Yesterday the New York Times conceded the viability, or at least the legitimacy, of the “lab leak theory” of the covid’s origins.
That’s the theory that posits that the novel coronavirus may have “leaked” out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the Chinese city of Wuhan where the virus first appeared. The lab was known to be experimenting with the coronavirus, so the theory that the pandemic may have been the result of the virus having somehow escaped the lab was never irrational.
And yet for years the establishment cracked down brutally on anyone who had the temerity to say, “Hey, look, there’s a lot of people getting sick with coronavirus in a city where there’s a lab that experiments with coronavirus, maybe there’s a connection?”
It was dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory by the smart set, many of whose good and decent members sensed racist or xenophobic undertones in the idea that a virology lab could have anything to do with a virus breaking out in its own backyard.
It was sort of stunning.
The same newspaper that yesterday proclaimed “Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says” published an article by Alexandra Stevenson back on February 17, 2020, entitled “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins” (my emphases):
The rumor appeared shortly after the new coronavirus struck China and spread almost as quickly: that the outbreak now afflicting people around the world had been manufactured by the Chinese government.
The conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists. But it has gained an audience with the help of well-connected critics of the Chinese government such as Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. And on Sunday, it got its biggest public boost yet.
Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.
“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said, “but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”
From today’s perspective, Senator Cotton appears to have been on very solid ground; his comments were just as reasonable when he made them three years ago.
It was the Times that was unreasonable—along with everyone else insisting that it was conspiratorial or “fringe” even to wonder if perhaps the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan, China, might have had something to do with the Wuhan Virological Institute’s experiments with novel coronaviruses in that city.
Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart had some fun with the foolishness of it all during an interview with late-night host Stephen Colbert. As reported by Forbes:
Stewart—who is an executive producer of the late-night talk show—appeared as a guest and started the interview segment by stating that people owed a great debt of gratitude to science for helping ease the suffering of the pandemic, “which was more than likely caused by science.”
Colbert then asked Stewart if he perhaps believed the Covid-19 “lab leak” theory, to which Stewart immediately replied that “it was a little too weird” that the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China where there is a “novel respiratory coronavirus lab.”
While Colbert suggested that the lab leak may one (sic) of the possible origins of the pandemic and should be investigated, Stewart joked about when scientists who worked at the lab are asked about the virus’ origin they respond with “pangolin kissed a turtle” or “maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili.”
Colbert tried to poke fun at Stewart by asking him how long he had worked for former Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who has strongly pushed the Wuhan lab leak theory, but Stewart pushed back, claiming that this was “not a conspiracy” but a “problem with science” which he believes tends to go too far sometimes.
At the end of the segment, Stewart appeared to couch his comments a little bit by speaking directly to the camera and stating: “I have been alone so long. And when I realized that the laboratory was having the same name—first name and last name—of the evil that had been plaguing us, I thought to myself, that’s f—d up.” But in a later segment, he continued to push the idea that scientists don’t know when to quit—pointing to the creation of the atomic bomb as an example—and claimed that they may one day be responsible for the end of humanity.
Stewart also “pushed his idea” with an analogy: “There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh, I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the . . . chocolate factory!”
A lot of us thought, “Well, there you go, if a champion of the left like Jon Stewart can make fun of the absurdity of insisting the Wuhan Virus couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then maybe the walls are finally crumbling down.”
Instead, the establishment doubled down: the Washington Post, for example, lamented that “Jon Stewart goes all-in on the lab leak theory.”
And here we are just a little further down the road and suddenly the unreasonable people turn around say, “Akshually, we’re still not sure where the virus came from, but you know what? It could have come from a lab leak!”
Which is the same “fringe conspiracy” they attacked Senator Cotton for articulating in 2020.
One would have to be extremely unobservant to be surprised by this turnaround: it’s become the standard operating procedure for the establishment forces represented here by the Times.
They berated people who questioned masking until they had to concede there wasn’t much evidence to support the kind of masking being advocated.
They berated people who questioned lockdowns until they had to concede that lockdowns might have caused at least as much harm as good.
They berated people who expressed skepticism about the vaccination’s ability to stop the spread of the virus until they had to concede that the vaccination didn’t confer immunity or prevent infection.
They berated people who questioned the wisdom of Europe making itself dependent on Russian gas until they had to concede it had been a fatal error.
They berated people who questioned the deterrent value of sanctions until sanctions failed to deter anything and they had to concede that sanctions had never been intended to deter anything.
They berated people who wondered aloud whether pumping trillions of dollars into the economy might lead to inflation, until inflation appeared—then they denied inflation was occurring, until it proved real and they dismissed it as transitory, until it persisted and they had to acknowledged that yeah, inflation was here and it was for real—but it was all Trump’s fault, so there.
They berated people who supported Georgia’s voting law reforms until it turned out those laws actually increased voter participation in Georgia elections. (Then they decided Georgia would be the perfect place to hold the Democratic convention in 2024!)
They berated people who suggested that the horrific death of George Floyd might not have had anything to do with racism until a lengthy and highly publicized trial revealed that Floyd’s death had nothing to do with racism, at which point they conceded. . . nothing.
And keep in mind, “berate” is a gentle euphemism for the kind of language and behavior they inflicted on anyone who disagreed with them.
Also keep in mind that’s only a partial list, and that it’s all a matter of public record.
Think of all the many things for which they’re berating people right now and ask yourself: how long until these people turn around and concede, “Gosh, you guys, know what? Biological men can’t actually get pregnant!”
Or “Say, it turns out that double mastectomies and chemical castration for children probably do more harm than good!”
Or, “Welp, we still have no idea who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, so it can’t logically be ruled out that America did it.”
The pattern is unmistakable: they assert that anyone arguing against them is doing so in bad faith and from malicious motives, then when reality catches up to them they brush it all off: hm, turns out this thing isn’t what we thought it was! Oh wellz.
Here’s Five-Thirty-Eight’s Nate Silver on yesterday’s news :
Welp. The behavior of a certain cadre of scientists who used every trick in the book to suppress discussion of this issue is something I'll never forget. A huge disservice to science and public health. They should be profoundly embarrassed.
Glenn Reynolds embedded Silver’s tweet on his Instapundit site with the following heading:
“PROFOUNDLY EMBARRASSED?” YOU SPELLED “FACING JAIL TIME AND PERSONAL RUIN” WRONG
Meanwhile, of course, there are still holdouts. Not everyone is willing to allow that an obvious possibility is and always has been an obvious possibility. George Takei’s response to Nate Silver is typical:
I expected you to read this material and conclusion more carefully rather than jump to the conclusion you prefer. That leaves me questioning your judgment in other areas.
As already noted, however, this is nothing new. Our establishment is consistently lying to us and insisting that any pushback against their lies is conspiratorial fringe nonsense, usually motivated by some form of racism, misogyny, or phobia.
What’s worse, they’re not content to insult their detractors: they’re constantly seeking to outlaw any contradiction. They want oppositional ideas censored from the public square. They don’t want debate, they want submission.
“Disinformation is a menace to the public health!” they shriek.
And then a little time goes by and they’re all, “Well, shucks, we may have been wrong, but we meant well.”
The hell they did.
They didn’t mean well. They had a theory of their own and knew they were right because they’re the good guys and are therefore always right and therefore entitled to shut down debate because anyone who disagrees with all the good right people is definitionally wrong and evil and That’s Just The Way It Is, me buckos.
That’s not “meaning well.” That’s arrogance. And when that kind of arrogance gets hitched up to any kind of power, it’s tyranny.
The fascinating thing is how much of this treatment the public seems willing to tolerate.
We’ve had more than fifty years of apocalyptic predictions about the climate—not a single one of which has come anywhere near fruition—and yet people continue to tremble at the prospect of the dire calamities being predicted by the exact same people who’ve been so provably, demonstrably, empirically wrong over and over and over again.
I don’t care how serious you think the “climate crisis” is: if you’re not willing to look at the track record of failure that’s been accumulated by the experts you’re relying on right now, and to factor in some skepticism about the future predictions made by people whose past predictions have been wrong, then you’re the science denier.
My point isn’t that we should be intolerant of error. My point is that the regularity with which our establishment errs is the single most obvious reason why we should never stand for its being allowed to control the terms of debate.