Conspiracy theories are just that…until the actual conspiracy – and often a cover-up -– are discovered to be fact.
Even the so-called fact checkers can be convinced.
Social media giant Facebook will no longer remove posts that reference idea that COVID escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a company spokesperson told Politico last Wednesday.
This step marked a policy reversal from February, noted National Review, when Facebook announced it would root out what it called false and misleading health claims including those suggesting that “COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured.”
The tech company had maintained a list of “debunked” assertions during the pandemic in consultation with global health advisers. (Must have been the ‘wet markets.’)
In fact, throughout much of the pandemic, the ‘Mainstream Media’ and prominent members of the scientific community were skeptical of the ‘lab leak’ theory, according to Newsweek.
The rebuttals often conflated the “research accident” scenario with a far less plausible one of biowarfare, wrote Cathy Young from Reason.com. The left saw the theory as a ploy by President Donald Trump and his supporters to blame China and to deflect criticism about his handling of the pandemic.
Some journalists speculated about a possible accidental leak from the beginning, including John Rogin of The Washington Post. Then it was New York magazine, then CBS.
Amid the mounting speculation, this week former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted: “Every piece of evidence suggests the Wuhan virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” He added: “Communist China owes the world answers.”
Pompeo has been saying this from the beginning of the pandemic.
Last week, President Joe Biden ordered an intelligence probe into the origins of COVID-19. Interestingly, CNN has revealed that a State Department inquiry launched during the Trump administration was shut down by the Biden team.
What do we know? At least that the media has shown its bias.
We also know that a joint probe carried out by the World Health Organization and China – solely by Chinese personnel essentially – made a determination in March that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely,” according to Newsweek.
British intelligence services have said that the theory of the virus being leaked from the lab is feasible.
A source close to the U.K. investigation told National Review that “There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way. The Chinese will lie either way. I don’t think we will ever know.”
Apparently, we know we may hear more lies than facts.
That is the message. This is The Messenger.
