Plagues, poisons and magical thinking – how COVID lab leak hysteria could be straight from the Middle Ages
- Written by Simone Celine Marshall, Professor of Medieval Literature, University of Otago

The COVID “lab leak” story clearly isn’t going away soon. The theory that the pandemic began with an accidental release of the virus from a lab in Wuhan recurs like clockwork – most recently in a report from Senate Republicans in the US this week.
Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy and FBI endorsed...