Via Twitchy, their deflection is that the DOE should "stay in its lane."

They of course don't mention that this isn't the DOE exactly, this is Department Z of the DOE, which is its intelligence division.

By the way, you conclude something with "low confidence" when you're actually confident of it but your superiors say you can't say that for political reason so you negotiate down to "low confidence."

As you guys know, I'm no fan of Ben Shapiro, and dislike him enough that he might represent a case of Single Individual Antisemitism for me, so it really pains me to say this, but this is a Good Joke:

So I don't want to spoil the Good Joke with explication but obviously these pontificators pontificate about politics and The Science (TM) every weeknight but now Department Z of the nation's Nuke Labs, which spends most of its time figuring out if rumbles were earthquakes or subterranean nuclear detonations, or if the presence of isotopes in the atmosphere indicates a possible nuclear explosion, needs to "stay in its lane" regarding covid-19.

Flashback: Here are some more unfunny clowns, by which I mean both late night comedians and "journalists," who previously assured us that claims that covid-19 came from a the Wuhan lab were a QAnon Fever dream based only on the mere happenstance that the lab there was called the Wuhan Covert Covid-19 Assembly and Release Lab.

ABCs @jimmykimmel: �[Trump] is also pushing intelligence agencies to find evidence for his theory that the virus was accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan. That�s his new angle to feed the wingnuts, treat the virus like it was a conspiracy.� pic.twitter.com/IA3of9sviq

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023

Stay in your lanes.

Oooh, I know which lanes I'm stayin' in, ladies!

As Nancy Sinatra said, "These lanes were made for stayin' in."

Sprechen Sie Lane-Stay?