Lab Leak Theory of Coronavirus: STILL NUTS

May I suggest looking at the revolting Chinese wet markets?

As I explained back in May, 2020, the “lab leak” theory for the origin of the coronavirus is almost certainly false.  It is also pernicious because it prevents us from taking steps to prevent the next worldwide pandemic of a deadly virus, to wit: DEMAND THAT THE CHINESE SHUT DOWN THE DISGUSTING WET MARKETS.

Failing that, how about we reconsider the mass immigration to our country of primitive people with sanitary practices so disgusting that they are capable of igniting a worldwide pandemic?

Mmm, tasty!

The four main points in my May 2020 column were:

1)    “Chinese people eat bats, dogs, civet cats and live octopuses, as well as a variety of endangered species, which are sold at wet markets, jam-packed with wildlife being slaughtered on site in breathtakingly unsanitary conditions. Among the “high-risk” behaviors at wet markets cited by the National Institutes of Health, shoppers “[blow] the cloacae of chickens” to “examine their healthiness.” (Look it up.)”

2)    “At least a half-dozen other animal-to-human viruses have come from the wet markets.”

3)    “Scientists have been warning us for decades: THE NEXT VIRAL PANDEMIC WILL COME FROM THE CHINESE WET MARKETS!  That doesn’t prove that this particular virus came from the wet markets, but it doesn’t sound like a case for Jessica Fletcher.”

4)    “Twenty-seven of the original 41 Chinese people who came down with COVID-19 had been to the Wuhan wet market. Several others were family members of those infected at the wet market.” 

https://anncoulter.com/2020/05/06/lab-theory-of-wuhan-virus-cooked-up-in-a-neocon-lab-2/

Since then, the evidence has continued to pour in against the lab leak theory and for the Wuhan wet market theory.

In a December book review of the book, “Viral,” pushing the lab leak conspiracy theory, The New Republic’s Lindsay Beyerstein notes that the authors main support comes not from “virologists or epidemiologists but, rather, a group of self-styled internet sleuths known as Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19, or DRASTIC.”

That’s just for openers.  She then cites three crucial pieces of new evidence favoring the wet market origin:

—  Contrary to the oft-stated claim of the lab leak proponents that nothing like the covid virus exists in nature, nor could it develop on its own by natural selection, newly discovered wild bat viruses from Laos disprove both those claims.  The Laos bat viruses are more genetically similar to the covid virus than any previously known virus; they are directly infectious to humans; and they use the exact same mechanism to infect humans as the Covid-19 virus. 

—  It has now been established “beyond a reasonable doubt” that live exotic animals sold at the Wuhan wet market in November 2019 included several animals know to carry SARS-like coronaviruses, including raccoon dogs, hog badgers, and Siberian weasels.

—  The first documented covid case was long believed to be in an accountant with no connection to the Wuhan wet market.  

Puzzling!  But – oops – it turns out the first provable case of covid was in … a vendor at the Wuhan wet market.

WHY IT MATTERS.

Besides the truth mattering for its own sake (and it’s never good for right-wingers to look nuts), the lab leak theory is just another cowardly conservative version of ALL CULTURES ARE THE SAME!  We can assimilate racoon anus-eaters as well as we can a Frenchman!

 Here, I’ll quote Takimag’s David Cole:

“The wet-market origin makes the Chinese more culpable. Lab accidents happen in civilized nations; wet markets don’t. The wet-market origin is uniquely Chinese and uniquely Third World. Vice is already arguing for federal hate-crimes charges for anyone who publicly tars Chinese culinary practices, and at least one police department has suggested it might make arrests to that effect. …

“The popularity of [the lab leak theory] on the right demonstrates that even among immigration hawks, there’s still a huge reluctance to blame “a people” or make value judgments about cultures and ethnicities. … Values-neutral nativism is a fool’s quest. If the West isn’t superior and the Third World inferior, if no one is primitive and nothing is barbaric, if it’s always the government and never the people, then why restrict immigration? To protect jobs? Okay, then what’ll your reason be once the economy recovers?”