I like Carl Bergstrom's take on this:

I have reason to believe that if the outgoing administration claims to have reason to believe something but refuses to provide the evidence behind it, they are lying.

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1350292056782954498

Here's a very serious, legitimate review of the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5

Unfortunately, from my experience, most people are going to believe what they want to believe, based more on political affiliation more than anything else, and the empirical facts don't register too strongly.

"The COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable. Any responsible country would have invited world health investigators to Wuhan within days of an outbreak. China instead refused offers of help – including from the United States – and punished brave Chinese doctors, scientists, and journalists who tried to alert the world to the dangers of the virus. Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one."

The above shows this is a political statement.

I happen to agree with this quote. It's also not, as the US administration likes to pretend, any sort of defense of their response to the pandemic. But at the same time, the presence of this quote makes it very clear that this is little more than a political, rather than a fact based statement intended to get to the truth.

It also aligns with what Pompeo is doing in nearly every other delicate situation in the US over the past few weeks. Setting stuff on fire making it as difficult as possible for the incoming administration to deal with.

The United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.

I'd wager several researchers in any research institution because sick in autumn 2019 and had symptoms consistent with common seasonal illness. And guess what new virus also has symptoms consistent with common seasonal illness...

This article discusses how common it is to have accidents/mistakes in these types of research labs, I found it pretty interesting but cannot vouch for it (perhaps it's already been debunked?)

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...

Great claims require great evidence

People should consider this claim with the same scrutiny as the claim that Russia was behind SolarWinds.

If anyone else is wondering when "autumn 2019" is, in an international format: it's the fourth quarter of 2019.

Following with interest. I have a basic level of trust towards Uncle Sam and a basic level of distrust towards the CCP, but we are still very far from a reasonable bar of evidence to be cleared here yet.

When I read the "teaser" of this announcement in a few UK tabloids (Daily Mail/Telegraph), the title seems bombastic ("UK diplomats brace for Pompeo's bombshell" or something like that).

Yet for me the announcement seems lukewarm. The 3 points are rehash of theories that's been surfacing since March last year, it adds nothing new.

I assume the announcement is made because Pompeo's want to stay relevant and WHO team has just arrived in China.

I’m trying to piece together how any of this makes sense.

The implication is that Covid was a biological weapon accidentally released? Wouldn’t this be a pretty idiotic biological weapon? An especially bad one for a heavily urbanized country to release? Not to mention the main outcome of this “weapon” would be hurt China’s top importers?

The State Department does not have the credibility to make statements like this right now.

The new part is the assertion that lab researchers got sick in the fall of 2019.

This is consistent with evidence of the virus in Italy in the same time period.

Due to the large number of Chinese working in Italy, there was a direct flight between Italy and Wuhan at the time.

The new Biden administration has no reason to cover this up further, due to the obvious danger that another pandemic results from a lab accident involving designer lethal virus.

Weren’t people being deplatformed for saying this back in March?

At the end of December 2019, A friend had a layover in the business lounge in Seattle on a return flight from Europe to San Francisco. At the same time, a direct flight from Wuhan came in. He spent 3 hours in the lounge waiting for the flight to SFO, ate at the buffet.

A few days later, he said he became deathly sick. Fever, coughing, and said he felt like he was going to die. His wife became very sick shortly after his illness began, and his 8 year old son as well. His symptoms did not completely clear up for him for a month. His wife was seeing one specialist after another for months with after-effects. His son got through it in 3 days.

All of this was before the first cases was officially reported by the CDC as diagnosed in Seattle on January 20th.

My friend's doctors did not know what they were dealing with at the time and did not test for COVID. After COVID became known, he looked into anti body tests. They were expensive ($700+ at that time) and he did not have one.