report on COVID origins is about politics — not science

A popular COVID conspiracy just got a major boost from North Carolina’s senior senator.

Richard Burr, who typically keeps a relatively low profile, seems to be playing games on his way out of office. Burr, the top Republican on the Senate health committee, abruptly released a report last week suggesting that the coronavirus pandemic was most likely caused by a “research-related incident” in China.

The debate over the pandemic’s origins is a politically fraught one, even if the scientific community largely agrees that the virus emerged from animals. Unfortunately, China’s lack of cooperation with any investigation has made it difficult to reach a definitive conclusion, which has only led to further conspiracies. The so-called “lab leak” theory has existed for quite some time, despite a lack of evidence to confirm it. It’s become increasingly popular among Donald Trump and other Republican politicians — many of whom have directly accused Democrats and U.S. scientists of covering it up.

What’s most unclear, though, is why Burr chose to release this report now, just before the midterms. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (of which Burr is the ranking member) has been conducting a bipartisan inquiry into the origin of the virus; the hope was that such bipartisanship would help temper what has become a fiercely politicized matter.

This interim report, however, was prepared by the committee’s Republican staffers and bears only Burr’s signature. The committee’s Democratic chairwoman said its work is still ongoing.

“My ultimate goal with this report is to provide a clearer picture of what we know, so far, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 so that we can continue to work together to be better prepared to respond to future public health threats,” Burr said in a statement. “I believe this interim report does just that.”

Still, the question remains: why rush to publish a one-sided interim report in the meantime, especially one that does almost nothing to further our understanding of the virus and its origin?

Burr’s report offers little new evidence to support its conclusion that COVID came from a Chinese lab. Instead, it provides a summary of publicly available, open-source information about COVID’s origins, arguing that “critical corroborating evidence” to support the theory of a natural spillover of the virus from animals to humans is “missing.” Scientists who contributed to prominent studies linking the coronavirus to a live animal market in Wuhan were not among the experts interviewed for this report, according to The New York Times.

In the report, Burr also raises questions about China’s development of a COVID vaccine, implying that perhaps the reason China was able to develop a vaccine so quickly was because it had access to the genomic sequence ahead of time.

The report, unsurprisingly, was poorly received by much of the scientific community, with one prominent expert on Twitter calling it “a total load of antiscience crap.” Another virologist told The New York Times the report was “an embarrassingly bad use of taxpayer money and resources.” Researchers were quick to point out that a number of peer-reviewed studies have reached the conclusion that COVID reached humans directly from an animal host, and even scientists who remain open-minded about the lab leak theory were critical of the lack of new evidence offered in Burr’s report.

It’s worth noting that this report is coming from the same senator who, when presented with ominous information about the dangers of COVID in early 2020, chose to turn a profit through insider trading rather than serve the public.

When you mix science and politics together, you do, in fact, get politics. Instead of quieting a noxious debate, Burr’s report has only fueled the fire of disinformation that has been blazing since the pandemic began. It also gives the COVID conspiracy theorists a new bone to chew on. That’s not helpful, and it’s irresponsible of Burr to use his official platform as a senator to draw hasty conclusions.

This story was originally published November 3, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "NC Sen. Richard Burr’s report on COVID origins is about politics — not science."