“The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines,” reports the Wall Street Journal:
The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research. US officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. The updated document underscores how intelligence officials are still putting together the pieces on how Covid-19 emerge. David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist…welcomed word of the the updated findings….”Kudos to those who are willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know…about Covid origins,” said Dr. Relman, who has served on several federal scientific advisory boards. “My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency.”
This is probably not the only virus to come from a Chinese lab. An earlier “Russian flu” that killed 700,000 also likely came from a lab leak in China.
Yet, when people like evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein suggested the possibility that the virus leaked from a Chinese government lab in 2020, they were dismissed by the mainstream media as kooks. In February 2021, Facebook banned any mentions of the lab leak, following “consultations” with “the World Health Organization.”
But the possibility was always obvious to experts. In private, Anthony Fauci and NIH officials worried about the possibility of a lab leak they publicly denied as a “conspiracy theory.”
Yet, in a fact-check it later retracted, PolitiFact gave a Tucker Carlson guest a “Pants on Fire” for the “debunked conspiracy theory” that COVID came from a lab. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace similarly claimed that “Donald Trump [is] turning his intelligence community to now investigate a conspiracy theory about COVID coming from a lab in Wuhan.” And when Republican Senator Tom Cotton suggested the virus came from a lab, the Washington Post similarly implied that it was a conspiracy theory, reporting that “Sen. Cotton (R-Ark.) repeated a fringe theory suggesting ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan.” A New York Times reporter dismissed the possibility of a lab leak, saying that the lab leak theory has “racist roots.” In 2020, the Associated Press dubbed the COVID-19 lab leak theory a debunked conspiracy theory.
It was foolish for reporters to dismiss the possibility of a lab leak. As Bret Stephens, one of the few conservative-leaning writers at the New York Times, asked in 2021,
Was it smart for science reporters to accept the authority of a February 2020 letter, signed by 27 scientists….feverishly insisting on the “natural origin” of Covid? Not if those reporters had probed the ties between the letter’s lead author and the Wuhan lab…
Was it wise to suppose that the World Health Organization, which has served as a mouthpiece for Chinese regime propaganda, should be an authority on what counted as Covid “misinformation” by Facebook, which in February banned the lab-leak theory from its platform?…To its credit, Facebook reversed itself [in 2021]. News organizations are quietly correcting (or stealth editing) last year’s dismissive reports.
Yet, many in the media dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak as a “conspiracy theory” because Trump was talking about it, notes a Washington Post reporter.
Government-funded disinformation blacklists also gullibly accepted Chinese government claims that there had been no lab leak, calling the idea of a “Chinese cover-up” racist “disinformation.” The London-based Global Disinformation Index, which has received taxpayer money from the U.S. and foreign governments, supplies advertisers and advertising agencies with a list of web sites to avoid. In a July 2020 report, GDI treated the concept of a “Chinese cover-up” or COVID resulting from a “lab experiment” as “COVID-19 disinformation” that caused “real-world harms,” such as harms to “specific groups” based on “race.” It complained that “ads for big brands have been found” next to “stories that…traffic in theories that the Chinese government … should be blamed for the virus’ spread,” treating that as disinformation.
The discussion of a Chinese cover-up that GDI falsely branded as “disinformation” was common on conservative web sites, many of which were given bad ratings by GDI. Virtually all of the news outlets given bad ratings by GDI were either conservative, or pro-free-market (such as libertarian Reason Magazine, which was critical of lockdowns and treated the lab leak as a possibility. GDI gave Reason a bad rating, even though it has won journalism awards, and a journalism-standards entity gave Reason a perfect score).
GDI often treats criticism of the government or progressive policies as an “adversarial narrative” that amounts to disinformation, even when it is factually true.
GDI compiles a blacklist — a “dynamic exclusion list” — that it feeds to advertising agencies and big corporations. One of the largest ad agencies, Xandr, told companies last year that it was using GDI’s “exclusion list.” Xandr recently stopped using the blacklist after a public outcry. Former State Department official Mike Benz said that the impact of these blacklists on conservative news outlets is “devastating.”
