Debunking Covid origins: a pre-emptive strike
Ever since the novel coronavirus entered our head space, the collective nightmare has become even more surreal with the breathless pre-emptive debunkings of “dangerous theories” by the mainstream media. Things have gotten so bizarre that the pre-denials by those in charge were reminiscent of soccer players falling down in agony when someone breathes on them. Instead of useful information and solutions, we got a million media prat falls.
The novel coronavirus had barely reached the United States when the barrage began.
On January 29, 2020, Washington Post writer Adam Taylor debunked the “fringe” theory that the virus was linked to weapons research while confirming in the same article that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was specifically studying bat-derived coronaviruses. And it wasn’t even labeled opinion.
Instead of examining any kind of lab escape separately from motive, Taylor and others juiced it up with the idea that the kooks were saying Covid was a bioweapons program, seeing as it had spread widely on “conspiracy theory websites.”
Wrote Taylor:
“ ‘Of course, if they are doing bioweaponry, it is covert,’ [chemical weapons expert Milton] Leitenberg said in a phone call, but added it was unlikely the Chinese government would use such a facility for production or even research and development of bioweapons.”
Taylor reported that Leitenberg had emailed his colleagues privately about the possibility of the virus being a bioweapon, but said “no one had found convincing evidence to support the theory.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a covert operation probably isn’t going to be easily detected. Yet over and over during this nightmare, we have seen the snooty dismissal of evidence warranting further investigation because convincing proof can’t be readily found from an office chair halfway around the globe.
Even now, more than a year later, the epic media fail over a possible Wuhan lab leak hangs over us like an ill wind.
On last Sunday’s talk shows, panelists admitted that they summarily dismissed the lab leak theory because it came from Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.
“Some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them,” said White House correspondent Jon Karl on ABC’s The Week. He added that Trump’s repetition of “China virus” actually prevented the truth from coming out sooner.
Really, Jon? Are you sure it wasn’t those 28 scientists who called a possible “lab leak” a “conspiracy theory”?
