LOCATION CLASSIFIED – The top secret government laboratory located in LOCATION REDACTED where the novel coronavirus was first concocted has confirmed that they will be calling an all-employees staff meeting to have a firm chat about this whole mess.
“We’re typically a pretty productive and secure facility but there’s no two ways about this,” said Dr. NAME REDACTED, Chief Virologist at the lab, “someone here made a serious boo-boo and we’re all going to have a sit down and rap about a little thing called ‘responsibility’.”
The facility, well known for previous successful products like Ebola and Kennel Cough, is known in the industry for having a generally fun and positive work-environment. In between development of horrific, body-destroying pathogens, researchers are able to lead relatively normal lives free from the pressures of meeting their infectivity targets. However, experts believe that this same focus on fun over containment procedures is probably the same thing that led to a real boner that caused a worldwide pandemic.
“Look everyone, I’m not even mad. It’s just so super-duper important that we figure out who accidentally punched in the 16 digit alpha-numeric code to open the gestation chamber, simultaneously turned the three keys to open the mag-locks sealing the microbe capsule, and then didn’t realize they still had the virus in their pocket when they next went shopping,” ANONYMOUS OFFICIAL stated to assembled employees in the lab’s Refreshment Nook.
“In fact, if someone just puts the now empty Contagion Vial back on my office desk before the end of day, there will be no more questions and I’ll assume everyone has learned a very valuable lesson,” he continued, “Guys, I don’t want to be a hard-ass about this but if this sort of thing keeps happening, then eventually we’re just going to cancel Cheesecake Wednesdays until everyone gets the message.”
The lab believes it has narrowed down the source of the breach, ruling out researchers currently assigned to the Hyper Polio and Turbo AIDS projects. Though some individuals pose that it might have been NAME REDACTED who released the virus, other say it was more likely to have been NAME REDACTED.
Insiders also report that senior leaders are most embarrassed by the fact that the virus was not even complete at the time of the mistaken release. The former project manager suggested that they typically pride themselves on a much higher mortality rate than a shameful 1-4%.
“Boy are we red-faced,” reported LAB EMPLOYEE #4729, “I mean, cards on the table, this was a real whoopsie.”
Though the investigation is still ongoing, most employees have politely suggested to their manager that it was probably Jeff.