....The 'lab-leak' theory is not of equal value - promoting it furthers the China hawks
"It is a sad experience to see that several writers I like and often agree with are propping up a Russiagate-like conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus..."
That Moon of Alabama article is clueless on several levels.
For me, the preponderance of evidence still leans toward a non-lab origin of the virus, though any definitive claim either way at this point is completely unfounded. There is always the possibility of lab leaks anywhere in the world.
Automatically calling scientists and journalists who lean toward--or merely leave open--the possibility of a lab origin as "conspiracy theorists" is unfounded political polemics, not science.
Many labs across the planet play god, and dice, with infectious diseases, sometimes just to study them, and sometimes as bioweapon development.
One well-known infectious disease god on playing with intensified viruses:
Fauci backed virus experiments ‘despite pandemic risk’
....
[Fauci:] “In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” he wrote. “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/anthony-fauci-backed-virus-experi...
Did this virus come from a lab? Maybe not — but it exposes the threat of a biowarfare arms race
Dangerous pathogens are captured in the wild and made deadlier in government biowarfare labs. Did that happen here?
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/24/did-this-virus-come-from-a-lab-maybe-no...
The establishment media's flip flopping in its messaging on the origin of the virus is what the journalists attacked by the Moon of Alabama article are actually about. Central is the propaganda game, which continues the Trump/Pompeo monsterization of China for regime advantage.
The US empire's foreign policy goals and its propaganda changes little with successive governments, Republican or Democrat. Biden's calling for an investigation into the Wuhan lab is little more than a propaganda ploy a la Trump. One could never conceive of any US president ever calling for any investigation into Israel's bioweapons program despite it being one of only countries on the planet not to sign the: Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.
What does change is the US is the establishment media's increasingly bizarre contortions which flip-flops on what is conspiracy theory versus legitimate reporting.
This is the real topic of those media critics that the Moon of Alabama article maligns as "conspiracy theorists". That writer's only mention of the authors' central topic is to dismiss it in scare quotes:
....Then, under a similar mantle of 'media critique', Matt Taibbi furthered the 'lab escape' theory
" When the Wall Street Journal came out with a story that a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report detailed how three Wuhan researchers became sick enough to be hospitalized in November of 2019, the toothpaste was fully out of the tube: there was no longer any way to say the “lab origin” hypothesis was too silly to be reported upon.
That’s not to say the “lab origin” theory is correct, at all. However, that’s irrelevant to issue at hand....""
Party alignment of the major media focuses on, distorts and fabricates, "news" in a predictable way. Carving out a profitable demographic was spearheded by Murdoch's Fox News three decades ago which decided to milk to the Republican mindset by feeding them whatever reinforced their approval and outrage. Balance be damned, it brought them back begging for more.
The Democrat aligned established media saw the effectiveness of that vile profit model and jumped into it with both feet with the advent of Trump.
The result is that when Biden basically continues the imperial messaging of Trump on the "Wuhan virus", which was once framed as indications of Trumps perfidy, the factional media contorts and stuffs down the memory hole its previous messaging.
