Thread by @Robert_E_Kelly

I keep reading that the media blew the origins of covid story by not listening to Trump & co. saying it escaped from a lab.

Yes, but in only barest possible way.

MAGA’s ‘reasoning’ for the lab origin claim last year was entirely motivated, political,

nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opi…

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and non-evidentiary. Hence, there was no reason to believe them. They were guessing conveniently. And don’t say they couldn’t reveal the evidence. Opportunistic Trumpers had no inhibitions about leaking.

Cotton, Pompeo, and the rest were looking to shift the blame for Trump’s

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disastrous response, and they grasped anything they could find. Worse, all had a long history of lying and racism, provided no evidence, and clearly knew almost nothing about epidemiology or China.

So again, there was no reason to believe MAGA last year, and a lot of legacy

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reasons not to: unparalleled lying, science denialism, Trump flunkeyism, racism, rank opportunism, staggering incompetence, etc.

Last year, when other origin theories were more credible, you would have been foolish to believe Trump & co. with their deficit of evidence and

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surfeit of Trump groveling.

So yes, they may turn out to be right. But if so, it’s for the same reason a stopped clock is right twice a day, or an astrologer makes a randomly accurate prediction.

@FukuyamaFrancis is far better on this than Douthat: americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/…

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Even if the lab leak theory is proven right, that doesn’t mean journalists were wrong to mostly dismiss it last year. It is anachronistically unfair to judge 2020 decisions by 2021 information (which won’t stop Fox from doing this of course).

Given the deluge of corona

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disinformation and absurdity coming from MAGA sources last year, it was the right choice – in an environment of low information – to preemptively distrust politically convenient theories from well-established liars.

I.e., even if journalism's dismissal of the lab leak theory

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is eventually demonstrated to be incorrect, IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE AT THE TIME given all the other ridiculous, grasping-at-straws corona ideas promoted by totally un-credible sources like Hannity or Rush.

Most of that stuff was obviously wrong, so the lab leak theory,

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barring any evidence, was just one more absurdity in a long list, including:

- corona is a bioweapon
- corona is no different than the flu
- corona will ‘miraculously go away’
- PPE shortages are fake news
- masks don’t work
- Fauci & Birx r deep state Democratic apparatchiks

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- hydroxychloroquine is a silver bullet
- drinking bleach might help
- injecting sunlight might help
- Jared Kushner and his business school pals will ‘make their own calculations’ and wrap this up right quick
- Scott Atlas is not a quack
- Richard Epstein is not a quack

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- the demon sperm doctor is not a quack
- we should just ‘take the hit’ to get to herd immunity quickly
- we should just let old people get corona in order to not hurt the economy

If Trump and MAGA had provided evidence for the lab leak, that would have been different. But

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they didn't. They threw it out there solely to muddy the waters along with a host of other nutball ideas, all to get Trump off the hook from flubbing the response. The entire thing was political. There was no science or method at all.

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