Congrats to all the normal people without fancy degrees who knew this based on common sense in 2020.
I was told repeatedly that this was xenophobic and irresponsible: In fact, Not the Bee was barred by Twitter 1.0, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google from posting the suggestion that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had anything to do with Covid!
And we weren't the only ones who were criticized and deplatformed.
From WaPo in February 2020:
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) repeated a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.
...
In response to Cotton's remarks, as well as in previous interviews with The Washington Post, numerous experts dismissed the possibility the coronavirus may be man-made.
That's what we were all treated to - a barrage of propaganda laced with the word "experts" to squash discussion or dissent.
I haven't forgotten that. I hope you haven't either.
Skip forward to January 2025, per The New York Times:
There is no new intelligence behind the agency's shift. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.
The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency's work.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, questions have swirled around whether the two labs handling coronaviruses in Wuhan had followed safety protocols strictly enough.
The agency made its new assessment with 'low confidence,' which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information.
Let's not pretend the NYT is free of blame here when it comes to the Clown Awards:
I look forward to sometime in the 2030s when the "experts" at the government spy agencies conclude what your homeschooled grandma knew in early 2020.
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