Shaping the news: Did the New York Times stifle lab leak debate?

 Great article on the way that the New York Times tried to destroy the truth about the Wuhan Insitute of Virology as the source of the Covid virus that has killed millions.

Read the whole thing.

But the following comment also deserves reading.  Especially the last part.  

As a result I find myself reading less and less reportage and instead choose to read more opinion pieces, simply because it is explicitly the opinion of the writer, that a reader can judge on its merits,  and not something that purports to be objective reporting whilst only offering half the facts and with a liberal/woke subtext smuggled in.

.Alexander Wood

.. The NYT is an extreme example, but this is happening across most mainstream media outlets to some degree or another. The Guardian and BBC very much to the fore in this country. Any writers and public intellectuals who don’t go along with this liberal Metropolitan worldview are branded heretics – I’m delighted to note this site is still home to many such heretics, and long may that continue!

WHY THE SCIENCE POINTS TO A LAB LEAK

Read the whole thing, but here's the bottom line: the way the virus was made virulent was the least likely way that nature would have done it but the common way that virologists who what to make a virus more lethal commonly do it.

All of this didn’t just recently come to light. The authors point out that the CGG connection was noted in published literature by February 2020. So, why is it that only in the last few weeks have the scientific, political and media establishments decided not only that it is acceptable to entertain the idea that covid could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but to point out publicly that this is the most likely explanation of the virus’s origin?

I think the answer lies in the realm of politics, not science. Covid was not a hoax, but it was immediately seen by the Left as the means through which they might oust Donald Trump from the White House. (“God’s gift to the Left,” as Jane Fonda expressed it.) For that strategy to work, the focus needed to be here at home, on the alleged (almost entirely mythical) failures of the Trump administration. Pointing the finger at China would not only reinforce President Trump’s speculation about the virus, it would also validate the tough approach he took toward the CCP throughout his term in office.

So the truth about the origin of covid had to be suppressed. That is how it looks to me, anyway.

Why we should welcome the lab leak theory

When you give it some thought, this makes a lot of sense.

 If SARS2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — came from nature then, logically, it’s only a matter of time before something like this happens again. And again. And again. And next time, it could all too easily be worse. Our best recourse, then, is clearly to study potential zoonotic pathogens in the lab. It could even be argued, as it has been by many researchers, that we should enhance these infectious agents to discover their vulnerabilities so that next time, we’ll know just what to do.

How else could we discover what we’re up against? After all, if SARS2 came from nature, then the biologists who were furiously studying its close relatives were, if anything, too slow and too cautious to protect us. The straightforward lesson of the pandemic would be to simply face up to the clear risk of studying dangerous, novel infectious agents in the lab. Indeed, we would be forced to redouble our efforts before SARS3 catches us off-guard.

If, on the other hand, SARS2 emerged from a lab, then the lesson is the opposite. Covid-19 would be, at the bare minimum, the direct result of our failure to heed prior warnings about the possibility of such an accident. Lab leaks are not uncommon, so making already dangerous viruses even more dangerous is a recipe for disaster. If, therefore, we want to avoid a pandemic from happening again, obviously we would need to curtail this research.