The crazy conspiracy that wasn’t | Editorials | newspressnow.com

Blind squirrel and broken clock, meet Tom Cotton.

The U.S. senator from Arkansas ran afoul of the media fact-checking machine for comments he made way back when the coronavirus was still an emerging story. He suggested, on Twitter and in Senate hearings, that the Chinese government was lying about the severity of the outbreak and that the coronavirus did not originate in a seafood market located in Wuhan, China.

He also noted that Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, is the location of a laboratory that works with deadly pathogens. Matthew Yglesias, in a widely read blog post, notes that these statements were accurate and based on reporting from respected publications, like the Lancet.

Then it all unraveled. Conspiracy theorists, possibly confusing correlation with causation, ran with the story that China engineered the virus and unleashed it on the world. Some even threw in Barack Obama somehow.

For the mainstream media, the recoil was strong. The “lab leak” theory became “discredited” and “debunked.” It’s tidy language that congers up aliens in Roswell, human trafficking at pizza restaurants and the MyPillow Guy’s fever dreams.

It’s also lazy. Some conspiracy theories contain an element of truth or at least some nuance that needs explaining. Such is the case with the origins of the coronavirus. The epidemic was first detected in a Chinese city that has both live animal markets and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We don’t yet know how it all started, let alone if there was malicious intent or a bureaucratic cover-up of a terrible accident. China has resisted full disclosure and cooperation on the investigation.

The lab leak was supposed to go away, a fringe theory. So imagine the surprise of debunkers when the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers at the lab were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November of 2019 before the first known cases came to light in Wuhan. Imagine the shock when Dr. Anthony Fauci told a Senate committee that the possibility of a lab leak exists and he’d like to know more.

Now the Senate has approved legislation from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley that would declassify U.S. intelligence on the Wuhan lab within 90 days. It’s worth a shot. We may never get to the bottom of what started this pandemic, but we could all use a little more honesty and humility about what we know and don’t know.

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