What to make of the COVID-19 lab leak theory

The COVID-19 lab leak theory, or the idea that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab in Wuhan (instead of China’s claim that it was a pathogen spillover event that arose from a wet market), seems to be the prominent discussion topic surrounding the pandemic in the corporate press these days. While the lab leak theory is definitely an important topic, it’s still secondary to the real smoking gun in this story – how China weaponized the narrative to sow global chaos.

Why did it take so long for the lab leak discussion to formally surface? Politics, mostly.

The “origin story” of COVID-19 remained a forbidden topic in the corporate press for the past 16 months, and people who brought it up on social media were often subject to permanent banishment. There were plenty of incentives *not* to bring it up. Twitter was known to ban people who pushed too hard on the lab leak theory. YouTube has an official policy banishing anyone who defies the “science” coming from the China-influenced World Health Organization. Facebook “fact checkers” dismissed the lab leak theory as false.

Discussing the idea became a major faux pas in elite circles, largely due to the political nature of its conclusions. The lab leak theory has been associated with China hawks, and most prominently, President Donald Trump, who stood by the idea over a year ago. Moreover, U.S. Government Health bureaucrats routinely dismissed the idea of a lab leak, while simultaneously brushing away allegations that they cooperated with the lab in question on high-risk research with few safeguards in place.

If the lab leak thesis is true, this implicates the Chinese government in a tremendous scandal of global proportions. It also necessitates a discussion over what China could have done to curtail the spread of the virus before it touched every corner of the globe. If U.S. intelligence reports are correct, China did not sound the alarm about the virus and inform the world about it until well over a month after “patient zero” got sick.

China has been on offense regarding the lab leak theory since the very beginning. Beijing has used its political weapons, such as the World Health Organization, in addition to its economic and trade pressure, to viciously attack any individual or entity that dares to bring up the lab leak theory in a formal setting. Beijing has used tremendous political capital to delegitimize the lab leak theory. While this does not mean China is guilty, it does make for ultra suspicious behavior.

In my opinion, the evidence for the lab leak theory remains a mixed bag. You shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a firm conclusion on this one. In the end, we may never find the true origin story of the virus is, as the people in the know will do everything in their power to make sure that information is kept out of the public eye for as long as possible. 

Another popular theory with even less hard evidence than the lab leak theory is the idea that the virus was *purposely* unleashed on the world by a cabal of global elites. This theory, positing that gain of function research resulted in a purposely released global bioweapon, has been floating around the internet for some time, and a variety of online sleuths have spent lots of energy attempting to make the case for this idea, with mixed results. It would be unfair to dismiss the idea, but in my view, it still misses the point about what has transpired over the past 16 months.

The virus was not the cause for global catastrophe. It was the response to the virus that crippled the global economy and our society. The disease was not nearly as damaging as the “cure” for the disease.

While it’s important to get to the bottom of what exactly happened in China regarding the virus itself, this does not change the fundamental nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. First and foremost, the *disease itself* is not particularly lethal. With a corrupt, shoddy testing system and an average age of death similar to our average lifespans, COVID-19, had it not been elevated to such an insane level of discourse, would have been understood as just another respiratory illness season. COVID Mania is a toothless endeavor without the information operation attached to it.

This is why the most important thing to uncover is not the origin of the virus itself, but the origin of the information operation that led to the catastrophic effects from insane policies supposedly designed to deal with the virus. I have written about this subject at length. A good starting point is my article from April, titled, “How COVID-19 became a disinformation operation wrapped in a virus.” 

We have firm, indisputable evidence that the Chinese government ran a disinformation operation attached to the virus, which did far more damage to the world in the form of spreading fear and panic across the globe. The Chinese government operation succeeded in shutting down the global economy and striking a devastating blow to China’s adversaries when they decided, based on China’s quack science recommendations, to enforce self-sabotage in the form of lockdowns, curfews, and the like. 

It’s good news that the lab leak theory is now out in the open, but this discussion must advance to the point in which we can discuss the much more deadly disinformation operation that remains attached to the virus itself.