Attention, “fact-checkers” – yet again, we were right and you were wrong. The lab leak theory – which for over half the pandemic was labeled a racist conspiracy theory, repeating which could get you kicked off of social media and drummed out of polite society – appears to be true.
But if there’s one thing the American media does well, it’s come together to deflect attention away from its collective misdeeds. (emphasis added): .
Media outlets that had once definitively debunked the lab-leak theory innovated a new journalistic genre: the un-debunking. And yet, the explicit intention behind these retrospectives was to indemnify those who’d collaborated in the pressure campaign against the theory’s proponents — or, at least, to validate their good intentions. “Were news reports diminishing or disregarding the lab-leak theory actually ‘wrong’ at the time,” asked the very same Washington Post that had savaged Senator Cotton, “or did they in fact accurately reflect the limited knowledge and expert opinion about it?” You won’t be surprised by how the paper answered its own question.
In other words, “the truth may change, but it is always what we say it is”.
And nothing changes the definition of truth more than you-know-who:
In February 2021, Facebook lifted an arbitrary ban it had imposed on posts that included “false claims about Covid-19,” including the notion that the virus was “man-made or manufactured.” The decision was attributed to the “evolving nature of the pandemic,” but the pandemic had not actually evolved at all. What had evolved was the conventional wisdom. At the same time, Facebook reportedly tightened the regime restricting users’ ability to post “content that has been rated false,” or at least has yet to be deemed true. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that the biases shared by those who “rate” relative factuality might extend beyond epidemiology. And in Facebook’s defense, ABC News absent-mindedly admitted, “the claims [sic] that the virus came from the lab was one often pushed by former President Donald Trump, though he never provided evidence.” Enough said.
Because to the – there is no better term – clique that sees itself as running America’s media and messaging, it’s not even the medium that’s the message. It’s the messenger:
In what must have been a painful concession in September 2021, science historian Naomi Oreskes admitted that the “lab-leak theory is plausible.” But even so, she qualified her mea culpa by calling “some of the people promoting the claim” — and Donald Trump, in particular — “irrational.” “We all judge messages by the messenger,” this distinguished voice in the field of science journalism let slip. Even the center-left columnist Jonathan Chait, who had been brave enough to buck the social pressures culminating in a consensus around the virtue of censorship, justified his colleagues’ prejudicial impulses after the fact, writing that the “idiotic conformity of the right’s pseudo-journalistic apparatus” had essentially incepted in the Left an equal and opposite reaction to its “propaganda.”
It’s hard to do anything but taunt big media anymore.
I’ve never worried much about whether Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan wet market or a Wuhan virology lab. Either possibility seems plausible.
It would have been nice if we could have investigated and discussed the possible origins of Covid-19 without all the political overlay. Which theory was supported by which faction made the whole discussion a political issue. If Trump says “China virus” then it couldn’t have been a lab leak. But as with everything else Covid-19 it became a matter of which political side you were own.
Why are conservatives getting excited about a report about the origins of a virus they claim is no worse than a cold, doesn’t require any particular hygiene protections and can be easily treated with bleach and ivermectin?
Answering the question of origin will only serve to assign responsibility; will it change China’s behavior? Probably not. But like so much with Covid-19 we are still learning and finding many assumptions to be wrong about the virus along the way. The real story is America’s utter failure in managing the virus by our political leaders.
^ without all the political overlay
Stick that up your a$$ sideways. Your entire contribution to this site is to overlay everything with your left wing politics.
I think it’s important that we change our own behavior. OK, we have a media and government power structure that appears to have shouted down the truth in many regards. What are we going to do about it? Who is going to lose their jobs, and what are those who remain going to do so we don’t miss this again?
This is the case with the lab origins, the efficacy of face masks, the aerosol nature of transmission (related to face masks), funding gain of function research with the world’s worst practicioner of genocide, and quite frankly why we missed the most basic thing in epidemiology; you quarantine the sick, not the healthy.
My contribution; I think we invite Ed Garcia, who while at Firestone put the kibosh on Liberia’s ebola epidemic, to take a good look and make some recommendations. I also think we do a ban on paying for scientific research at Chinese labs. There is no (expletive) excuse for doing research that could be used for bioweapons with the world’s worst practicioner of genocide.
Answering the question of origin will only serve to assign responsibility; will it change China’s behavior?
No, not directly. China has historically demonstrated how much it cares for what others think of them. Xi is more a thug and a gangster then a statesman.
But exploring the origins and getting definitive answers shapes voter opinion. And voter attitudes shape political policy toward China in the future.
If the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market, it demonstrates the failure of the Chinese government to contain a natural contagion. If the virus originated in a lab, it demonstrates at best government incompetence at preventing a containment breach. At worst, it shows malevolence. Knowing the origins of the virus is key to present and future foreign policy with regards to China and the rest of the Asian-Pacific region. No big leap why China wouldn’t be thrilled about the lab origin theory gaining traction, but I’m curious why you and your political ilk don’t seem to place value on us getting answers?
But like so much with Covid-19 we are still learning and finding many assumptions to be wrong about the virus along the way.
I’ve heard similar words from lockdown proponents, followed by calls for “amnesty” for the actions they took or encouraged. What’s often missing is an apology to those lives and livelihoods were destroyed by their policies rooted in authoritarianism. My aunt had the misfortune of being in an Illinois nursing home during 2020. She contracted COVID-19 and later died alone. My uncle was “permitted” to invite 10 people to her funeral. So my message to the suddenly-uncurious crowd is to get bent.
In the US, we had the Twitter files.
In the UK, they have the Lockdown Files. Their source is not Twitter, their source is the DM’s of Matt Hancock, the UK public health official in charge of the UK’s government’s response to the pandemic.
Hancock didn’t release the files, exactly. He gave them to his ghostwriter for Hancock’s book. Ghostwriter did her job, and noticed that she had no contractual restriction from releasing the DM’s, so she did release them, to The Telegraph.
The are very illustrative of the utter insanity of the UK’s lockdown regime. No one knew what they were doing, the politicians instituted policies that were popular, then tried to use science to justify the policies they had already implemented.
Very much like Canada, where Trudeau implemented national travel restrictions & then requested Canadian health officials for scientific justifications. When the Canadian health officials couldn’t justify Trudeau’s travel restrictions, he simply ignored them.
@jdm just for fun 🤩
“Trump on more than 20 different occasions defended the performance of the Chinese government in terms of COVID.. so if there is a problem with the Chinese government unleashing the virus.. you would have to pin that on your favorite President Donald Trump not Joe Biden” ~ Jamie Raskin
https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1630609204842201088/mediaviewer
As usual, the fix lies in asking the authorities questions that they do not want to answer.
Fauci approved the gain of function research at Wuhan Virology Institute.
What do you suppose he thought when it became clear that Wuhan was the source of the pandemic? I’m sure that there must have been some interesting conversations between Fauci and his Wuhan partners. What was said in those conversations?
Regarding blaming Trump, he was the recipient of the same information that was being fed by the CDC to the press, no? Now granted, it would have been a good thing had he been listening more to experts like Ed Garcia instead of Anthony Fauci, but you go to war with the army you’ve got, no?
This is not just a US deal. The Japanese, despite a culture of mask wearing and a strict lockdown, endured a high covid casualty rate.
The question of the origin of the disease needs to be answered because we don’t want it to happen again.
We know that in January 2020 Fauci & Collins were aware that some NIH money may have been used in gain of function research on coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of virology. We know that he & Collins discussed the possibility of a lab leak with otehr high ranking virologists in February 2020.
January 27, 2020: Dr. Fauci knew NIAID had funded EcoHealth Alliance, the WIV was a subgrantee of EcoHealth, and EcoHealth was not in compliance with its grant reporting, in particular a grant that NIAID knew had gain-of-function potential on novel bat coronaviruses.
February 1, 2020: Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19. On the conference call, Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.
https://comer.house.gov/2022/1/comer-fauci-s-emails-raise-questions-of-lab-leak-cover-up
Looking back through the SITD archives on the topic of Covid, it is astonishing how correct I have been.
Emery can’t say the same.
You didn’t need to have a degree in virology or public health to understand that putting people with Covid into long term care facilities full of the elderly was a homicidal plan, but that is what the CDC advised. That is why Wals & Cuomo did it. Unbelievable.
Tar and feathers . . .
https://twitter.com/freddiesayers/status/1630865714134253569/photo/1
In the Telegraph’s lockdown files, messages showed that English schoolchildren had to wear masks because ministers wanted to avoid a political row with Nicola Sturgeon.
It wasn’t based on science at all. Spineless and shameful.
https://twitter.com/ArchRose90/status/1630989634338521089
Silly MP, science™ trumps science.
It matters where the virus originated because it validates the skepticism we showed and invalidates the opprobrium you cheered. We were right and you were wrong.
The Deep State knew they had paid for gain-of-function research, knew the virus escaped from the very lab doing that research, and lied about it to the President and to the rest of the nation. It matters that the government which works for us, lied to us. They’re not supposed to do that and when they do, they should be punished for it.
It matters that liberals and Deep State liars suppressed research into the lethality of the virus and research into alternative treatments for the virus. It matters that liberals and Deep State liars forced the nation to endure lockdowns which did more harm than good, warehousing sick and healthy elderly together which killed more than it saved, insisted on mask and social distance policies which had no effect at all, all the while knowing they were lying to the nation to control behavior and not to save lives. We were right and they were wrong.
It matters that liberals and Deep State liars changed the definition of “vaccine” to cover a genetic experiment, rammed through approval despite known flaws, hid the evidence of adverse effects, mandated military and employee vaccination on pain of termination, and added the vaccine to the list pre-school children must have to start school. The vaccine does not stop us from getting the virus, does not stop us from spreading the virus, may reduce the severity of symptions of some strains in elderly people but not most of us, and may have serious long-term adverse effects which are only now being brought to light. We were right to be skeptical and you were wrong to punish us for declining to participate in your genetic experiment.
That’s why it matters.
UMMP, well said on sending COVID patients to nursing homes. My grandmother’s nursing home lost about 20% of its residents due to such an epidemic. (she survived at age 101 and died a few months later of natural causes–probably survived the Spanish Flu too)
You quarantine the sick, not the healthy. Not that tough of a concept, and I remember hearing that noted in frustration from a good friend of mine at Mayo pathology who does basic work regarding the immune system. I have to wonder if Walz and the like did it because the old are more likely to vote Republican.
I don’t think that the elites who managed the political response to the lockdowns are evil geniuses. I think that they are idiots. In Britain and in Canada, which are further along in auditing their governments Covid protocols, you now have clear evidence of the government causing its citizens to panic, and then reacting to the panic they had caused. They literally wanted to be seen doing something, even if that something was actively harmful. That’s why mask mandates were so popular. It was a visible sign of compliance.
All you needed to see that what they were mandating was useless was to use your common sense. Closing small retailers and funneling people into crowded big box stores. The authorities were never able to explain whether mask wearing protected you or others.
It is always a bad sign when questioning public officials is subject to criticism. This ain’t the army. It ain’t a nursery school.
We may never have the same expose of the flawed (to say the least) government response to covid in the US that we are seeing in Britain and Canada. In the US it was mostly left to governors who could ignore or accept the flawed, politically driven “advice” from the CDC.
But I think that my theory is correct. Governors paniced a large proportion of their populations, then reacted to the panic that they had created. This explains the fractured response to covid at the state level in the US. DeSantis’s coalition was not as sensitive to covid panic. Neither was Kristi Noem’s. They could ignore the paniced calls for lockdown.
But Cuomo? No. Newsom? No. Walz? No.
In MN, despite virtually action Walz took to combat covid being obviously useless, DFL’rs still think that Walz responded appropriately.
Konstantin Kisin on the revelations of Britain’s Lockdown Files:
The stuff coming out about COVID right now is simultaneously shocking and EXACTLY what everyone with a brain was saying at the time.
It’s not shocking because it reveals anything new. It’s shocking because we were attacked, mocked and gaslit for saying it at the time.
https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1631026121486524419
We know who has the brains now, don’t we?
It matters that liberals and Deep State liars suppressed research into the lethality of the virus and research into alternative treatments for the virus
Remember how happy the media was to sarcastically call out one treatment as “horse dewormer” – and how happy one of the Emerys was to jump on that bandwagon?
Even tho’ there was – at that time – substantial and growing medical documentation for its efficacy against the Kung flu. And let’s make this real clear, there was no fucking reason to not let people use alternative treatments because the recommended ones didn’t fucking work.
It was extremely important that people not be allowed, either by force or simple ridicule, to use alternative treatments which were effective and much, much cheaper than the so-called vaccines.
Now why do you think that was?
It would take a lot of sifting for me to find the link, if it even still exists, but back in April of 2020, I did see an article about Gain of Function research. It talked about how Obama shut down every GoF lab in the US, except one, and that one had connection to the Wuhan lab. In November 2019, Trump opened up the GoF labs that were shut down. The science community seemed to generally be happy with that at the time. The article implied that it would be very easy for a virus to escape into the community, but of course never came out and actually blamed the Wuhan lab. But, after reading that article, I came to my own conclusion, which ended up being the correct conclusion. After coming to that conclusion, I was also determined to avoid the virus as much as I could and given it actually was a leak, I still haven’t regretted trying to avoid it and if we actually hear about the next one they try to sic on us, I’ll try to avoid that, too.
To me the important thing about the ivermectin psyop was that there was no problem with ivermectin. It was cheap. It caused no harm. At the time there was no treatment. What terrified the elites was that a person might make their own decision and forego getting vaxxed because they thought ivermectin would keep them from getting a case of covid so bad they required hospitalization.
One of the problems with public health regimes is that it prioritizes keeping the health care system from being overwhelmed over every other concern. When is it okay to commit atrocities, such as ignoring informed consent requirements, in some effort to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed? They hung nazis for doing experiments on people w/o informed consent.
Check google trends, searches for ivermectin were virtually nil until November 2020 which just happens to be the month the vaccine was released.
When you work as a professional in any industry, you figure out pretty quickly what metrics reward you monetarily and career-wise. In academia, the metric is published papers. How do you publish a paper? You do research. It might seem to be a no-brainer that GoF research should be off limits, but look at the incentives of virology researchers.
It is always worth remembering that Nazis claimed that their cruelest policies were public health measures. Caring for people that could never be expected to be able to care for themselves took resources away from caring for sick people who could be healed and made into productive members of society. Killing the infirm was mercy to both society and the person who was killed. The government had a duty to insure that all children were born healthy and strong.
I’ve been injecting bleach since the day Trump told me to.
Feel great.
Surprised to see that Boris Johnson is so dense. Oxford grad, speaks classical Greek and Latin, etc. But he seems mystified by the idea of a likelihood being presented by a 0-1 value rather than a percentage.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqJQxsFWIAE9qC_?format=jpg&name=large
No doubt that incentives matter, UMMP, but it is sobering to contemplate the likelihood that we apparently have whole agencies where nobody is using their head enough to realize that their proposed course of action is a moral abomination, or at the very least, nobody speaks up. It at least used to be the case that you had to provide a lot of money or the threat of death to silence things this way.
Konstantin Kisin on the revelations of Britain’s Lockdown Files:
Leave it to a Russian to be a word of logic and sanity amid lies and disinformation. Not a Uke, a Russian. Sorry, could not resist. His takedown of the AGM crowd at the Oxford debates was epic.
The Lockdown files may have broken the log jam in Britain, re holding leaders responsible for forcing covid restrictions on the public they are supposed to represent. They’ve gone from “everything we did was done with due diligence and was proper” to blame shifting for the mess they made of things.
In some sense it doesn’t matter if anyone loses their job or ends up in prison. The relationship between “public health officials” and the public has been poisoned.
May it happen here.
One day, Americans who supported the lockdowns & other covid mandates will realize that public health officials” in the US have poisoned the well. There is now a social and legal infrastructure in the US that will instantly oppose any mandates that arise from a “public health emergency.”
Experimenting on people w/o their advised consent is a crime against humanity.
What I find so interesting about the right-wing’s obsession with the China lab leak story is that if it’s in fact true that China leaked a virus that killed a million Americans it only makes Trump’s incompetent response look all the worse….
Experimenting on people w/o their advised consent is a crime against humanity.
And in any law abiding, moral society, these crimes would be persecuted. And since they are not, we can only deduce that we are not a law abiding, moral society but a third world shithole without laws and morals. If A=B and B=C then A=D. That’s what passes for sanity these days.
Emery, perhaps you can tell me how Presidents, people generally not skilled in the medical arts, ought to decide how to override the decisions of those who at least theoretically are, but have decided to suppress unpopular ideas.
Let us know. For my part, I have a little bit of knowledge of aerosols from my work as an ESD engineer, remember that you’re supposed to quarantine the sick and not the healthy, and was appalled that they were sending people with active cases into the most vulnerable communities. But would I have been able to prevail against the NIH, CDC, and media? I don’t think so. Yes, my ideas were a lot better than Fauci’s, I believe, but there is the reality of politics.
Also, there is a new paper out, linked by Powerline, that seems to indicate that the distinguishing feature of COVID-19 comes from gain of function work done in Wuhan and funded, at least indirectly, by the NIH. As JPA notes, it’s getting to be about time to see if those rooms in Nuremberg are available for use.
^^ I’m not up to speed on the full conspiracy…is it that a lab leak in China released a *fake* virus to dupe the US into shutting down, wearing masks, and creating vaccines? What I find hilarious is that it took them three years to acknowledge that Covid-19 is real.
…it only makes Trump’s incompetent response look all the worse….
Reminding SiTD of these questions which the Emery collective has not yet answered, from our former commenter, Joe Doakes:
What should he have done?
When should he have done it?
By what constitutional authority could he have executed these actions?
He tried to prevent foreigners from entering our country who were traveling from where the virus was known to have originated. Result? The left frantically screamed about racism.
If you’re not going to explain how and why Trump’s response was incompetent, then your statement deserves to be ignored or better yet, mocked.
OK, now Emery, Trump was the first to urge action regarding China regarding COVID–it was the Democrats who were denying its reality in late 2019 and early 2020. Let’s not whitewash history. Also, let’s go back to something you said a couple of days back:
I’ve never worried much about whether Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan wet market or a Wuhan virology lab. Either possibility seems plausible.
Emery, if it came from a wet market, it’s a tragic accident that can be dealt with with better food safety rules. If it came from WIV, it’s an act of war. If you’re not concerned about this, you seriously have the blinders in front of your eyes.
I believe “low confidence” is the term you’re looking for…
How’s that Moderna clot shot working, rAT? Still able to jump into garbage cans on a single bound, or you need a boost?
Once injected, that shit will be floating around in the blood forever. With all the lies that have come to light, and the “sudden death” which has become a thing, only a complete moron wouldn’t be concerned.
10/10 rAT doesn’t even know what I’m referring to…he’s getting ready for yachting season. ⛴️
Emery neglects to mention the fact that “low confidence” signals that we have no access to CCP info on covid. China will not cooperate in the investigation onto covid’s origins.
Always look at the meta data, the information that describes your data set.
“Low confidence” probably also means that those making the appraisal really don’t want to rock the boat too much. For my part, I’m not as confident that it was released from WIV (intentionally or otherwise) as I am confident that the official story is nonsense. WIV is simply the best option, and per UMMP’s comment, yes, it matters that the Chinese aren’t cooperating. That probably takes me from “low confidence” to “medium high confidence” right there.
And, of course do not forget the high confidence level the FBI gave to the Steele Dossier, which we now know, beyond any doubt, was cooked up by a Hillary staffer working with a Russian exile in DC.
OK, yes, I wasn’t including the part about either “incompetence bordering on criminal” or “finger on the scales”. Point well taken.