[link removed]

FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
Lab Leak: The Official Conspiracy Theory That Still Gets You Credit as a Free Thinker Ari Paul ([link removed])
WSJ: Time for Accountability on the Covid Lab-Leak Coverup

Mike Gallagher (Wall Street Journal, 4/15/25 ([link removed]) ) insists the "scientific elite...should have come clean about the pandemic’s laboratory origin." His evidence for such an origin? "Western intelligence agencies...favor that view, and most Americans agree."

For a while it seemed like the dubious hypothesis ([link removed]) that the virus that causes Covid did not jump from animals to humans, but was released from a Chinese lab, might be fading away. But the US government and the media are breathing new life into this zombie idea ([link removed]) , contributing to the vilification of China and undermining actual scientific research.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/15/25 ([link removed]) ), former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who previously headed the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, asserted that “Wuhan lab’s risky gain-of-function research was a giant mistake that cost millions of lives.” He offered as evidence that “Western intelligence agencies” who “initially bowed to political pressure and rejected the theory that Covid emerged from the Wuhan lab…now favor that view, and most Americans agree.”

The op-ed called not for a massive overhaul of scientific research into stopping the next pandemic, but for a domestic and international hunt for those responsible for such treachery, because the “Chinese Communist Party was permitted to bleach the crime scene.” Gallagher said:

Mr. Trump should establish a multination tribunal, akin to the International Criminal Court but with actual teeth, to investigate the origins of the virus, examining evidence of negligence or intentional misconduct, and determining the culpability of key people and institutions.


** 'Finally comes clean'
------------------------------------------------------------
NYT: We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives

"In 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic," writes Zeynep Tufekci (New York Times, 3/16/25 ([link removed]) ) they were treated like kooks and cranks." In fact, the theory got a respectful hearing from outlets like the Washington Post (4/2/20 ([link removed]) , 4/14/20 ([link removed]) ), ABC (5/3/20 ([link removed]) ) and CNN (5/3/20 ([link removed]) ); see FAIR.org (10/6/20
([link removed]) ).

Gallagher isn't alone when it comes to media outlets reheating the lab leak furor. New York Times contributing writer Zeynep Tufekci (3/16/25 ([link removed]) ) stressed that “there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab leak or proving that the virus arose from human-animal contact in that seafood market.” Her main evidence that the virus might have originated in a lab leak was the assessment of various intelligence agencies (mostly US, one German).

Tufekci (New York Times, 11/27/24 ([link removed]) ) had previously praised President Donald Trump’s appointment of Stanford health economist Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health, despite "making catastrophically wrong predictions" about the deadliness of Covid, because he “has criticized those who would silence critics of the public health establishment on a variety of topics, like the plausibility of a coronavirus lab leak.”

Tufekci’s recent column was gleefully received by right-wing media. The New York Post (3/17/25 ([link removed]) ) ​​said the Times “finally ran a column by a scientist who said the public was ‘badly misled’ about the origins of Covid-19—triggering backlash from readers who say the admission comes five years too late.” It said that Tufekci—who is a sociology professor at Princeton University, and not a medical researcher, as the Post implies—“argued that officials and scientists hid facts, misled a Times journalist and colluded on campaigns to bury the possibility of a research lab leak in Wuhan, China.”

The British conservative magazine Spectator (3/18/25 ([link removed]) ) reported on Tufekci’s piece with the headline “The New York Times Finally Comes Clean About Covid.” The subhead: “It only took the newspaper five years to acknowledge what people had said since the beginning.” Another right-wing British outlet, UnHerd (3/17/25 ([link removed]) ), also used Tufekci’s column as fodder for a “we told you so” piece.

It’s not true that Tufekci is the first at the Times to advance the lab leak hypothesis. The Times' David Leonhardt ([link removed]) promoted the concept in his widely read Morning Newsletter (5/27/21 ([link removed]) ) only about a year after the US went into shutdown mode. "Both animal-to-human transmission and the lab leak appear plausible," Leonhardt wrote. "And the obfuscation by Chinese officials means we may never know the truth."

Molecular biologist Alina Chan was more definitive in a New York Times op-ed (6/3/24 ([link removed]) ) published last year, headlined "Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in Five Key Points." Chan wrote that “a growing volume of evidence…suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China.” The essay "recapitulates the misrepresentation, selective quotation and faulty logic that has characterized so much of the pro—lab leak side of the Covid origin discourse," FAIR's Phillip Hosang (7/3/24 ([link removed]) ) wrote in response.


** Government talking points
------------------------------------------------------------
Science: House panel concludes that COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak

Science (12/3/24 ([link removed]) ): "The committee’s 520-page report...offers no new direct evidence of a lab leak, but summarizes a circumstantial case."

In another FAIR piece (4/7/23 ([link removed]) ) about corporate media pushing lab leak speculation, Joshua Cho and I noted that news and opinion pieces often cited intelligence agencies to bolster the credibility of their lab leak claims. "Readers should be asking why so many in media find government talking points on a scientific question so newsworthy," we wrote, noting that "there is a vast amount of scientific research that points to Covid spreading to humans from other animal hosts."

Less than two years later, as Trump prepared for his second inauguration, the federal government reintroduced the specter of “lab leak” when the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a report that offered “no new direct evidence of a lab leak,” but instead, according to Science (12/3/24 ([link removed]) ), offered

a circumstantial case, including that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) used NIAID money to conduct "gain-of-function" studies that modified distantly related coronaviruses.

The magazine also reported that "Democrats on the panel released their own report ([link removed]) challenging many of their colleagues’ conclusions about Covid-19 origins." The minority report noted “that the viruses studied at WIV with EcoHealth funding were too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to cause the pandemic.”

The following month, the CIA “offered a new assessment on the origin of the Covid outbreak, saying the coronavirus is ‘more likely’ to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals” (BBC, 1/25/25 ([link removed]) ). As AP (1/26/25 ([link removed]) ) noted, however, the “spy agency has ‘low confidence’ in its own conclusion.” Reuters (3/12/25 ([link removed]) ) subsequently reported, citing “a joint report” by two German outlets, Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung, that

Germany's foreign intelligence service in 2020 put at 80%–90% the likelihood that the coronavirus behind the Covid-19 pandemic was accidentally released from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.


** 'Unfounded assertions are dangerous'
------------------------------------------------------------
GCRI: Most Experts Believe Natural ZoonoticOrigin More Likely

According to a survey by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (2/24 ([link removed]) ), epidemiologists and virologists believe a natural zoonotic origin for Covid is far more likely than a lab leak.

Once again, the claims about the pandemics origin being a Chinese lab leak seem to come from Western spooks and anti-Communist zealots, not actual scientists. Yet Gallagher and Tufekci present these governmental declarations, sometimes from the same agencies ([link removed]) that brought us the Iraqi WMD hoax, as compelling evidence, seemingly more authoritative than the researchers in relevant fields who point to a zoonotic jump as Covid's most likely source.

The Journal of Virology (8/1/24 ([link removed]) ) noted that the “preponderance of scientific evidence indicates a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2." Nevertheless, the journal reported, "the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in and escaped from a lab dominates media attention, even in the absence of strong evidence.” The immunobiologists and other scientists who wrote the essay spelled out the danger of “lab leak” myth:

Despite the absence of evidence for the escape of the virus from a lab, the lab leak hypothesis receives persistent attention in the media, often without acknowledgment of the more solid evidence supporting zoonotic emergence. This discourse has inappropriately led a large portion of the general public to believe ([link removed]) that a pandemic virus arose from a Chinese lab. These unfounded assertions are dangerous…[as] they place unfounded blame and responsibility on individual scientists, which drives threats and attacks on virologists. It also stokes the flames of an anti-science, conspiracy-driven agenda, which targets science and scientists even beyond those investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The inevitable outcome is an undermining of the broader missions of science and public health and the misdirecting of resources and effort. The consequence is to leave the world more vulnerable to future pandemics, as well as
current infectious disease threats.

It is hard to believe that the world’s scientists have conspired to create research suggesting zoonotic jump (Globe and Mail, 7/28/22 ([link removed]) ; Science, 10/10/22 ([link removed]) ; PNAS, 11/10/22 ([link removed]) ; Scientific American, 3/17/23 ([link removed]) ; Nature, 12/6/24 ([link removed]) ) for the sole purpose of covering up a lab leak. The Times and Journal’s unquestioning acceptance of the lab leak hypothesis endorses it as the expense of scientific research that says otherwise, and assumes that China’s government is guilty until proven innocent.

More importantly, the goal of reviving the lab leak idea seems completely divorced from preparing for the next pandemic or protecting public health. If anything, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for scientists to guard against future viral dangers, given its many cuts to scientific and medical research (All Things Considered, 2/10/25 ([link removed]) ; STAT, 4/1/25 ([link removed]) ; Scientific American, 4/11/25 ([link removed]) ).

Recent articles giving credence to the lab leak hypothesis serve the Trump administration’s mission of reducing medical research and protections for public health, and have the side benefit for MAGA of stirring up nationalist rage against China. It's harder to understand what people genuinely interested in protecting humanity from the next pandemic get from listening to intelligence agencies rather than scientists.
Read more ([link removed])

Share this post: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Twitter"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Twitter" alt="Twitter" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Facebook"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Facebook" alt="Facebook" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Pinterest"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Pinterest" alt="Pinterest" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn" alt="LinkedIn" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Google Plus"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Google Plus" alt="Google Plus" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Instapaper"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Instapaper" alt="Instapaper" class="mc-share"></a>
​

© 2021 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up for email alerts from
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Our mailing address is:
FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING
124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201
New York, NY 10001

FAIR's Website ([link removed])

FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today ([link removed]) .

Follow us on Twitter ([link removed]) | Friend us on Facebook ([link removed])

change your preferences ([link removed])
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]
unsubscribe ([link removed]) .