Most of us grew up seeing science as a huge net benefit to our lives. Then the COVID years saw science come to mean something very different: “Obey the diktats of every worrywart holding some kind of office, no matter how reckless, and avert your eyes from the obvious consequences.” — School lockdowns anyone? Cancer patients losing priority? Small businesses destroyed while the megabusinesses get larger, less efficient, and more authoritarian? Civil liberties not only ignored but actually derided by pretentious ignoramuses in the media?
The cherry on top? A reasonable hunch that the virus escaped from a lab in upcountry China that was dedicated to studying such viruses was derided as a racist conspiracy theory.
Reasonable hunch?: At MercatorNet:
The city at the epicentre of the pandemic is also home to China’s leading coronavirus lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The lab’s virus database was taken offline on 12 September 2019, and along with it, 22,000 coronavirus samples. The same day, security was beefed up and a tender issued to replace the lab’s air-conditioning system.
Personnel at the WIV fell sick in October 2019 with symptoms that were entirely consistent with what we came to know as Covid-19.
Despite their knowledge of the outbreak, the Chinese Community Party kept silent about it during the crucial early weeks and apparently “disappeared” a WIV researcher and citizen journalists who blew the whistle.
Cybersecurity analysts have recovered Chinese government data that had been wiped from the internet, showing a major buy-up of PCR supplies in Wuhan in late 2019 — equipment used to test for coronaviruses. – Kurt Mahlberg (March 2, 2023)
But nuthin’ to see here, right, folks? Move along there …!
Just recently — not surprisingly — some people whose job is to help prevent such crises from recurring have felt forced to try to be honest about the possibility. The news has started to leak out and – as for the “debunkers” – well, lots of us now have the receipts:
When Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posited the possibility of a lab leak in February 2020, he was roundly mocked by the media. The New York Times headlined, “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.” Scientific American headlined — in March 2022! — “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth.” Facebook actively quashed attempts to disseminate the theory; Dr. Anthony Fauci went on national television and downplayed the theory. – Ben Shapiro (March 1, 2023)
It now gets riper: From Jonathan Turley:
Yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the FBI believes that Covid-19 did originate from a lab in China. While liberal pundits have tried to dismiss the similar finding of the Department of Energy, the public attention of the FBI will make it more difficult to spin out of this major story. Yet, the most interesting moment with Wray came in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier. Wray told Baier that the agency has, “for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.” The notion that the FBI has held this belief for “quite some time now” is unnerving since it remained stoney silent as experts and commentators were censored and shunned for even uttering the theory. – (March 1, 2021)
And so … at New York Post:
“How many employees of media corporations who repeatedly mocked the COVID ‘lab leak’ theory as a ‘debunked’ lie that only insane conspiracy theorists believe (because Fauci told them to say that) will apologize now that much of the USG (US government) believes this?” tweeted Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. – Ariel Zilber (February 28, 2023)
It is absolutely astonishing that the NYT’s lead COVID reporter — who became that only because the pape fired their real reporter because he upset rich teenagers who they made him take to Peru — said it’s racist to consider the “lab leak” theory. pic.twitter.com/ZV5nknpoEv
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 28, 2023
A huge number of NBC and CNN employees repeatedly said the “lab leak” theory was “debunked.” That was a total lie. It was never debunked. That lie was concocted by Fauci and Peter Daszak, who had major, undisclosed personal conflicts in protecting the Wuhan Lab.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 28, 2023
MSNBC’s @JoyAnnReid: “Debunked bunkum” that Covid could have come from a Chinese lab pic.twitter.com/TTis0PusYy
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023
The question isn’t whether any of these people will face consequences. They probably won’t. And that isn’t even what matters.
No, a bigger fish is being fried here: The point isn’t just that the debunkers are proven wrong in principle (because there was good reason for concern) but that there was never any reason to give them much credibility in the first place – except that they claimed to represent “science.”
A few more blows like this – and they would be just the ones to administer them – and trust in science among the smarter segments of the public will not easily recover.
That will be strange new territory for all of us.