The Biden administration is slowly, cautiously, admitting what anyone with a brain knew from the start, that it’s likely the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.
Nobody minds that the experts didn’t get everything right when a new virus and a serious public-health threat burst onto the scene. Nothing is certain, and they were dealing with limited information.
The inexcusable part of this whole mess was the demonization of anyone who didn’t go along with the approved story. Even well-credentialed experts!
We were told …
- Natural immunity doesn’t help
- Masks do
- If you claim it came from a Chinese lab, you’re a racist
- People at very low risk, like children and healthy young adults, need to get the vaccine,
- The vaccine is entirely safe (and if you say otherwise you’re a science denier and a conspiracy theorist)
- etc.
They got a lot of things wrong, but that’s okay. People aren’t perfect. The problem was the campaign against dissenters.
Three things are now certain.
- A lot of apologies are due.
- Americans will justifiably be skeptical of anything that comes from our public health authorities.
- Incentives are badly misaligned.
On that last point, I don’t know if it was an effort to make money for the pharmaceutical companies, or simply the growing intolerance of anyone who doesn’t toe a particular line, but there should be investigations.