Speaker 1: Hey, I want to call your attention to something maybe you forgot about.
Does everybody remember when a few months ago the corporate media decided that now we
have to talk about the lab leak theory of covid and we all have to say, hey, could it
have been made in a Chinese laboratory as a bioweapon?
Could it accidentally have leaked from the lab?
And of course, some of us like me had all along been saying the exact same thing, investigate
everything.
Why would we, without investigating, say something is true or isn't true?
Let's let's investigate the origins of covid.
But until we have evidence that it came from a lab or was deliberately made and released
as a bioweapon, until we have evidence for that, it would be irresponsible to suggest
that that is likely.
And that's what I said in twenty twenty and that's what I said in early twenty, twenty
one.
And it's what I said a few months ago when the story was raging.
But for some reason a few months ago, the story was everywhere in the media and it was
framed as why are some like Dr. Foushee and the Left, whoever?
Why are people covering up and preventing an investigation into the lab leak theory?
Now, the reality was just about everybody was saying, sure, investigated.
Look into it, but we just don't have evidence right now that that's actually what took place.
But the cover up hypothesis is prototypical of how you generate more media interest.
You not only float an idea, but you claim that the idea is being suppressed, that the
idea is being covered up.
And this actually worked because a couple of months ago, members of the media actually
started asking Joe Biden and Biden administration officials about it.
They would ask Jen Psaki in the press briefing room.
Jen, does the Biden administration oppose investigating what the origins?
No, no, it doesn't oppose.
We're fine with an investigation.
I think it was Peter Steve Doocy, Peter Doocy, who asked Joe Biden about it, and Joe Biden
said investigate, go ahead and investigate.
And just about everybody was saying, we don't rule out anything.
Let's find out.
But we don't yet have evidence that that's the case.
Now, here's the really important part in understanding these media cycles.
When this bubbled up a couple of months ago and Joe Biden was asked about it and so was
Jen Psaki, there was no new evidence at that time that would make us say this now looks
much more likely.
So let's ask about it.
It came in and then it suddenly went away and it became a nonstory.
It may come back again.
At no point was there really any reason to think that covid was a bioweapon that came
from a lab.
It's just the perfect prototypical example of how something becomes a story in the media.
And then just as quickly the story goes away and we don't even really understand why.
And this was the case all along.
And then very quietly, a few days ago, we got a new report published written about in
Nature which explains that, quote, The intelligence investigation is inconclusive on virus's origins,
but finds it wasn't weaponized and it is unlikely to have been engineered, according to the
declassified key takeaways issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and
the intelligence community.
More broadly, it's been assessed that the covid virus likely first appeared in Wuhan
no later than November of twenty nineteen, emerged without the knowledge of Chinese authorities
and was not developed as a bioweapon.
Most agencies also agreed, though with low confidence, that it was probably not genetically
engineered, although to an agency's believe we don't yet have enough evidence to say for
sure.
So when you read it, if you read it with the conspiratorial mind, you say this is part
of the cover up.
There's sort of not closing the door completely to the possibility.
But but if you actually look at it for what it is, understand that for a very long time
there was fear, uncertainty and doubt generated around the idea that the true origins were
being covered up.
The truth is, we never had evidence to believe that this was bioengineered or leaked from
a lab or released as a bioweapon.
We didn't have evidence for that.
We couldn't rule it out.
Sometimes in science, you can't rule things out, but you don't have evidence for them
that allowed for people to weaponize the hypothesis, to attack others, to claim that there were
bad liberal people lying and covering this up.
And I am still open to the possibility that this was being studied and it leaked or whatever.
I don't think we should put any kind of limitation on studying it, but we don't have evidence
for it.
And it's very similar to the use of the migrant caravanned stories or stories of Middle Eastern
terrorists coming through the US Mexico border.
All these things are physically possible.
They're theoretically possible someone could go from the Middle East to Guatemala and then
come to Mexico and physically cross the US Mexico border.
We don't actually have evidence that that's going on.
And there's this churn of unverifiable, rage inducing propaganda.
There are legitimate questions about the exact chemistry of the Wuhan's strains and about
events at the Wuhan lab.
It's been discussed in reputable media.
Let's investigate it.
There is no reason right now to think that it came from a lab just like before.
So how much are we going to sort of repeat the same story absent that evidence?
Now, one other thing.
There's another important thing.
When people say this is being discussed everywhere online, like how is this not a serious story?
The discussion online is biased towards controversy and conspiracy.
You just have to understand that.
And that's important when we talk about the baseline of a lot of these discussions.
But the perfect example, the story came two months ago and then it went.
And we still don't have more evidence that any of those hypotheses are true