With the Energy Department joining the lab-leak party, will the apologies ever roll in to those so thoroughly excoriated for questioning the animal-human theory of Covid’s origins?
Cockburn has done a little digging and would like you to join him on a trip down memory lane, to revisit the litany of enlightened elites who proclaimed the lab-leak theory a conspiracy. From scientists to media talking heads, the condemnation of the lab-leak hypothesis was pretty universal in the early months of the pandemic, even going so far as to proclaim it racist.
The World Health Organization
Not that the WHO needs any more discrediting after its stunning performance, but it was pretty clear that animals were to blame: “All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else.” It later changed its mind in February 2021 when its original denials were no longer tenable. There comes a point where even the WHO has to stop carrying water for the CCP.
Anthony Fauci
The now-sainted Anthony Fauci took a similar approach, painting the lab leak theory as lacking evidence and casting the blame squarely on those poor bats. To be honest, Cockburn can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy for the much maligned animals. The whole world spent months casting aspersions upon the innocent little creatures. They didn’t experiment on themselves!
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin
Washington Post star columnist Jennifer Rubin left no room for interpretation in her piece entitled, “The descent of the GOP into authoritarian know-nothingism.” The writer castigated Republican senator Tom Cotton for so much as suggesting that the virus might have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Apparently, the hypothesis was “unadulterated nonsense, one step removed from anti-vaxxer rubbish and UFO-spotting.” Oh, how the tables have turned!
HuffPost
Commenting for an article published in the Huffington Post, Michael Mina, previously an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, rejected Cotton’s claim as “a ridiculous assertion.” “All signs point to a pathogen that has been circulating in animals and jumped to humans. It’s pretty common for these viruses and there’s no good reason for him to be saying something like that.” No good reason, except for the fact that the senator’s suspicions have turned out to be the most likely explanation for Covid.
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols
Tom Nichols declared Cotton a purveyor of modern day Soviet propaganda. “A US senator with the equivalent of the Soviet story that the Army invented AIDS.” Nichols goes on to say, “This is a clever and manipulative senator riling up the uneducated…” Smearing a US Army veteran as a Kremlin wannabe purposely spreading lies for his benefit just because he speculated that China might have lied… yikes.
Anne Applebaum
It pains Cockburn to say it, but The Spectator has a history here, too. Anne Applebaum, who was deputy editor back in the Nineties, took to Twitter in February 2020 to pile on to Senator Cotton: “Wow. Just like the Soviet propagandists who tried to convince the world that the CIA invented AIDS.”
Wow. Just like the Soviet propagandists who tried to convince the world that the CIA invented AIDS https://t.co/BA8fXPnXif
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 16, 2020
Anne gets a bonus point for garnering the following response from Chen Weihua, a Chinese state actor:
Cockburn does not expect many of the commentators to acknowledge their mistakes, though some have at least admitted they were a little bit wrong.
In any case, every good story needs a lesson. The best one here might be to hold back the knee-jerk reaction to everything that comes from a Republican’s mouth. Whisper it — but sometimes they’re right…
