The New Neo

Who is this “we” who were deceived?

And who was doing the deceiving?

Here’s the article, which doesn’t exactly answer those questions but seems to be saying that the “we” who were deceived included the well-meaning media and everyone else except a few science-hating right wingers, and that those doing the deceiving were some scientists:

Take the case of EcoHealth, that nonprofit organization that many of the scientists leaped to defend. When Wuhan experienced an outbreak of a novel coronavirus related to ones found in bats and researchers soon noticed the pathogen had the same rare genetic feature that the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan researchers had proposed inserting into bat coronaviruses, you would think EcoHealth would sound the alarm far and wide. It did not. Were it not for public records requests, leaks and subpoenas, the world might never have learned about the troubling similarities between what could easily have been going on inside the lab and what was spreading through the city.

a March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists and declared that no “laboratory-based scenario” for the pandemic virus was plausible. But we later learned through congressional subpoenas of their Slack conversations that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately many of its authors considered the scenario to be not just plausible but likely. One of the authors of that paper, the evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, wrote in the Slack messages, “The lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”

Spooked, the authors reached out for advice to Jeremy Farrar, now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization. In his book, Farrar reveals he acquired a burner phone and arranged meetings for them with high-ranking officials, including Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. Documents obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know show that the scientists ultimately decided to move ahead with a paper on the topic.

Operating behind the scenes, Farrar reviewed their draft and suggested to the authors that they rule out the lab leak even more directly. They complied.

The author of the Times article, Zeynep Tufekci, seems to have been motivated to write it in order to warn that scientists are engaged in something similar to what started it all in Wuhan, and under conditions of insufficient safety precautions as well:

Researchers, many of whom work or have worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (yes, the same institution), describe taking samples of viruses found in bats (yes, the same animal) and experimenting to see if they could infect human cells and pose a pandemic risk.

Here’s another statement in the piece:

And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax.

I became curious to see what I had written early on about the lab leak theory, and I found this from April 15, 2020. That was actually extremely early, and here’s a quote from Jonathan Turley in that post of mine :

The Washington Post reported that embassy officials in January 2018 alerted U.S. officials of serious problems in the lab which was conducting risky research on bats, the very source of COVID-19.

So, what is this bit about how “the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax”? That already was known two years prior to COVID, and known by the WaPo by April of 2020. And yet the lab leak theory continued to be written about as though it was the province of far-right lunatics who hated science and scientists and Chinese people. I don’t think the MSM was duped; I think it was cooperative.

I’m not the least bit anti-science, but as early as April 2020 I knew that the lab leak theory was highly plausible, and so did many people such as Jonathan Turley. I’m now going to reproduce that post I wrote in April of 2020 in its entirety; everything from here on is from that post. It shows how easy it was to not be deceived, even way back then. So journalists have no excuse:

You may have noticed that I haven’t written much if at all about COVID-19’s origins, despite having written a ton about the disease. Was it from a wet market? Was it from a lab? My opinion was that it was 50/50 and that we just didn’t know, so I didn’t want to waste much verbiage on it.

But now I’m leaning towards the lab theory.

Here’s Jonathan Turley on the subject:

When the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, China, many people immediately raised the concern that it might have been the result of a lab release from a controversial Chinese the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab was working on coronavirus and had raised concerns over its containment protocols. Then there was the fact that China hid the outbreak, arrested top doctors, and buried research on its origins. However, a narrative quickly emerged in countering President Donald Trump’s references to the “China virus.” People, including members of Congress, who referred to the lab were ridiculed on CNN and other outlets as conspiracy theorists like Politifact declared the theory to be utterly baseless. For some of us, the overwhelming media narrative seemed odd and artificial. It would seem obvious that a lab working on viruses in this area would be an obvious possible source. Now, after weeks of chastising those who mentioned the lab theory, another cache of documents and information shows that there are ample reasons to be suspicious and that concerns were raised two years ago within the State Department.

The Washington Post reported that embassy officials in January 2018 alerted U.S. officials of serious problems in the lab which was conducting risky research on bats, the very source of COVIT-19. The United Kingdom has issued a statement that they are seriously considering the lab as a possible source.

Apparently the lab was already flagged as being lax about safety, raising obvious concerns. And if you think about it, China has been lax about safety regarding its manufacture of drugs, as the recurrent recalls of blood pressure medications for contaminants indicate. Please note that in that article, datelined September 2019, it quotes Trump as “calling on US industries to manufacture here at home, instead of outsourcing to China.”

Prescient, that.

More from Turley:

The point is not that this proves that the virus originated in the lab. Rather, my interest is the overwhelming media narrative that emerged to deny that this was a credible potential source. That narrative emerged around the time that the media was hammering Trump for his use of “China virus” and “Wuhan virus.” That criticism was enhanced by the argument that the virus developed naturally. That could still be the case but it never seemed rational to me to discount the lab theory.

What is most amazing is that, if the Chinese allowed this virus to escape and then arrested doctors raising the alarm over the spread, it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime: a world pandemic caused by human error. Millions have been infected and thousands have died. If the cause was negligence by a totalitarian nation (that ignored warnings and punished doctors), this would be a story of the century. Suddenly magazines care saying that they are now thinking about the “unthinkable.” Yet, it was never truly unthinkable was it?

It was only “unthinkable” when it served their purposes to brand it that, as part of their “Trump and the right are racist xenophobes and crazy people” narrative. The evidence must be getting very strong for them to begin to abandon that stance now.

I agree with Turley that “it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime” if the escaped-from-lab theory turns out to be true. And I don’t mean “great” as in “wonderful” – I mean “great” as in “enormous, compelling, transformative.” I use the latter word because I believe this entire COVID-19 episode is going to change the standing of China in the world, and already has begun to do so. No wonder China was so keen to cover it up from the start.