LOL:
WaPo: The new mask guidance relies on an honor system. Do we trust each other enough to make it work?
https://archive.ph/Rc7bv https://mtracey.substack.com/p/as-new-evidence-emerges-for-covid
7 May 2021 20:43:49 UTC
As New Evidence Emerges For COVID "Lab-Leak" Theory, Journalists Who Screamed “Conspiracy” Humiliate Themselves
Michael Tracey 3 hr ago
I asked numerous journalists who authored these stories for comment on whether they stand by their over-assured denunciations from early 2020 of this supposed “conspiracy theory,” which according to them had been “debunked.” None replied to me in time for the publication of this Substack item. (If that changes, I will update the post.) However, the author of the Washington Post article, Paulina Firozi, did reply in the sense that she disabled her ability to receive DMs shortly after I messaged her on Twitter:
This is all the more ironic in the case of the Washington Post, whose editorial board on April 30 called for a new investigation into the origin of the virus, including into “the possibility of a laboratory leak.” Which is the exact same “possibility” Cotton was decried by the Washington Post as a debunked conspiracy theorist for raising last year. Columnist Josh Rogin also just published an article May 6 lauding congressional investigations into the lab-leak theory.
The New York Times pulled a similar routine by parroting the “conspiracy theory” label, as though that’s the be-all-end-all and no further inquiry on the subject was required:
Unfortunately, I’ve received no reply from Alexandra Stevenson.
The Daily Beast was as pathetic as usual, with Executive Editor Tracy Connor lambasting Cotton for having “amplified a debunked conspiracy theory about the origin of the coronavirus outbreak.”
Tracy Connor sadly has not replied to my email.
The cratering and staff-shedding HuffPost had been hot on Cotton’s trail for some time vis-a-vis the COVID “panic” they claimed he was shamefully stoking. Here’s an incredible-in-hindsight article from January 2020 lashing into Cotton:
Unchastened by this humiliation, HuffPost persisted in mocking Cotton:
It’s truly amazing that HuffPost writer Mary Papenfuss possessed the copious scientific knowledge required to dismiss the lab-leak theory as a “debunked conspiracy” in February 2020. Perhaps she ought to consider a career change and become an epidemiological fortune-teller of some sort. I’m devastated to report that she also has not responded to my query.
It goes on and on. Here’s the Guardian’s masterful summary in April:
“Virus conspiracy.” Just stated as fact over and over again. In keeping with the pattern, I’ve gotten no response from Martin Pengelly.
Here’s the Kaiser Family Foundation’s news page — which you might have wrongly suspected would have higher standards on this subject area — dutifully repeating the “conspiracy” mantra:
Notably, these media reports are all indistinguishable from the take proffered by Democratic Party propaganda organ Media Matters:
Media Matters @mmfa
Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo and Sen. Tom Cotton keep pushing coronavirus conspiracy theory about coronavirus and a bioweapons laboratory Cotton cited a study by the Lancet. Lancet a month ago denounced the misuse of its study to push the conspiracy theory Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo and Sen. Tom Cotton keep pushing coronavirus conspiracy theory mediamatters. org
March 30th 2020
A number of factors likely contributed to these journalists proclaiming hard-and-fast certainty about this issue, despite having no grounds for such certainty. Many likely thought they were heroically combating anti-Asian xenophobia by dismissing a theory that could’ve assigned some measure of culpability to Chinese state authorities for the origination and spread of the virus, although it’s unclear why this should have implicated individual Chinese-Americans. Either way, lying or misrepresenting stuff in the name of combating xenophobia can’t be justified journalistically, and is liable to backfire anyway.
The greatest victory the international inteligence spooks pulled off is damning the idea of a conspiracy. For every one "The earth is flat" and "tap water lobotomizes the brain", there's a few "What if government officials were friends with arms manufacturers" and "Hey I'm not so sure I like there being a massive database of my search history and viewing habits in a big server"
But it was (is) a conspiracy.
If it leaked unintentionally because of the incompetence of Chinese scientists, that isn't a conspiracy
China is evil, not stupid.
I think if it wasn’t intended for this purpose, it’s fulfilled a lot of other desires the CCP had for the world.
The Dark timeline is dark. :/
This seems likely. Its not deadly enough for it to be an effective bioweapon, and only kills those that qould be weak to a flu anyways.
I'd wager it was just an experiment that leaked, poorly contained and then exploited for global gains.
20 years ago I worked around people at the DOD who thought that we should be engineering bioweapons for economic warfare. And if you looked at what the requirements were compared to what just happened...
You want something that is highly infectious, that can overwhelm medical systems, but not kill enough people to justify the nukes flying in retaliation.
It doesn't really matter if it was engineered specifically to be a bioweapons, but, however it got out, they certainly weaponized it once it was in the wild and the results are as good as it gets.
Don’t forget they claimed to have borderline eradicated it as of last Summer or some shit AND that like no one in the Chinese military ever caught it through like last Spring.
I don't think it's lethal enough to be a bioweapon.
However, people seem to have forgotten a story that came out early on about it having HIV-like features. I can definitely believe they were building a bioweapon and it escaped before it was ready.
Or alternately, the real effects of it haven't been seen yet. If the whole fucking world has AIDS in five years based on this, that'll be a true apocalypse.
Cover up is.
the leak was an accident, the response wasn't.
they let it get out so they weren't the only ones to suffer.
Epstein and harvey weinstein were conspiracy theories..........
Everything is a conspiracy theory, because it's easy to dismiss things as lunacy. Of course, when it comes to light that it is true, the narrative is re-written to "oh, everyone knew that!" or "how could it not be?" like in the Snowden case, and the cycle repeats again for the next one. There's really no winning in this.
Until lots of people get fired and horrible companies like NYT, WaPo, Daily Beast and Guardian go bankrupt.
I hope the great media collapse happens soon.
Why would they get fired for succeeding at their task(propaganda)?
People keep making the mistake of thinking that media's goal is to make money rather than brainwash the masses.
We can only hope for bad publicity and falling readership.
Always rag on the media.
2020 was the year that mainstream journalists beclowned themselves