It’s been a while since I’ve written about the lab leak hypothesis and the continuing cover-up by everyone involved. If I put on my scientist’s hat, the only possible conclusion is what it’s always been: the evidence is inconclusive but a lab leak is a reasonable—some say the most reasonable—explanation. But when I put on my non-expert but reasonably informed and logical citizen hat, the conclusion is inescapable: the cause of COVID-19 was almost certainly a lab leak.
I had thought that after the original, furious denial by the virologists involved that any explanation other than a Zoonotic one was possible and that anything else was a conspiracy theory, that opinion had converged on a dual hypothesis of either a lab leak or zoonotic explanation. But apparently not.
Matt Ridley and Alina Chan wrote an even handed book about the origin of COVID-19 called Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. The book looked at the evidence scientifically and reached the usual conclusion: both explanations were reasonable and deserved more investigation. That seems like the current conventional wisdom but the reaction to the book suggests not. Scheduled interviews about the book were cancelled and the book was met with what can only be called intellectually dishonest reviews.
This is why the well informed, logical man on the street is justified in being suspicious. The people involved not only don’t want to discuss the issue, they don’t want anyone to discuss it. So the alert man on the street is entitled to ask, “What’s going on here?”
If, like me, you’re a fan of mystery stories, you know that one of the first things a detective will ask when faced with an unknown perpetrator is cui bono. It’s clear who benefits from the continuing proscription of discussion: China, the government officials who championed and funded gain-of-function research, and most of all, of course, the virologists whose careers are built around this research. Not surprisingly, these are the very people doing everything they can to discourage discussing the origin of COVID-19.
The issue and the machinations surrounding it have a political aspect but Irreal, of course, doesn’t care about that. I care only that we put a stop to this irresponsible research before they manage to kill us all.
