A Sense of Doubt blog post #3090 - Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory Confirmed?
It matters, and it does not matter.
Knowing the origin of the Covid-19 outbreak matters in terms of preventing this exact thing from happening again.
Also, it's not hyperbole to be cautious in terms of how confirming the lab leak theory will increase animus against Chinese people, especially Americans who identify as Asian, let alone Chinese.
Yet, I cannot claim that Reason Magazine is not credible. It's a very credible publication, though biased.
Following the Wuhan lab leak theory "confirmed" [?], there's further condemnation in the form of the Biden administration suppressing information on social media.
Take that as you will.
All of this matters little, as the next pandemic will be fungal and if really deadly, we're so royally fucked.
https://reason.com/2023/06/21/lab-leak-theory-confirmed-ben-hu-wuhan-china-covid/
Lab Leak Theory: 1, Misinformation Cops: 0
Confirmation of Wuhan scientists as "patients zero" makes the lab leak theory look likely—and the misinformation police look like fools.
The lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins gained tremendous legitimacy this week as The Wall Street Journal confirmed independent reports that the earliest outbreak occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2019.
"Patients zero" are now presumed to be three Chinese scientists, including Ben Hu, who worked extensively on gain-of-function research (the manipulation of viruses to make them more dangerous), which was funded by grants from the U.S. government. Those cases occurred in November 2019—well before the Huanan wet market outbreak favored by some in the scientific community as the more likely origin story—and they occurred among the very people one would predict if the virus originated in a lab. This is quite damning, to say the least. Anyone still clinging to an animal origin theory—remember the pangolins and raccoon dogs?—is running up against Occam's razor.
Assuming the intelligence reports are accurate and that Hu and his colleagues did contract the earliest cases of COVID-19, the implications are huge. This would mean that substandard safety protocols at the Wuhan lab probably unleashed a killer pathogen on the rest of the planet, and the Chinese government attempted to cover it up.
China is hardly the only government on the hook; the lab leak also means that research paid for by U.S. tax dollars—and vouched for by coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci, the nation's foremost gain-of-function advocate—is partly to blame for a pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide. Fauci, the very person tasked with leading the U.S. response to COVID-19, was in charge of the government agency that gave Hu, the gain-of-function researcher initially sickened with the disease, millions of dollars to experiment with bat coronaviruses.
Information on the central role played by Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was made public by the White Coat Waste Project, a watchdog group that uses public records requests to scrutinize federal funding of science. The Journal cited the organization's work, writing that it confirmed Hu's receipt of U.S. funding.
Concerned about the potential for catastrophic harm, the Obama administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research in 2014. In late 2022, Fauci sat for a seven-hour deposition, admitting that exceptions had been made for gain-of-function research deemed vital to government scientists. In any case, the pause ended in 2017. Meanwhile, numerous authorities, including the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, have raised concerns about negligence at the Wuhan lab over the years. Vanity Fair and ProPublica described the lab as a "biocomplex in crisis."
If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, well, here we are.
The confirmation of the lab leak theory would also mean that all the mainstream journalists, establishment scientists, and social media moderators who derided its adherents as conspiracy theorists were stunningly wrong. This should serve as a potent lesson to all the entities—many of them state-funded—that have made policing alleged misinformation their seminal issue.
Said cops including some of the most influential voices in the scientific community and expert commentariat. The New York Times' lead coronavirus reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, previously described the lab leak theory as having racist roots. Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez criticized the comedian Jon Stewart for daring to raise the issue on an episode of Stephen Colbert's show. CNN medical analyst Leana Wen lamented the theory's likelihood of inspiring anti-Chinese animus. Others in the media called the lab leak a "fringe conspiracy."
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, vigorously banned and suppressed posts about the lab leak before finally abandoning this policy as the theory gained some mainstream acceptance toward the latter half of 2021. As revealed by the Facebook Files, Reason's report on the communication between social media companies and federal health bureaucrats, Facebook took its COVID-19 content cues from the government. All of this behavior—these efforts to shame or suppress individuals who were asking questions about the preferred narratives of government scientists—now seems incredibly short-sighted.
The Biden administration has committed to declassifying intelligence related to the origins of COVID-19, consistent with bipartisan legislation signed earlier this year. Frustratingly, the feds have missed the congressionally imposed deadline, which was last weekend. It is long past time for President Joe Biden and federal health officials to tell the American people the truth so that all responsible parties can ultimately be held accountable; despite the assumptions of so many media commentators, the lab leak theory does not have unilaterally anti-Chinese implications—on the contrary, it is the explanation for COVID-19 that incriminates the U.S. government as well.
Biden White House Pressured Facebook To Censor Lab Leak Posts
"Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made," asked Meta's president for global affairs.
President Joe Biden's White House pushed Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to censor contrarian COVID-19 content, including speculation about the virus having escaped from a lab, vaccine skepticism, and even jokes.
"Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made," asked Nick Clegg, president for global affairs at the company, in a July 2021 email to his coworkers.
A content moderator replied, "We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn't have done it."
These and other emails obtained by Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio) and The Wall Street Journal provide further evidence of the federal government's vast efforts to curb dissent online. As I reported in Reason's March 2023 issue, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) communicated frequently with Facebook content moderators and pushed them to take down posts that contradicted the guidance of federal health advisers:
According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. "Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all," reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: "BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo."
These Facebook Files show that the platform responded with incredible deference. Facebook routinely asked the government to vet specific claims, including whether the virus was "man-made" rather than zoonotic in origin. (The CDC responded that a man-made origin was "technically possible" but "extremely unlikely.") In other emails, Facebook asked: "For each of the following claims, which we've recently identified on the platform, can you please tell us if: the claim is false; and, if believed, could this claim contribute to vaccine refusals?"
The fact that the White House was engaged in the exact same behavior as the CDC is not remotely surprising; indeed, it's already well-known that Biden staffers harangued social media moderators, though these specific emails have not previously been released.
The Wall Street Journal's reporting demonstrates once again that the platforms themselves were deeply skeptical of the government's directions:
"The WH has previously indicated that it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects, so we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed," the vice president wrote.
"I can't see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that—and I wouldn't recommend it," Clegg wrote in a subsequent email, an apparent reference to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In some of the emails, Facebook executives expressed concern that removing posts in which Americans expressed hesitation about getting vaccinated could actually make them less likely to get a shot.
All of these disclosures show that it's pointless to be angry with social media companies—they were put in a very difficult position. Supporters of free speech must direct their ire toward the federal government and demand that government officials stop engaging in this behavior.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has proposed a bill along these lines. I interviewed him about it here.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2308.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2954 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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