Below is my column in The Hill on the recent Wall Street Journal report on the Biden Administration’s resistance to experts who voiced support for the lab theory on the origins of COVID-19. As with many academics in higher education, government experts were warned not to question the natural or zoonotic theory. In the meantime, figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci said little to support other experts who were being censored and targeted for opposing views. Call it the Silence of the Labs. The effort to marginalize such figures continues this week as pandemic hawks circle Dr. Jay Bhattacharya in anticipation of his confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health.
Here is the column:
This week, the Wall Street Journal released an alarming report on how the Biden administration may have suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of President Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.
The chilling suggestion is that, despite the virus ultimately killing more than 1.2 million Americans and over 7 million people worldwide, there was still an overriding interest in the administration to downplay the Chinese responsibility for the pandemic.
The Journal lays out how that unfolded, but the more disturbing question is why.
The article provides many examples of how dissenting views were marginalized and discouraged within the government. After President Trump described the virus as the “China virus” and alleged that it likely came from a lab, dismissing the lab theory became an article of faith in politics and academia.
The problem was that FBI researchers had concluded that the lab theory was the most credible explanation. But their lead researcher, Dr. Jason Bannan, was kept out of the key meeting, and their opposing research was discounted or ignored.
They were not alone. The Journal reported that Defense Department experts John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien conducted a genomic analysis that found evidence of human manipulation of the virus. It also concluded that it was done using a specific technique developed by the Chinese at the Wuhan lab. They suggested that the Chinese appeared to have altered the “spike protein” that enables the virus to enter the human body in a “gain of function” operation.
They were reportedly told to stop sharing their work and warned that they had to effectively get with the team. Later, the three wrote an unclassified May 2020 paper that was prevented from being shown outside the medical intelligence center.
At the same time, letters and articles that dismissed the lab theory were organized for public consumption. The government worked with social media companies to censor those with opposing views.
Much of the media showed the same confirmation bias and intolerance. During the Trump presidency, many journalists used the rejection of the lab theory to paint Trump as a bigot. By the time Biden became president, not only were certain government officials heavily invested in the zoonotic or natural origin theory, but so were many in the media.
Reporters used opposition to the lab theory as another opportunity to pound their chests and signal their virtue.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading one of his favorite “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified,”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum,” while CNN reporter Drew Griffin criticized spreading the “widely debunked” theory. CNN host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.
NBC News’s Janis Mackey Frayer described it as the “heart of conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) raised the theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
Likewise, after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned the lab theory, Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler mocked him: “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
As these efforts failed and more information emerged supporting the lab theory, many media figures just looked at their shoes and shrugged. Others became more ardent. In 2021, New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was still calling on reporters not to mention the “racist” lab theory.
In Kessler’s case, he wrote that the lab theory was “suddenly credible” as if it had sprung from the head of Zeus rather than having been supported for years by scientists, many of whom had been canceled and banned.
One fact, however, is already well established. The suppression of the lab theory and the targeting of dissenting scientists show the true cost of censorship and viewpoint intolerance.
The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.
Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.
Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.
Many still hope that Congress and the incoming Trump administration will conduct a long-needed investigation into the origins to allow for a more credible and open debate. That hope was increased by the nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the organizers of the Great Barrington Declaration, to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health.
The suppression of the lab theory proves the ultimate fallacy of censorship. Throughout history, censorship has never succeeded. It has never stopped a single idea or a movement. It has a perfect failure rate. Ideas, like water, have a way of finding their way out in time.
Yet, as the last few years have shown, it does succeed in imposing costs on those with dissenting views. For years, figures like Bhattacharya (who was recently awarded the prestigious Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters) were hounded and marginalized.
Others opposed Bhattacharya’s right to offer his scientific views, even under oath. For example, in one hearing, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) expressed disgust that Bhattacharya was even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik decried an event associated with Bhattacharya, writing that “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford University allowed dissenting scientists to speak at a scientific forum. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”
One of the saddest aspects of this story is that many of these figures in government, academia and the media were not necessarily trying to shield China. Some were motivated by their investment in the narrative while others were drawn by the political and personal benefits that came from joining the mob against a minority of scientists.
We have paid too high a cost to simply shrug with the media and walk away. It is a question not only of whether China is responsible for millions of deaths but of whether our own government effectively helped conceal its culpability.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Turley– “figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci said little to support other experts who were being censored and targeted for opposing views”
++
I think the public record [such as it is] now indicates that Fauci was behind some of the efforts to censor those who believed the virus leaked from the lab working on it.
Why wouldn’t he try to hide it? He promoted the dangerous research in Wuhan and likely didn’t want to be identified as one of the principal causes of a planet wide plague.
Looked at that way, he would have done much less harm if he only shot a couple of tellers while robbing banks. Bank robbers don’t like to be identified either.
“He promoted the dangerous research in Wuhan and likely didn’t want to be identified as one of the principal causes of a planet wide plague.”
How certain are you that Fauci was not consciously involved in the deliberate release of COVID in order to advance the egregious increase in state control and curtailment of civil liberties (that continues to this very day) that was the result?
Here is the list of pseudo-scientists who dictated that SARS-CoV-2 (covid19) did not and could not have originated in a laboratory. They degraded and canceled any scientist of dissenting opinion on the origin of the virus which disagreed with their dictate that it originated in nature. They wrote this in a fraudulent letter published in the fraudulent journals “Nature” and “The Lancet”. These individuals and journals should be remembered for their deliberate fraud of the public if they are ever cited again in scientific literature. Their reputation now precedes them – they don’t qualify as “scientists”. Here are their names:Charles Calisher (Colorado State University, Fort Collins), Dennis Carroll (Texas A&M), Rita Colwell (U MD), Ronald B Corley (NEIDL Institute, Boston), Peter Daszak (EcoHealth Alliance, New York), Christian Drosten (Charité – Universitatsmedizin Berlin), Luis Enjuanes (National Center of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain), Jeremy Farrar (The Wellcome Trust, London), Hume Field (University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia), Josie Golding (The Wellcome Trust, London), Alexander Gorbalenya (Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands), Bart Haagmans (Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands), James M Hughes (Emory), William B Karesh (World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Working Group on Wildlife, New York), Gerald T Keusch (Boston University), Sai Kit Lam (University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), Juan Lubroth (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy), John S Mackenzie (Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia), Larry Madoff (Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA), Jonna Mazet, (UC Davis), Peter Palese (Icahn School of Medicine, Mt Sinai Hospital, New York), Stanley Perlman (University of Iowa), Leo Poon (University of Hong Kong), Bernard Roizman (U Chicago), Linda Saif (Ohio St, Columbus), Kanta Subbarao (The University of Melbourne, Melboune, VIC, Australia), Mike Turner (The Wellcome Trust, London), Kristian Andersen (Scripps), Robert F. Garry (Tulane), Edward Holmes(University of Sydney), Andrew Rambaut (University of Edinburgh), W. Ian Lipkin (Columbia University)
If you know history, you are aware that it was bureaucracy-riddled governments that brought down most of our great empires. Once you cede power to unelected and embedded small minded people who thrive on the powers of their own bailiwick you have a difficult time removing these petty tyrants. Since it would be difficult to fire most of the underlings of such little tyrants your only resource is to eliminate the bailiwick. I wonder just how many over-lapping, expired and useless departments and agencies this new administration can eliminate in the first 2 years. Budget management should be their first tool and then the rational legislation to end obsolete and expired entities and their staffs. This and the border wall will be Trump’s test – illegals and the pernicious government employees who enable and abet their existence within our nation. We shall see if Trump’s swagger is real or just a show. He has got to drop the hammer on these Fauci/newsome types.
In order to re-establish a ‘limited government’, where would one begin to downsize ? https://www.usa.gov/agency-index
Well, my first thought was a small thermonuclear device to clean our/disinfect the greater DC area lol; but in reality, if we can build enough public awareness of the sheer volume of corruption and graft going on within (not only federal, but state and local governments) we could, maybe garner enough election support to un-elect most of the politicians who enable this leviathan of an intertwined bureacracy. I doubt if that will ever happen so I may revert to idea #1.
Anthony Fauci and his collaborators undertook gain of function virus research in a PRC lab with the help of U.S. funding. WHO could be incompetent enough to think this was a good idea?
This story was suppressed by the same mainstream media that is now on life support.
This was an opportunity to see how people react to power. Some governors and mayors showed their true colors when they had a taste of raw power.
Those involved in the gain of function research and those who abused power should be investigated and brought to trial. It is imperative that the truth be revealed.
If there is nothing to hide, then there is nothing to fear from a deep and thorough investigation.
This came from the Wuhan lab. A second grader could easily connect the dots. Now it is time to find those responsible, the specifics of how it occurred and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Gain-of-function research has been going on for a very long, way before COVID and Fauci. It is an important tool to understand how to defear medical diseases like cancer. A hammer, a knife, a gun are all very useful tools but they can become lethal weapons. So too with GOF research. Again and again, these issues are best seen through the lens of the formation of a conscience of an individual, and hence society, and not necessarily ruling out x, y and z as dangerous to society.
Zhang, C., Liu, J., Xu, D., Zhang, T., Hu, W. and Feng, Z., 2020. Gain-of-function mutant p53 in cancer progression and therapy. Journal of molecular cell biology, 12(9), pp.674-687.
Selgelid, M.J., 2016. Gain-of-function research: ethical analysis. Science and Engineering Ethics, 22, pp.923-964.
Duprex, W.P., Fouchier, R.A., Imperiale, M.J., Lipsitch, M. and Relman, D.A., 2015. Gain-of-function experiments: time for a real debate. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13(1), pp.58-64.
Rørth, P., Szabo, K., Bailey, A., Laverty, T., Rehm, J., Rubin, G.M., Weigmann, K., Milán, M., Benes, V., Ansorge, W. and Cohen, S.M., 1998. Systematic gain-of-function genetics in Drosophila. Development, 125(6), pp.1049-1057.
Kondou, Y., Higuchi, M. and Matsui, M., 2010. High-throughput characterization of plant gene functions by using gain-of-function technology. Annual review of plant biology, 61(1), pp.373-393
and others
Did Fauci lie about GOF Research? Yes, he did. See exchange between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul. Fauci outright lied when he stated GOF was a “nebulous term”. The above citations make no doubt that GOF is hardly nebulous
Estovir,
Good points.
Ginning up a false narrative is not only unethical, it is criminal.
Doing this research in the PRC proved to be a cataclysmic disaster. The Damage is incalculable. The PRC has been showing their true colors in their constant attack of U. S. Government agencies, business and citizens of the United States.
Why do we still do business with them? They are kind enough to place nets on their multistory complexes to keep the workers from committing suicide from jumping. They are happy to use slave labor to undercut our manufacturing.
If such a thing occurred in a medical facility in the United States, the ambulance chasers would descend in droves. People would go to jail. Lying to a congressman or senator during an investigation is a crime. The PRC can sweep it under the rug. “Nothing to see here.”
I am sure some of the research was done with good intentions and is beneficial, but there was a culture surrounding Dr. Fauci and his collaborators that reeks of malfeasance.
True science has taken a severe blow to the jaw.
The Trump nominees, RFK, Jr, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, are well placed to draw conclusions from the pandemic and response and propose changes. There are several areas they should consider.
First, the procedures adopted in 2017 to control gain of function research proved themselves to be inadequate. By limiting what is covered to a sliver of what might be dangerous, the regulations proved ineffective, perhaps deliberately so. The whole area needs a thorough overhaul.
Second, the panoply of measures adopted by the bio-security state — business and school closures, restrictions on religious and other gatherings, mask and vaccine mandates — did far more harm than good. These were unprecedented and contrary to longstanding understandings in the public health community of how to deal with a pandemic of this kind. They were sprung on the public, fully formed, like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus. Their source is murky to this day; Debbie Lerman has argued that this was a National Security Council operation that deliberately preempted the public health authorities in February 2020, perhaps because they understood that this was an engineered virus requiring a militarised response. In any event, reforms are needed to stop the administrative state, and state and local executive authorities, from doing this again. It is striking that none of these measures was passed by legislatures at either the federal or state levels.
Third, there is a great need to stop the censorship. The “COVID dissidents” proved to have been right about many things. Whether allowing free debate would have resulted in better policies is an unknown, but it is hard to imagine that it would have made things worse. The risk of misinformation is much less than the risk of censorship. Moreover, censorship enables the government and allied media to spread misinformation without challenge.
Whether the new Trump administration will make progress in these areas remains to be seen. The risk of bio-security state tyranny has been shown to be very great.
Re. Daniel
“… In any event, reforms are needed to stop the administrative state, and state and local executive authorities, from doing this again. ..”
Agreed with your comments. About “from doing this again”, It is even more concerning that since the Industry knows that a Lab Virus can be widely (Pan-Global) distribute, and the ‘reaction’ of Governmental Officials will be to throw Money at the Industry (in addition to the cost of what you have explained), there are no safe guard for a ‘deliberate viral introduction’ by the Industry. UpJohn’s Lab in Kalamazoo Michigan sits on a Library Vault of Viruses and Vaccines (good ones and bad ones), What’s to stop Pfizer from releasing a Biological Agent (virus) along Interstae-94 (I-94) and distributing it from Point Zero, when the need for Wall Street Profits are necessary. -NOTHING-
Wuhan is the scapegoat for the Industry, the Virus (Covid-19) is the blackmailing device, and the Government is the facilitator & provider of Profits for the Industry.
Evil as it is, Cynical as it maybe, The reality is that there is a Wuhan Lab sitting just few miles away from I-94 and Other places with the same situation.
Your Money or Your Life ~ À la Big Pharma and Wall Street Profit Extortionist
Daniel writes, “First, the procedures adopted in 2017 to control gain of function research proved themselves to be inadequate. By limiting what is covered to a sliver of what might be dangerous, the regulations proved ineffective, perhaps deliberately so. The whole area needs a thorough overhaul.”
Daniel, I just want to add that Fauci got around the gain-of-function protocols by offshoring the research and funding it through front groups to launder the money. Fauci did the same thing to torture and murder Beagle puppies; warning: don’t internet search that if you’re faint of heart.
As many may recall, this is exactly how Hillary perpetrated the “Russian Collusion” hoax. She offshored the oppo research to British and Russian trolls and laundered the money through Fusion GPS. Sounds like Hillary and Fauci had exactly-the-same playbook.
I doubt this is just a coincidence. It suggests that Democrat politicians and federal officials have been offshoring their dirty work for years. The unanswered question now is what else did they offshore to get around the law? How much did taxpayers fund?
I hope Trump and Kash kick over that rock to find out.
“Whether allowing free debate would have resulted in better policies is an unknown, but it is hard to imagine that it would have made things worse. “
Daniel, I think censorship was a killer. I don’t know how much Dr…? recent video is applicable, but if only some is (I believe so) then I believe the death rate would have fallen.
“The chilling suggestion is that, despite the virus ultimately killing more than 1.2 million Americans and over 7 million people worldwide, there was still an overriding interest in the administration to downplay the Chinese responsibility for the pandemic.”
There was a reason for that. We have a long history of blaming those we perceive as culpable for what caused the pandemic instead of focusing on our failure to be prepared for it. It’s easier. As a nation, we tend to avoid blame for things that we clearly failed to act on.
When rhetoric about China being the source of the virus spread, racists and bigots went about attacking random Asians and blaming them for the pandemic. There were plenty of cases when Asians were targeted for blame and violence because Trump sought to blame China while ignoring his poor reaction to the pandemic. Common sense would dictate that tamping down the blame game would have been useful at the time. The increasing blame on China gave license to inflict violence on Asians at the time, and preventing or minimizing it would have been a higher priority.
Turley is avoiding the increasing problems Trump and his buddies are creating as long as he can by digging up old news to distract from it. Elon censored conservatives, and Trump backtracked on his promises about Ukraine and grocery prices after making big, loud promises that led him to get elected. Trump is already lying. Will John Say chime in and make excuses, or will he be critical of Trump? I’m willing to bet he won’t do the latter.
Suppose Turley is concerned about censorship, as he is in this column. In that case, he should really be chastising Elon for censoring conservatives who are criticizing him for his H-1B visa claims and preference for foreign-born engineers over Americans. We clearly don’t produce the kind of talent that is coming from overseas and that’s not sitting well with the MAGA faithful.
Such a liar.
I love the way the TDS infected claim anything they choose not to see or acknowledge is a “lie” and then demand us to pile on with them or be branded as hypocrites.
They are true Alinskyites!
We have a long history of blaming those we perceive as culpable
And there’s George: for once telling the truth in his explanation of channeling his guilt and sins onto those he hates.
Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot George on display.
I think Americans need to seriously ask themselves WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!?! We have a virus that seemingly originates in an area of China long known for its bioweapons factory, funded, therefore, thereby, apparently, at the direction of the U.S. federal government, that is released into the U.S. to reach maximum velocity precisely one week following the obvious abject failure of Trump impeachment, when it was clear to all that legacy media had extracted and exhausted every possible ounce of impeachment’s political energy, a “pandemic,” officially dialed up to a mass hysteria that would have put even the Salem witch trials to shame – believe me, it’s precisely the same – coupled with official demands for the shuttering of the our economy, Trump’s very successful economy, with PPP loans as easy-pickin’ political plunder, together with the fascist-like marriage of fed and social media for the sole purpose of communist-styled suppression.
You want to know what I think? I think the entire upper echelons, or some significant portion of this federal government, has “sold out” to the Chinese. They are owned, that is what I truly believe. And why good Americans continue to allow this fed to deprive us of our dollars to fuel all of this corruption is absolutely beyond me. I would think there must be a point somewhere, perhaps in the not too distant future, when good Americans say “enough is enough.”
Anybody who was monitoring the death rates by age and paying attention to Sweden, which was our ‘control,’ knew early on — sometime in the summer of 2020 — that most everything coming from ‘official’ sources was less than factual. Bhattacharya’s first investigation, like the Diamond Princess, showed that virus was less deadly than advertised, and that it was primarily a problem for the elderly (over 70) and those with two or more chronic and debilitating health problems. For those that did more research, there was also the video in which Daszak bragged in late 2019 that his organization, a cutout for Fauci, had funded research in Wuhan, and other evidence that American scientists had been involved in setting up the lab there. Bhattacharya, Kuldorf, Gupta, Markary, and others all disagreed with the narratives being pushed by official sources, which the media simply repeated, but it took effort to ‘find them online. For those who made the effort, it was clear that the vaccines were not actual vaccines, that those under 70 were at no more risk from COVID than they were from the ‘ordinary’ flu (as opposed to the Asian and Hong Kong outbreaks, which I survived without a therapeutic posing as a vaccine. But those of us who had some idea of what was actually happening were marginalized, cancelled, mocked, and silenced in a variety of ways. That is how powerful the ‘crowd’ (see Gustav Le Bon) and group think (see Irving Janis) are — the postmodernists are not entirely wrong in claiming that a powerful argument (or narrative) is more persuasive than verifiable evidence. Kind of depressing.
Old Guy, you are right that much was known by the summer of 2020. As a result, rational governments behaved differently from ours. Sweden never closed its primary or middle schools and did not close down businesses. Other Nordic countries did the same after the Spring of 2020. In Florida, DeSantis listened to Bhattacharya, Kulldorf, Atlas and others, and ended restrictions in the summer of 2020.
Sweden experienced the lowest excess mortality in Europe through the pandemic years. Open Florida fared as well as closed California in terms of excess mortality after adjusting for age, and far better in terms of learning loss and economic damage. There were no mass outbreaks in schools that were kept open.
Yes. Almost everything we were told to believe was a lie, and Sweden showed that in real time, but those who pointed that out were shouted down by Fauci and the medical ‘experts’ and the ‘journalists’ who simply repeated the official line. Really depressing. In the UK, they privileged the ‘experts’ at one university over another, even though the ones they ignored, Heneghan and Jefferson & cpy. at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine had a better record and managed a ‘vaccine’ without artificial proteins. https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/
If people like me no longer trust the government and the experts, there are lots of reasons for out lack of faith in those higher and mightier than us.
I may have a comment stuck in the SPAM filter.
One of the most rad things about Trump 2.0 will be that he’ll massively bungle and politicize another pandemic soon enough and it will take the pressure off schills like you, Turley, to try to go out and create an anecdotal dreamscape in the attempt to defocus on trump’s massive weaknesses….
Of course trump and first Lady Musk won’t even attempt to develop a vaccine this time and legions of magats will die as a result of that next level incompetence, but hey, you’re doing your part, Jon. Party on!
It is a question not only of whether China is responsible for millions of deaths but of whether our own government effectively helped conceal its culpability.
There was no logical reason for our government to defend China from the lab leak theory, unless we shared responsibility. This was so obviously the case, it quickly divided this country into two camps that would come to define the 2024 election. On one side are the tyrannical-regime supporting neoliberals, and on the other are the freedom and liberty defenders of the America First movement.
We have discovered that humans’ natural immunity response to viruses is similar to our response to government tyranny. Gain-of-function should be viewed as synonymous with the weaponization of government agencies against the American people.
The logic of the lab-leak coverup by those who initiated it (Farrar, Collins, Fauci, Daszak, certain virologists):
1. Protect gain of function research;
2. Protect collaboration with China;
3. Avoid personal and institutional blame; and
4. From the perspective of Daszak and the virologists, preserve and increase their research funding.
The media and social media went along because they usually accept the lies of high officials and because the main political support for the lab leak hypothesis came from Trump and other Republicans.
“unless we shared responsibility.”
There are any number of Deep State apparatchiks who would gladly have bribed Chinese scientists to turn COVID loose on the local Wuhan population to vet it s their new biological weapon of choice for use in destabilizing regimes that they do not like. Maybe Russia was a prime target, or the CCP itself. Such insidious clowns have always made themselves blind to the likelihood of damage to the people they are supposed to be serving in the pursuit of such objectives.
Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: Xi Jinping released the virus to create havoc to topple Donald Trump in an election year and boost the candidacy of China friend Joe Biden. And he succeeded. Seems entirely plausible.
Maybe. What is worse – Xi did it, or the Americans funding the WIV whispered to those Chinese scientists release it to stop Trump’s reelection? If the former, it was an act of war, and if the latter, Xi has the goods on our Deep State bureaucrats and can blackmail them for all they are worth.
“Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.”
After gain-of-function research promoted by Fauci and Daszak was offshored and outsourced, some worried that the Wuhan facility was doing it at levels 2 or 3 rather than level 4. The lab leak which caught the local hospital by surprise might have been accidental.
Even worse is that nobody in a position of power other than Rand Paul is interested in doing anything about gain-of-function research. The next pandemic could well come from a US lab and the Americans people would have only the incompetent blowhards that they keep electing to Congress to blame.
Gain of function research on viruses, done responsibly with high grade environmental infection transmission controls, is essential research to predict possible more virulent mutations of the virus so that effective vaccines can be developed before the next epidemic or pandemic occurs. The key words there are “responsible” and “environmental controls” to prevent virus from escaping the laboratory. Neither were operative in Wuhan. A key question is whether that oversight was negligence or was it purposeful.
“Gain of function research on viruses, done responsibly with high grade environmental infection transmission controls, is essential research to predict possible more virulent mutations of the virus so that effective vaccines can be developed before the next epidemic or pandemic occurs.”
There is no authorization in the US Constitution for the Federal Government to engage in such research. If the research is justified, let the pharmaceutical companies conduct it, on their own dime, and at their own risk of being held fully accountable for the results. I would support legislation to partly revoke qualified immunity in order to create and maintain that accountability.
When it comes to censorship, Elon Musk’s platform, X, has been actively censoring conservatives who criticize his stance on H-1B visas. Laura Loomer’s account was suspended, and several conservative organizations have had their blue check privileges revoked for speaking out against him. So where is Turley’s outrage?
Instead, we end up with discussions about COVID-19 lab origin theories and potential connections to China, which are old news. It’s amusing that Turley still can’t assert that the China lab theory is true. His statements are filled with qualifiers like “may,” “likely,” and “possible.”
What’s the point of launching an investigation at this stage? Trump will be focused on creating new chaos, which makes it hard to expect any reasonable outcomes. Issues like immigration and tax policy, along with Republicans pushing for cuts to Medicare and Social Security, will dominate the political landscape. I can only see this investigation as an excuse to criticize China, making it easier to blame them for our problems instead of addressing the issues ourselves. China is rapidly advancing in areas like infrastructure, education, and economic expansion while we seem to just complain and point fingers.
Perhaps Turley, who claims to support free speech, should reconsider X’s censorship of conservatives unless he is afraid of facing the same fate as them.
george, musk is censoring. Now, prove it.
Or admit you made it up… as usual.
You can look it up yourself. It’s not hard. Laura Loomer’s X account was suspended, and conservative commentators’ blue check mark privileges have been removed. The common denominator in all of them is criticism of Elon.
Ever since Elon went out of his way to fight for H-1B visas because he really, really needs them instead of recruiting homegrown talent, and according to his buddy Vivek, who says they are just not as hard-working as foreign workers, seem to have touched a wee nerve in the MAGA community. So, what does Elon do? He starts censoring those who are critical of him. Imagine that the free speech absolutist is censoring critics because he doesn’t like it. Turley should be having a field day with this. It’s the perfect opportunity to be ‘balanced’ with his free speech principles.
No he hasn’t.
@George: When it comes to censorship… Nothing beats Bribery Biden outsourcing government censorship to social media.
Why do you avoid addressing that plain truth, to Speak Your Truths instead?
The bad news is that the government lied to the people during the COVID-19 debacle. The good news is that we, the people, knew it was lying to us all along. Thirty or forty years ago, this would not have been possible, but it’s an old axiom of policy that when formal systems don’t work, people will devise and use informal systems to get what they want. That informal system was, of course, things like Twitter and other social media systems that collect and disseminate the news in a manner that can readily be checked and disregarded if fraudulent. Government information systems were no match for the citizen reporter and made agency spokespersons look silly and stupid as they tried telling us stuff we could see for ourselves was untrue.
The COVID crisis showed the power of the people around the globe to find the truth no matter where it may be, even in faraway China. Within literally days after the first deaths from COVID occurred, we were hearing on social media about the wet market in Yuhan and the virology lab where the virus likely originated. Clowns like Fauci tried to confuse us by saying the virus likely came from studying bats in caves elsewhere in China. The American people knew otherwise.
Throughout 2024, Karine Jean Pierre and her media colleagues at NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times tried lying to us that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” when in fact, we knew he was drooling in his pablum and unable to complete a coherent sentence. The disastrous “debate” proved what social media were telling us. If nothing else, we have survived all these horrible people and should be much stronger and better moving forward.
The bad news is that the government lied to the people during the COVID-019 debacle. The good news is that we, the people, knew they were lying to us
it is clear Democrats HATE America.
We need to jail democrats by the 1000’s and abolish their party. Two Civil Wars is 2 too many!
um… why not Konzentrationslagern Herr Himmler?
Im a democrat. Come and get me, Q!
Slack Labs Matter!
“Slack Labs Matter!”
So does “Lack Slabs Matter” in the event of enough government-abetted deaths…
I hope we never lose focus on this so we can never have it happen again.
The optics of censoring the evidence of lab leak are lousy. So are the outcomes from the censorship. And the truth did finally come out. I wonder if that says something about us that Winston Churchill touched on after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into WWII. After they have tried everything else the Americans will finally do the right thing.
And all this occurred while the whole common-sense public knew good and damned well that it had come out of the Wuhan Lab. Of course the common-sense community did not include the vast majority of useful idiots so susceptible to legacy media and other Democratic lies. One of the most remarkable occurrences was the emergence of Jon Stewart as someone possessing an ounce of brains not yet rotted away by the rest of his liberal views. Colbert’s dismay at Stewart’s unexpected rant was memorable. Just like the Left’s stealing the 2020 election, the COVID grift was just too obvious for anyone with the least intelligence– or honesty– to miss.
Cionnath, thanks for bringing up the Jon Stewart piece regarding the origins of the virus. Stewart, who I find pretentious and condescendingly liberal 90% of the time, did a bit about a chocolate disease starting in Hershey PA and people saying that it was not from the chocolate factory there, but that it came from “nature”. It was brilliantly simple and that is why we never heard it again.
Anyone that thought that the virus that originated in the city where the virus was being worked on was just some sort of natural phenomenon is either a moron, a Chinese bought and sold agent, like Biden, had their hands all over the disaster like Fauci, or just partisan hacks that thought attacking China would be a vulnerability to Biden and Dems, and this is where the media came in.
Wait, you use as a reliablel source two clowns, stewart and colbert. Please, you embarass yourself.
Hey Moron, Colbert disagreed with Stewart, but that doesn’t jive with whatever point you are trying to make.
As for me, my point is that of course the virus came from the lab and anyone that pushed the alternative had an agenda to do so. Care to debate that point?
Jon Stewart only got wise over a year later after the search for Pangolin 0 came up empty.
Also, “jive” is pretty much what Fauci does. (He said you might get AIDS from your kids or Covid from a pangolin.) As opposed to Sen. Paul who looks for whether evidence and theory “jibe”.
“jibe”
Thank you!
That is what China paid Hunter millions for. The Big Guy and his corrupt administration and friends in the media almost got away with it. The rest of us knew at the very beginning that when China refused to cooperate with the investigators it was a cover-up of the real origin story and yet the Biden acolytes worked like crazy to promote the false “natural”/”wet market” theory and suppress the truth.
* it’s a Corona virus…the only reason people died is because of treatment. Large doses of steroids for mucus membrane inflammation and antibiotic to prevent secondary infection like pneumonia. Are there any doctors in this shithole?
BS