Virus released from a Chinese laboratory: our liberal media “discover” the hypothesis silenced and mocked for months
January 6th is approaching and Linkiesta finally has her epiphany . The online newspaper directed by Christian Rocca yesterday published an editorial article in which it refers for the first time to the hypothesis that the Chinese coronavirus does not come from the Wuhan fish market but is, in fact, the result of an accidental escape from one of the laboratories of the epicenter city of the pandemic. The anonymous author of the piece cites a brilliant journalistic investigation by New York Magazine (in the person of Nicholson Baker), whose full reading I highly recommend. Baker spent months between interviews with experts and consulting scientific documents to come to the conclusion that the “ taboo theory ” ( Linkiesta dixit ) of the pathogen's unnatural origin is far from unlikely. And the simplest solution, according to Baker is this:
It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a lab and eventually came out. Sars-CoV-2 , the virus that caused Covid-19 , began its existence inside a bat, then learned to infect people in a claustrophobic mine shaft, and was then made more contagious in one or more laboratories, perhaps as part of a scientist's well-meaning but risky effort to create a broad-spectrum vaccine.
It's still:
The hitherto dominant thesis that a bat with the coronavirus has infected another creature (some say a pangolin) and that this creature already sick with a different coronavirus disease has in turn acted as a living shaker by combining these two strains into one would be hardly credible. new disease.
The regular readers of Atlantico Quotidiano have known for some time, however, that " the hitherto dominant thesis " had been questioned several times by various American, Australian and even Chinese virological experts, as well as by some prestigious newspapers whose tendency is certainly not reactionary or conspiratorial, such as the Washington Post . All in the absolute silence not only of Linkiesta but of almost all of the Italian press that did not consider it appropriate and necessary, in nine long months of hammering on Covid-19 , to ask a few questions about the real great unknown of this planetary tragedy: what is it the real origin of the pandemic.
Indeed, those who wanted to ask this question and look for some answers to propose it to their readers were generally greeted by an opinionated silence, if not by the explicit derision and the habitual ostracism in the caste-like corporatism that dominates Italian journalism. : the usual anti-Chinese Trumpians, amateurs in the fray. But the pseudo-progressive habit of accepting official truths (even those of dictators) and discrediting the work of the non-aligned is hard to die, even when reality finally assails you. And Linkiesta already falls back into the first lines of the anonymous article when, to justify the journalistic hole, he suggests that the escape from a Wuhan laboratory was " a suggestion on the lips of all bar commentators ", considered by public opinion " Like yet another conspiracy theory ". The public opinion is obviously the de Linkiesta journalists (in large company, by the way).
Still, I don't remember having set foot in any bar (there was a lockdown , it must be because of that) while I was documenting for days before writing the first piece on the origin of the virus, published by Atlantico Quotidiano last April 6. , the title of which read: " Too many dead to trust Beijing: this is why we cannot exclude that the Wuhan Virus has come out of Chinese laboratories ". We like to be clear in the exposition. If you read carefully, you could already find most of the information that was revealed to the de Linkiesta editorial staff only yesterday: doubts about how the bats from the caves of Yunnan and Zhejiang arrived at the Wuhan fish market, the impossibility to confirm the existence of an intermediate host (the famous pangolin), what they were and what experiments the two main biological laboratories in Wuhan were carrying out on coronaviruses , the existence of previous incidents with pathogens, the hypothesis of accidental escape proposed by Chinese researchers Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao in a document later classified, and much more.
Not that the undersigned is Sherlock Holmes: it was enough to want to read, compare the sources, consult the maps, put together the data and the opinions of the experts, to come to the conclusion that the official version of Beijing was not the only one possible. A few days later, on April 15, Federico Punzi returned to the subject , underlining the doubts of the US administration on the security systems of the laboratories in question, according to what was reported in the Washington Post by analyst Josh Rogin, and concluding:
“The idea that it was a completely natural event is circumstantial. The evidence that he came out of the laboratory is also circumstantial ”, but at this moment, the official heard by Rogin reiterates, on the side of the latter hypothesis there is a list of points, on the other side almost nothing.
On April 17 we kept the point by providing further details on the investigations of American intelligence , while on April 23 Marco Cesario dwelled in great detail on the Franco-Chinese joint venture at the origin of the Wuhan Institute of Virology . Four insights in two weeks, while the mainstream media was busy following the arrival of aid from China. Then there is the crazy story of Li-Meng Yan, the virologist forced to flee to the United States after denouncing the Chinese government cover-up and then censored by Twitter precisely for postulating the artificial origin of the coronavirus . Here too, press silence. In short, to be just " bar " talk there was a lot of information available on the net, to want to study it.
However, I would be ungenerous with the pro-Chinese editorial staff of Il Manifesto if I did not recognize that on May 6 the communist newspaper published a piece signed by Andrea Capocci in which it dealt with the problem of the Wuhan laboratories. Only that he did it to wrongly attribute to Trump the claim that the coronavirus had been " created " in Chinese research centers: hoax, conspiracy theory, pseudo-scientific theories. Too bad that the American administration had never suggested this hypothesis but, as already explained, only that of the accidental leak . A few days earlier, the poet of Chineseness in Italy, Simone Pieranni (also Il Manifesto ), had insinuated with the same words (thus referring to " creation ") to the microphones of Radio Rai the anti-Trumpian hoax (yes, yes), without the interviewer denied it.
A conspiracy of silence by the Italian press? It would be assuming too much. Simply an ideological reflex never extinguished (in the aforementioned case) and a no less worrying intellectual laziness combined with a certain awe in criticizing the great Chinese manipulator (in the other cases), whose immoral suasion is now taken for granted in most editorial offices. Italian. How else to explain that the expert in Asian things of Il Foglio , the good Giulia Pompili, able to range with ease from Korean cinema, to the Euro-Chinese summits, to the consistency of spring rolls, has not found the time to reserve, if not to dismiss it hastily , I am not saying an in-depth article but not even a miserable tweet about an issue to which – not the amateurs at the fray of Atlantico Quotidiano (those are not mentioned by definition) – but the prestigious New York Magazine has finally decided to dedicate a cover story? They say that time is a gentleman. We sit and wait. Meanwhile, we continue to work.
The post Virus released from a Chinese laboratory: the Italian liberal media “discover” the hypothesis silenced and mocked for months appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/virus-uscito-da-un-laboratorio-cinese-i-media-liberal-nostrani-scoprono-lipotesi-silenziata-e-dileggiata-per-mesi/ on Wed, 06 Jan 2021 05:05:00 +0000.