DRASTIC makes Newsweek in a big way:

Wuhan Lab Theory

Trump was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist and denounced as a racist for pinning the blame for COVID on China and promoting the theory that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Social media platforms and many media outlets called it "settled science" that he was incorrect.

A year later, the narrative has shifted. Trump's suspicion of the Wuhan lab is now mainstream. International anger at China's obfuscation of the origins of the pandemic boiled over. Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the pandemic, including the lab leak theory. And while that investigation was inconclusive, a group of amateur sleuths known as DRASTIC has compiled a lot of evidence that suggests the science of the lab leak theory is anything but settled.

Thanks to DRASTIC, we now know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had an extensive collection of coronaviruses gathered over many years of foraging in the bat caves, and that many of them—including the closest known relative to the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2—came from a mineshaft where three men died from a suspected SARS-like disease in 2012. We know that the WIV was actively working with these viruses, using inadequate safety protocols, in ways that could have triggered the pandemic, and that the lab and Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to conceal these activities. We know that the first cases appeared weeks before the outbreak at the Huanan wet market that was once thought to be ground zero for the pandemic.

None of this proves that the pandemic started in the Wuhan lab, of course: it's entirely possible that it did not. But the evidence assembled by DRASTIC amounts to what prosecutors call probable cause—a strong, evidence-based case for a full investigation.

These developments have forced some awkward U-turns on Trump's critics. Newspapers corrected stories, Facebook stopped censoring posts suggesting the virus could have been manmade, and PolitiFact yanked a "fact check" calling the lab-leak theory "debunked."

On May 11, 2021, Fauci was asked by Senator Rand Paul on Capitol Hill if the virus might have emanated from the Wuhan lab and Fauci answered, "The possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favor of a full investigation."

DRASTIC coverage comprised a very large portion of this article.