TK Mashup: The Lab Leak “Conspiracy Theory”

• TK Mashup: The Lab Leak “Conspiracy Theory”
  by Matt Taibbi & Matt Orfalea, https://taibbi.substack.com/
  “NOT MAN MADE OR GENETICALLY MODIFIED,” they cried in unison, until they didn’t, as Matt Orfalea’s latest trip back in time shows
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  After Covid-19 hit America’s shores, a question naturally arose: how did this happen? Most of us assumed the mystery would soon be unraveled, that the society of epidemiological detectives who found everything from the rat that transmitted Lassa Fever to the leak that caused viral outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt would nail down the origin of the pandemic.
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  It didn’t happen. We were initially told something about bats, a weird animal called a pangolin, and a Chinese “wet market,” but never heard the full story. A combination of the virus originating in an authoritarian state and a sudden seizure of incuriosity among the international press corps led to a strange coverage détente, in which we weren’t told exactly what happened, but we were told all sensible people were sure of what didn’t happen. 27 scientists in The Lancet put it this way in mid-2020: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

  As TK contributor Matt Orfalea pieces together in his latest hilariously disturbing trip to our recent past, the notion that Covid-19 did not originate in a lab became a mandatory talking point. This might have made sense, if epidemiologists had definitively identified the source of the disease. But they hadn’t, making the intensity of the press reaction both comical and suspicious.

  A common explanation for the propaganda is that once Donald Trump suggested the disease might have had a laboratory origin, it became mandatory to denounce the idea for political reasons. The Trump-said-it-so-it-must-be-wrong angle was also ubiquitous, as Orfalea shows here:read more.

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