China has angrily turned down a proposal from the World Health Organization to launch a second phase of investigations into how the coronavirus pandemic began. In an ill-tempered announcement of its rejection, Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was “taken aback” that the WHO’s proposal included a plan to look into the theory that the coronavirus pandemic began with a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan. “It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan,” he said, going on to say the lab-leak theory “disregards common sense and defies science.” The theory was dismissed as a conspiracy theory in the early months of the pandemic, but gained renewed credibility after President Joe Biden ordered aides to investigate the possibility that the virus came from a lab accident.