Has the Lab Leak Hypothesis Been Proved?
Senator Tom Cotton and others were excoriated for suggesting that the possibility that the Wuhan virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology should be investigated. Not only have such suggestions been denounced, until last week, Facebook did not even allow the idea that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory to be discussed. Over the last couple of weeks, a consensus has emerged that the lab leak hypothesis is plausible and definitely deserves investigation. This is not, however, because anything new has come to light in recent days. Andy McCarthy argues that not only is the lab leak theory plausible, it has already been proved to be correct beyond a reasonable doubt. He makes a strong case:  Lab accidents are common, and have been known to spawn infectious diseases (including the escape of SARS1 from the Chinese National Virology Institute in Beijing no less than four times, according to Wade). WIV scientists were conducting gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses, in particular their capacity to infect humans. The bats in which are found closely related (but, importantly, not identical) viruses do not inhabit the vicinity of Wuhan  they are nearly a thousand miles away from that densely populated city and have limited flight range. The likelihood of naturally occurring interspecies transmission (outside a lab setting) is infinitesimal. The lab conditions in Wuhan were insufficiently safe  grossly so, it appears. Several of the labs researchers fell ill (at least three severely enough to be hospitalized) right at the critical time, in autumn of 2019, before the first identified case of infection with SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Here, two additional points are salient. First, those implausibly claiming that the circumstantial case is weak always skip past the inconvenient fact that the circumstantial case for their preferred theory of natural transmission (from bat to human, directly or through an intermediary species) is so weak as to be negligible  there being, most tellingly, no known existence of a bat (or pangolin, etc.) in which a virus matching SARS-CoV2 has been found. I dont know where the coronavirus came from, but the arguments Andy makes are obviously telling. I would emphasize two different points. First, the anxiety of the entire American establishment to protect the Chinese Communist Party is remarkable. Prominent Americans from Joe Biden to Mark Zuckerberg to Lebron James apparently prioritize loyalty to China over pretty much everything else. We normal Americans need a much better understanding of why this should be true. Roger Simon addresses this question:  Many of them [Wall Streeters]almost all of them to the left of center, at least publiclyhave quietly decided, whether they admit it to themselves consciously or not, that China will be the winner in its struggle with the United States and the West. Some of them even want it that way for their own advantage. Again, for the most part unspoken, they see the CCP as monolithic and better organizednot having to deal with the untidiness of democracyand clearly more ruthless (from Tiananmen to the Uyghur to the Falun Gong), and therefore inevitably victorious. Its an if you cant beat em, join em situation, as pathetic as that sounds. And its all around us. Making mega-bucks then off China trumps opposing their horrifying policies for a great percentage of our country, often especially to those who pretend otherwise. ***  Globalism, as I wrote in an earlier piece, is in reality China-ism. Thats how it works. A perfect example is giant Apple whose most recent quarterly China revenue came in at a record-breaking $21 billion+. At the same time we got all sorts of social justicey talk from CEO Tim Cook. What Cook is doing, cashing in big on one side while mouthing liberal pieties on the other, suits the Chinese communists perfectly well, essentially enabling them. Apple then becomes a linchpin of American communism much in the way Huawei is a linchpin of Chinese communism. (Not inconsequentially, Apples top five executives, including Cook, earned a total of almost exactly $120 million in 2020, up 13 percent during the pandemic.) Almost our entire corporate world is trotting eagerly behind, the majority acting in the same manner. Not you and me, to be sure. The second key point, I think, is how the American press combined with pro-China social media to suppress discussion of covids origin. The New York Times and the Washington Post might as well be Pravda and Tass for all the interest they have in disseminating information that casts doubt on the Leftist party line. And Facebook, Twitter et al. not only support the Democratic Party/Chinese Communist Party line, but worse, aggressively suppress any suggestion that a different view is even possible. We are living in a very dark time.