Fear-mongering efforts to greatly compromise constitutional liberties during the COVID pandemic have often been justified in the name of “real science.” Seemingly every issue today is politicized, revealing that mechanical “scientific” thinking does not shield one from dishonesty and abuse.
Recent revelations about COVID-19 have arisen from both the left and the right, and together they reflect a nonpartisan recognition that the “real science” proves COVID-19 was, without question, man-made. It was developed in a Wuhan laboratory, interconnected with the Chinese military, financed significantly with United States government grant funding, and covered up by American bureaucrats with conflicts of interest.
An extensive expose by left-leaning Vanity Fair links the genetic footprint of the COVID-19 virus to an infection of humans excavating bat guano in Mojiang mine in China, and also directly to the DNA signature of a virus developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Concurrently, the conservative Wall Street Journal (previously booted from China for asking hard questions about WIV) printed a strong argument that this same genetic footprint could only have been produced in a laboratory. This smoking gun has been proven by “real science” — the politicians and special interests tapping millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers for “gain-of-function” bioweapons research have used a political smokescreen to block the world from learning the truth of the origin of COVID-19. That origin is a Frankensteinian Chinese lab funded by U.S. taxpayers despite warnings of extreme danger of creating a superbug.
The Vanity Fair article meticulously tells the entire tale, which spans both the Obama and Trump administrations (it’s hard to blame either without the other). But that’s worth noting — the graft of big money and well-positioned bureaucrats with conflicts of interest (assisted by a biased liberal mainstream media) transcended government regulatory and investigatory agencies commissioned to protect the public from harm during a “once-in-a-century” pandemic. As Vanity Fair describes:
Lab-leak talk was mostly confined to right-wing news outlets through April, gleefully flogged by Tucker Carlson and studiously avoided by most of the mainstream media. In Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Republican minority had launched its own inquiry, but there was little buy-in from Democrats and the NIH didn’t provide responses to its lengthy list of demands for information.
Underneath the partisan bickering over the true source of the WIV virus is a much deeper problem not discussed much: why is the United States investing taxpayer dollars into efforts to create pathogens that can wipe out humanity through “gain-in-function” technologies. Many esteemed scientists tried to warn the world about the risks of exactly this type of scenario, yet they were ignored, and now those responsible for creating this pandemic with “real science” have lied assiduously to evade accountability. Will the merit or morality of “gain-in-function” research ever be assessable without the clouding moral lenses of human, individual and nationalist biases and errors? The human race rather counts on it.
This raises further moral questions that “real science” can never answer: If government cannot be trusted not to invest in Chinese labs to seed genocide through unfathomably dangerous genetic tinkering, can it be trusted to do the following:
- honestly report on COVID deaths?
- prohibit hydroxychloroquine or antibody testing?
- protect health care workers with proper PPE?
- tell the truth about the efficacy of masks?
- decide what businesses and individuals should do in response?
- produce a vaccine for which more billions were spent, to yet more tech companies, insulated from liability?
- tell the truth about adverse vaccine reactions, or other effects?
- report flu deaths accurately?
- assert that unvaccinated people should be marginalized and stigmatized?
- implement race-based preferences and discrimination in schools to counter past discrimination?
- balance a budget?
What of leaders in Vermont who have aped the mainstream media’s dishonesty about the origin of COVID-19, favoring the anti-Trump narrative that the disease developed from a “natural” transmission from bats to humans, and portraying any other theories as racist and hateful? This dangerous and irresponsible bias was repeatedly couched in arguments invoking “real science,” when it is clear that science was abused from beginning to end by errant humans with corrupt motives. Lancet magazine was strongly implicated in the cover-up — so much for the integrity of science.
If the mainstream media is now also proven complicit in this unconscionable failure, the same list of questions above can be asked once again with regard to the trustworthiness of today’s journalism. Given this epic failure, it would be welcome if government bureaucrats and mainstream media reporters could attempt a little gain-in-function of their own competence.
Citizens have good cause to distrust government competence to research the creation of new deadly viruses (as most every science fiction movie also affirms). As Harvard University’s Marc Lipsitch noted well before the current pandemic: “Enhancing potential pandemic pathogens in this manner is simply not worth the risk.”
The problem with “real science” is that humans can never be trusted with it.