The Left is circling the wagons around the risible notion that COVID has a purely zoonotic origin.

I say the notion is risible despite several Intelligence agencies and many “experts” maintaining that the virus jumped species at a wet market in China because…it really is laughable. There is no identified animal reservoir for the virus, no evidence of “bat soup” at the market, and the Wuhan Insitute of Virology–a few blocks away–did research on bat viruses and even gain-of-function research that was funded by the EcoHealth Alliance, using NIAID money.

And we all know that China has been covering up since the beginning of the pandemic. It would be a hell of a coincidence if this weren’t a lab leak.

Occam’s razor says the virus escaped the lab, almost certainly by accident. I don’t buy the intentional release scenario because China has paid an enormous price for its Zero-COVID strategy. I doubt it was biological warfare research, but maybe I am just naive. I think it was arrogant scientists doing what arrogant people do: playing God.

The recent change in the Department of Energy’s position regarding the origins of COVID–and I expect that over the coming years, the rest of the Establishment will similarly admit the obvious–is driving the Left nuts.

There really is no explanation for this if you assume that they actually care about the facts. Even should they disagree with the analysis, about which we have relatively little concrete data, the origin of the virus is a matter of fact, not ideology. Right?

Well, no. Just as the issue of whether masking works or not is hardly a matter of science, but of commitment. When the Left speaks of The Science™ they are actually asserting the importance of authority. Science is about discovering what is, authority is about obeisance to the powerful.

It is the latter that matters to the powers that be.

Then MSNBC's @Kasie Hunt: "This question about the Wuhan lab — we know it’s been debunked, that this virus was man-made or modified or anything like that." pic.twitter.com/LTYzUhm6ey

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023

The Left has decided on their line of attack on Energy’s analysis: they are not competent to make a judgment. This is not based upon any actual knowledge regarding why Energy was asked to make a judgment–after all, they didn’t have a BS session and decide to issue a press release. They were tasked with making an analysis because they actually have, for some reason, expertise in the matter.

Just as the FBI does, as they developed biological expertise post-9/11. The FBI also believes that the source of COVID was a lab leak. A fact that no critics of the DoE’s analysis note.

They're getting desperate https://t.co/F5ZM76Xhkt

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) February 28, 2023

Nighttime comics are making an interesting case: they simultaneously attack the credentials of the DoE, ridiculing their ability to make a judgment, while relying upon their audience to accept their own credentials to do so. If the DoE is incompetent to make this judgment, why on Earth should I trust Colbert to do so? Did the government assign to them this task?

Notice how Colbert emphasizes that Energy only has “low confidence” in lab leak, brings up NIC & four other agencies leaning natural origin but doesn’t mention they also only have “low confidence”, & doesn’t mention at all that the only “moderate confidence” is FBI with lab leak. https://t.co/Pd61IeKAxD

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) February 28, 2023

Now as a blogger, I am a bit more skeptical of credentials than the nighttime comics. Having watched the government in action for nearly 40 years, and having participated in many discussions led by “experts,” my skepticism is well-earned. Rarely have I seen the results of policy decisions led by experts turn out remotely like the predictions, which leads me to believe that the predictions rarely are any good.

In fact, their predictions are rarely any good. Go check if you doubt me.

Experts are not devoid of expertise–you can learn a lot from them. What they rarely have is a synoptic view of situations. Their knowledge is siloed and hence often very distorted. Most importantly they are utterly unaware of human behavior. They can analyze the mathematics of a situation with great precision, often, and come to the most ridiculous conclusions based on their certainty that they grasp the whole.

It’s not rocket science, because rocket science really is pretty simple. Human behavior, biological processes, and anything related are other things entirely. People are not pinballs.

The lab leak theory is so offensive to the Left because it undermines others’ faith in experts, upon whom their policy prescriptions and hence power depends. The Left itself is indifferent to the actual assertions of experts, save when they support their ideological predictions.

Hence their continued assertion that the CDC is right about masks despite the obvious evidence they are not.

This was when @MSNBC @NicolleDWallace eviscerated @realDonaldTrump for pushing what she said was a conspiracy theory that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This is why you should not say anything with absolute certainty, this is why you should… https://t.co/4rPUPz1bqk pic.twitter.com/v1xCVF1sMF

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) February 28, 2023

The possibility of a lab leak needed to be debunked in 2020 because Donald Trump pushed the idea, and he could never be right. The world was divided between The Science™ and The Orange, and we know who the Left needed to win that battle, at all costs.

Anything Trump said must be ridiculed at all costs. If he said water was wet the MSM would find an expert to contradict him and ridicule his assertion.

At #RNC2020 @SenTomCotton says @realDonaldTrump has been "clear-eyed" about China since "before they unleashed this plague on the world"
Cotton had pushed debunked theories that #covid19 originated from a biological warfare lab, a claim China's @AmbCuiTiankai dismissed on our air https://t.co/PEtQPvB5Lr pic.twitter.com/MIzBevVOCt

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 28, 2020

MSNBC's @JHeil: "Clearly the case that Trump is divorced from it facts"; he's pushing a "made up" theory about Covid originating in a Wuhan lab to help his "re-election" pic.twitter.com/3NVtGOsuqR

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023

Some Leftists are admitting the possibility that they got it wrong–after all, it is the Biden Administration’s DoE that concluded that the lab leak theory is more likely true than not–so they claim their rejection of the idea is…Donald Trump’s fault.

Apparently, if Trump had asserted the opposite, then they would have chosen the “right” side in this.

This is just another way of saying that everything they say is based upon the desire for power. Truth itself is malleable, or rather irrelevant.

This is, of course, exactly what I have been arguing for decades about the Left’s relationship to the truth.

The Left views “truth” as whatever gives them power. It is a premise of all “critical theory” that truth claims are actually power claims.

When people make this argument you should take them at their word. They are admitting their willingness to lie, so best to assume that they are. They are using speech as a tool to gain power, not as a way to communicate with you.

That doesn’t mean they are always wrong; it just means that they are utterly indifferent to the truth.

And there we are.