Wuhan Lab Theory No Longer a Conspiracy According to Biden and the NYT

When I was covering the upcoming national elections in September, I predicted that most of the scary stories about COVID that were ubiquitous back then would dissipate if Biden was elected. The reason: It was generally agreed that the best chance of getting Trump out of office would be to scare people about the virus and blame him for “mishandling” it. That’s exactly what happened. Almost overnight, the stories printed and broadcast about the virus turned from frightening to hopeful. And last month, a senior executive at CNN admitted that the station’s policy was just that. A parallel narrative accused Trump of spreading a completely unfounded conspiracy theory when he suggested the virus might have started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – a top-security lab that allegedly performed gain-of-function research (GoFR). Now, 15 months later and six months into Biden’s first term, the “plandemic” theory is no longer a lunatic idea. It’s a genuine possibility, according to a growing number of US scientists and health officials. This should be an embarrassment for Biden and team, but his handlers have spun him a narrative that makes him the hero. Here is part of the script they wrote for him: “After I became President, in March, I had my National Security Advisor task the Intelligence Community to prepare a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” Biden said on May 26, adding that he wanted intelligence agents to “redouble” their efforts in finding the origin of the virus. “As of today,” he said, “the US Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question.” Then, quoting from their report, he said, “’While two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.’” In this NYT opinion piece, Ross Douthat acknowledges the bias in the media against the lab theory and explains why it matters. And here’s an explanation of why Biden tread lightly.