Most Americans now believe that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in China, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard poll that found a dramatic shift in public perception of Covid-19’s origins over the last year.
U.S. adults were almost twice as likely to say the virus was the result of a lab leak in China than human contact with an infected animal, which many scientists believe is the most likely scenario. The poll’s findings show what was once a fringe belief held mainly among some on the political right has become accepted by most Republicans, as well as most Democrats, amid heightened scrutiny of the lab leak theory. …
The absence of a large partisan gap on the issue is particularly striking, said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who designed the poll. CONTINUED
Alice Ollstein, Politico