COVID VINDICATION
Talk about hedging your bets. The new report out of the federal Energy Department wasn’t exactly damning, now was it? It read more like an American newspaper editorial. On the one hand this, on the other hand that.
But U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton ought to feel vindicated.
The Energy Department says it has “concluded” that an accidental laboratory leak in China “most likely” caused the COVID-19 pandemic “although U.S. spy agencies remain divided.”
More hedging: Some officials say the intel is weak, and the conclusion was made with “low confidence.” Other agencies have not come to that conclusion, although the FBI is on board.
Finding the cause of the pandemic, with high confidence, might never happen. The ChiComs aren’t cooperating.
But with the Energy Department and the FBI leaning toward the lab theory, at least there are actual official memos being passed around in Washington about the matter, which is no longer being dismissed, officially, as a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Which reminds us of 2021, when a U.S. senator from Arkansas was being mauled, figuratively, over his thoughts about a possible lab leak. Somewhere this morning, Sen. Cotton must be smiling. And we can’t resist the temptation to repeat this editorial from Oct. 3, 2021, found below, minus a little editing:
“Some of us are old enough to remember when Tom Cotton was called a crazy man for suggesting that the COVID-19 virus might have come from a lab in China.
“Just because the place where the virus was first spotted — Wuhan, China — also has the well-known Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory facility, and just because it researches dangerous pathogens, and just because it’s near a market where scientists think the virus may have first appeared in humans, doesn’t mean it didn’t jump from a bat. Or something.
“Word came earlier last week that the World Health Organization is restarting its investigation to find the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Experts say the trail is growing cold, and time is running out …
“The ChiComs on the Chinese mainland don’t want to be the focus of this investigation. They insist that the investigation dilutes resources by focusing some of the questions on the United States and other countries, who might have sneaked into China in the dead of night to release this virus that has killed nearly 5 million people worldwide. [Seven million as of early 2024.]
“Now that’s a conspiracy theory. But one so unbelievable that perhaps the only people who would suggest it would be on state media controlled by CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, not to be confused with the late and unlamented CCCP, as in the former Soviet Union. Although the two are close cousins.
“The new WHO team will look into whether this virus could have come from a lab. So it’s gone from what The Washington Post called a ‘fringe theory’ in February of last year to a real focus of a UN investigation in only a year and a half.
“It’s hopeful, but doubtful, that the new investigation will have more luck than the previous one. Earlier this year, the WHO visited Wuhan, but the Red Chinese were so unhelpful that investigators walked away without having solved anything. And the new team doesn’t even have permission to visit China yet. Much less visit Wuhan … and ask fresh questions of officials there.
“Whether the WHO can insist is also doubtful. It has as much muscle as any other United Nations committee. But the United States and the rest of the free world can insist on some answers and real data. We’d like to know if this could happen again.
“Well, we already know it could happen again. [We’d] like to know the odds. And whether the ChiComs have learned anything about laboratory security yet.”