WaPo Fact Checker: 'How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible'

The Washington Post's fact-check desk acknowledged the lab-leak theory — 'once dismissed as a ridiculous conspiracy theory' — had gained new credence and that 'important information was available from the start but was generally ignored.' Coming from the outlet that ran the corrected 2020 Cotton framing, it marked the institutional pivot of 2021; the piece attributes the shift to new information (the Biden review, the Science letter, WIV-sickness reporting) and is presented as reporting, not apology.