For many months, the establishment media and the most well-known social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, have waged a campaign against anybody who dared suggest that the virus commonly referred to as COVID-19 was created – either deliberately or accidentally – in a virology lab in Wuhan, China. In recent weeks, there has been considerable backpedaling on the part of those people, including leading epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci. Many of them not only dismissed the Wuhan lab theory, but panned those who promoted it as irresponsible and even, in some cases, racist.
It was former President Donald Trump himself who led the accusations against the Chinese lab. Considering the seemingly limitless animosity felt for him by those on the left, it is perhaps not too outrageous to suggest that this theory of the origin of the virus was eviscerated so stubbornly because of that animus. Trump and many other Republicans are now claiming that their suspicions are on the verge of being confirmed, as investigations into where the global pandemic began appear to be pointing in the direction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Trump was happy to spike the ball, of course, releasing a statement that read:
"Now everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus."
Some reports suggested that the Biden administration shut down an investigation into the origin of COVID-19, begun while Trump was still in the White House. These allegations have been denied and Mr. Biden authorized a probe by his own administration which so far has, at the very least, indicated that the virus may well have escaped the lab in Wuhan.
But the 45th president isn't the only one who is feeling vindicated. On May 24, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) tweeted:
"The lab-leak hypothesis was always reasonable, but reporters & activists in white lab coats nonetheless spent the better part of a year denouncing it as a ‘conspiracy theory.’ They were wrong. But that’s not what’s most important now. What’s important is truth & accountability."
Even now, though, not everyone in the left-wing media is willing to take it on the chin and simply admit that they were either duped or knowingly deceived the American people. One reporter for The New York Times took to Twitter to suggest that it was racist to even consider the possibility that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab. Many news outlets are now running stories that try to explain why the “lab leak theory” is once again being talked about. Rather than admit that they were wrong to dismiss the theory in the first place, these media entities are trying to rationalize their rejection of it.
The one big question looming large, should this virology lab in Wuhan be confirmed as the source of the virus, is what action will be taken against the Chinese. Republicans are demanding that the communist regime be held accountable. Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote a letter to the Democrat leaders of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, demanding accountability. In part, the letter said: “In short, there is evidence the CCP started the pandemic, covered it up, and is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide.”
Whether Mr. Biden and other world leaders have the stomach to impose sanctions on China – sanctions that would deter the regime from letting loose another pandemic upon the globe, whether deliberately or accidentally – remains to be seen.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
