I’ve written several times about the origin of COVID-19 but there are still no answers. What has become clear, however, is that we’ve been subjected to an organized disinformation campaign. In February of 2020 The Lancet published a letter from Charles Calisher, Dennis Carroll, Rita Cowell, Ronald Corley, Peter Daszak, Christian Drosten, and others stating that COVID-19 originated naturally through animal transmission and that the idea that the outbreak originated from a lab accident was unfounded and a conspiracy theory. They repeated these claims in another July 2021 letter to The Lancet.
It’s now become clear that this is actually the opposite of the truth. There is, in fact, no compelling scientific evidence to support the hypothesis of a natural, zoonotic origin and the idea of a lab accident is, far from being a conspiracy theory, a plausible explanation. Indeed, those with the means to know and who don’t have a vested interest in the outcome, have long believed the lab accident hypothesis a good explanation.
An article in BMJ examines the possibility that the press—an therefore all of us—were taken for a ride by an organized disinformation campaign by actors with a vested interest in denying the lab accident explanation. The Lancet letter campaign turns out to be an organized effort by Daszak and others associated with the EcoHealth Alliance who did their best to obscure their connection with EcoHealth Alliance.
This disinformation campaign even trickled down—or is it up—to Facebook and Google, both of whom spent a year censoring any content that suggested COVID-19 might have originated in the lab. You can say what you want about those who refuse to “trust the experts” but they might be onto something.