Let's help the journalists remember SARS1 (just called SARS) and other virus outbreaks we still strongly doubt came directly from a lab. Some people think HIV was lab brewed. Most don't think we had the science, let alone the motivation, to infect the world with AIDS for no good reason (Georgia Tablets?).
So then SARS2 comes along, and kills a lot of us, including lots of people in China. Tucker Carlson is quick to tie the gain of function lab leak thesis to some nefarious plotting on the part of the Communists. John Birchy stuff.
Maybe true. Every party has its share of severely retarded (mentally challenged) people. "The Chinese wanted to hurt the western economy" -- what a dumb way to go about doing it, if so, and what a dumb goal in the first place, as it's all one planetary economy (ecosystem). Most Chinese know that, no?
Much more likely, if we go with a lab leak narrative, is that it was accidental. This wasn't anthrax mailed from a DC based biolab. This wasn't some nerve agent from the USSR, used to go after Britons. This was the kind of thing that happens in Andromeda Strain (science fiction by Michael Crichton, 1969) when someone gets sloppy, or some piece of equipment fails.
Hollywood could make this movie easily. A room depressurizes. Sirens go off. Lights flash. Someone gets sick. Then more people get sick...
So then do we say "the Chinese" accidentally released the "China virus"? We could. Many do.
We could also say "the virologists" released an "artificial virus" (not occurring in nature) by mistake. Virologists have shown themselves to be reckless in other instances. That these virologists happened to be Chinese in China doesn't matter, or doesn't have to. The funding was international, we already know that, as is the subculture of virology.
What looks so suspicious from Tucker's point of view is that a certain database went off line, after certain lab faculty disappeared from pubic view.
Did the take down of the database seriously impede the world's response? Was this all part of the plot?
Given an accidental spill would likely result in a coverup, to forestall possible retaliation or other unpredictable actions, removing all traces of the experiment might have been step one in the wake of the spread. That's not a science minded response, but we do not live in a science minded world. Pointing the finger at innocent animals, such as pangolins, is always easier than owning up to a major error.
However, virologists have gotten good at sequencing. Lots of labs were working with coronaviruses (one of the most common kind) including, we think, in Ukraine, with its share of big pharma biolabs and nearby human guinea pigs.
Sequencing an isolated virus specimen is not hard. The mRNA technology was ready to roll. The virus RNA was easily reverse engineered. Piece of cake.
So we might speculate that virologists added a little hook to a SARS coronavirus to make a version 2.0, which they then accidentally lost control of, in a lab in China.
That makes Chinese the victims, who by and large did their best to contain the spread, and by extension the rest of the world.
The new virus could have just as easily started in Ukraine, or in DC.
So say it started in China. Does that make it all a Communist plot? Maybe it does, if you're Tucker minded.
