The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2023(+) caused an estimated 17-30 million deaths, yet the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains officially undetermined. The Lancet commission Sachs et al. (2022) highlighted the need for accountability but is not listened to by WHO SAGO (2025). Sachs mentions the collaboration by US labs with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and deduces a likely lab origin in the USA and leak at WIV. Possibly a sample that was intended for testing by the WIV BSL4 lab was sent erroneously to the WIV BSL2 lab. Haslam (2024) infers that it was a bat vaccine (perhaps mutating towards humans). Some suggest rogue biowarfare by unsupervised agents in the first Trump administration during his clash with China. Colignatus (2025) about the current world crisis shows the need to strengthen the United Nations given the geopolitical risk of disorder and warring regional hegemons. President Trump’s rhetoric about “the China virus” is toxic to society. (Economic) Scientists can help defuse the virus controversy. This requires much more transparancy than exists now. In early February 2020, a small group of leading virologists—convened by Jeremy Farrar with Francis Collins (NIH) and Anthony Fauci (NIAID)—discussed whether the virus could have been engineered. Releases under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that some researchers initially considered a laboratory origin likely. Within days, however, drafts were reframed to emphasize a zoonotic pathway. “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” (Nature Medicine, March 2020), henceforth POS2, is a Correspondence (point of view) and no full Article. It concluded categorically that the virus “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” This conclusion shaped the global narrative, though its generality is problematic. SAGO (2025) indeed rejects that generality but still suffers from the earlier narrative by not studying US labs. Reviewed is here how POS2 was produced, mapping the network of actors (including Andersen, Holmes, Rambaut, Drosten, Fouchier and Koopmans) and listing their institutional ties and narratives. The authors focused on the WIV without considering potential involvement of US laboratories, and they looked at genomic structure rather than examining laboratory practices. They held ex cathedra that a lab would create perfection and nature not. Scientific integrity requires a correction or retraction of POS2 and a revamped re-examination of the origin of the virus, see Sachs et al. (2022) and Haslam (2024).