Another Covid Conspiracy Graduates to Fact
Yes, the Covid lab leak theory just refuses to die, to the chagrin of all those involved.
If there's one thing we've learned we can count on over the last three years, it's that when common sense is labelled “conspiracy”, it's usually only a matter of months before it emerges from its silken shroud to become full-fledged fact. This is not a new phenomenon, but it definitely kicked into overdrive during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Similarly, when social media is flooded with celebrities condemning “misinformation”, you’ll have a pretty good idea what you should start reading up on.
As I wrote in, On Conspiracy Theories, the meager rules for what constitutes a conspiracy theory these days is part of the reason for this. That, and the fact that those who call out conspiracy theorists can't resist the urge to show their superior intellect by demeaning someone who would dare go against the established narrative.
To be fair, many of the main so-called conspiracies in the Covid era weren't necessarily branded as such by the news media, at least not right away. Much of it simply arose from lazy social media users who felt that “conspiracy theorist” was an easy insult for someone they disagreed with. It's pretty much interchangeable with “denier” most of the time, which is another easy one for those who can't be bothered to come up with an actual argument. At any rate, these monikers have a way of sticking around.
Eventually the shrillness evolves to more scientific sounding words like, “misinformation”, and then to “disinformation”, and even “malinformation”. All of these sound much more intelligent than the aforementioned “conspiracy theorist” - especially when you're shrieking them at some shadowy, faceless internet user. Also, it takes a lot less effort to type out. I consider them all to be pretty much equal in this context.
Probably the most commonly used word was the one that the governments themselves were the most guilty of - misinformation.
As terrified as we were supposed to be by the “far-right” attempting to deceive us all with their misinformation campaigns, what went largely under the radar was the government's own misinformation (we used to call this “propaganda”).
Here's a partial rundown of the conspiracies that graduated to fact over the last few years (and yes, I'm well aware that there are many others as well). You can follow the links provided if you want to see the proof:
Masks don't really do anything, especially masks made from a scrap piece of cloth. China cashed in big on this one and so did home crafters.
If you're asymptomatic, you're not going spread the disease. There was a lot of pushback on this one because this asymptomatic group actually included most people at any given moment, and we couldn’t just have them running around carefree, now could we?
The Great Barrington Declaration, who's authors were cancelled for stating that we should focus on protecting the vulnerable (old people) and leave the rest of us alone. Detractors of this approach continuously maligned the authors as fanatics who wanted to “let the virus rip” in-order to achieve herd immunity (which ended up becoming it's own conspiracy, for some bizarre reason), instead of their actual intent, which was to take the virus more seriously and do more to protect the people who were most at risk.
School closures were unnecessary. The proponents of this concept were accused of being selfish grandma killers because obviously all kids are “super spreaders”.
Covid-19 came from a lab in China. This was a doozy. This was the conspiracy of conspiracies because it involved a foreign government and some sketchy scientists.
The “Lab-leak Theory” has been becoming clearer with each passing month, and with each and every clarification comes more doubling down from those who are convinced it’s still a made-up story.
I've been continually astounded at how quickly people are to demand more facts in this particular case, in spite of all the existing evidence, when all through the pandemic they just took every morsel of information that the government fed them as if it were gospel truth. No questions at that time, and if anyone else had any doubts about it, they were deniers and conspiracy theorists.
I found it interesting that the medical journal, The Lancet felt the urgent need to issue a statement early on condemning (um, “strongly condemning”, I mean) that Covid-19 did not have a natural origin.
The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation about its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent...and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.
Wow, an overwhelming conclusion, eh? And from multiple countries? That is a strong condemnation indeed. I found it interesting that The Lancet also felt the need to state that the “transparent sharing of data” was “being threatened by misinformation”. I wonder which transparent data sharing they were concerned about, as I can't recall any sort of transparency at all regarding this matter. Evidently they did feel threatened by something though.
When compared to the last two epidemics that occurred, it was amazing what we didn't know about the origin of this one. In the SARS epidemic it took them all of about two months to figure out that it started in the markets. Same thing wth MERS - they found out it was camels in a couple of months as well.
In the case of Covid-19, “after two years we still haven't found a single infected animal that could be the progenitor of this pandemic; that's extremely surprising."
Surprising indeed, especially given that statement was made a year ago, and we still haven't found one.
Much less surprising is finding out just last week that Covid “Patient Zero” is apparently a guy named Ben Hu. Ben who, you ask? That's what I'm trying to tell ya…
Anyway, Ben is just a guy who also happens to be a scientist from Wuhan, China. Oh yeah, and he also happens to work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Not only that, but Mr. Hu was also in charge of the WIV’s gain-of-function research on Coronaviruses and apparently contracted the disease in November of 2019. All just circumstantial and coincidental I know, but it does make one think…
In 2021, the FBI and the US Energy Department came out with their conclusion that the lab leak theory was the most likely origin. Strangely enough, this didn't gain a whole lot of traction in the mainstream press until March of this year when FBI Director, Christopher Wray stated that they had known this “for quite some time”.
If you've got another hour or so to kill today, this Vanity Fair piece is a fascinating read:
This shouldn't happen: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy
If you don't, here are a few salient points:
Research into coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab in China was funded by the US government through a US organization that actively attempted to cover up information that supported anything to do with the "lab leak theory." This of course was legitimized by the media.
Later it was found that the head of this organization actually conspired with other scientists to orchestrate a statement in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet "with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity."
You know, the "consensus"...
Every few months another book comes out about this story - and these are books written by seriously competent and successful journalists and scientists. One very easy read that will keep you on the edge of your seat is On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years by Elaine Dewar. Another one (that I'm currently about halfway through is Viral by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley. There are more, but these authors seem to have pretty solid credentials. Even so, it doesn't take long for this stuff to get out of date. Regardless, the first one by Elaine Dewar does a great job of reconstructing the back story and the major players in this dystopian drama.
I post a lot of this kind of stuff on my social media feed, and I'm relatively certain I have a good number of friends that are sick of it by now (and I've lost a few because of it), but seriously, I'm fresh out of fucks to give about that. In fact, that supply was exhausted years ago when I began to see our government's response to this pandemic. I honestly believe the pandemic that we heard about all day, every day, wasn't the real pandemic at all. The real pandemic was one of government overreach and propaganda, but that's another story. I still think it was the Crime of the Century and that's why I refuse to stop bitching about it. The only thing worse than that was the way the media enabled and colluded with them, instead of holding them to account. How will trust in government, media, and public health ever come back frome this?
I would like to offer some counter arguments/ alternate perspectives if I may.
You outlined 5 ‘conspiracies which graduated to fact’, but I wonder if you’ve considered the following…
Science is not truth, it’s evidence. When a question is put to science, at first there is no answer. Science will collect the evidence and after enough is gathered, it can be observed and will generally point towards a conclusion. That is all it can do and all it can claim to do. This is why science changes over time. If it DIDN'T change, we would know that it's BS.
COVID 19 is sometimes referred to as a ‘novel coronavirus’, and that’s because it was novel - it was new and unknown. When it first emerged, science had no answers to the urgent questions the world was demanding answers for. Almost four years later, we now have enough evidence to assert some reasonable conclusions based on the evidence science has gathered.
So, how about these conspiracies? Could it be that the appointed experts were simply doing what we demand and expect our appointed experts to do, which is to be cautious and give the best advice based on what they know at any given time?
For example, if we ask these appointed experts a question like ‘should we wear masks?’ They could shrug and say ‘we don’t know yet’, OR they could say something like ‘this virus appears to affect the respiratory system, as such, based on other respiratory viruses, there’s a good chance it’s an airborne pathogen and, as we’ve known for the last last 150 years or so, wearing a mask cuts down the likelihood of transmitting airborne pathogens, and since we still don’t know the effects or mortality of this virus, wearing masks is recommended at this stage”.
My view is this… when we’re all on the same ship and it begins taking on water and sinking, some will grab a bucket and begin to bail water, and others will simply stand back and criticize and accuse those bucket grabbers of nefarious motives. This is inevitable; it’s human nature (turbo charged by the internet). Standing back and criticizing is easy, anybody can do that. Those who grabbed buckets and got to work saved the lives of millions and millions of people. I support those who grab a bucket. They might make mistakes and they might get things wrong, but me and my keyboard have done less than nothing to help. The next pandemic might be a whole lot worse, and there will be a lot fewer people grabbing buckets after seeing what happened to the experts during the Covid crisis.