The virus junta’s backtracking continues apace. And, in all likelihood, the hits will keep on coming.

Not that anybody will do anything about it. The bureaucrats who brought you “safe and effective,” masking, school closures, shutdowns, and zoonotic emergence will keep collecting prizes, keep getting pushed as “experts” in the media, and will be treated as the heroes of the pandemic.

The Establishment went all-in on using the pandemic to push its agenda of censorship, economic takeover, and retaking the government from MAGA, and they succeeded in all three.

So their pandemic response was a success. Little things like the deaths of millions, the burning down of our economy, the massive learning loss, and all the collateral damage caused by their management of our country are small prices to pay for their successful power grab.

It should go without saying, but not only is a lab origin not a "conspiracy theory", but (@ScienceMagazine I'm looking directly at you) it's also not a "controversial view"

It is a theory. In fact, it is the most likely theory and it was suppressed for 4 years. https://t.co/jd2WWlGfJJ

— Alex Washburne (@WashburneAlex) January 16, 2024

One of the most controversial issues from the start of the pandemic was the origins of the virus. It was pretty obvious that a lab leak was at least likely, given the where, the how, and the Chinese crackdown (and potential murder of a researcher) on information.

But the Western scientific establishment went to great lengths to label any speculation to that effect a “conspiracy theory,” Fauci went so far as to commission a paper and bribe scientists to dismiss the possibility. Private messages between the scientists who wrote the paper made it clear they didn’t believe what they published.

Whether through legal action or changes in the law, we need to establish a clear precedent that it's not okay for science funders to use the power of funding + promotion available to them to pick and choose which theories get to go forward.

Science must never have a Pope again https://t.co/r9zvRqDlnE

— Alex Washburne (@WashburneAlex) January 16, 2024

One of the scientists who spent a lot of time spreading lies was Francis Collins, who led the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic. He was among those who commissioned a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, and he expended great effort in downplaying the lab leak theory, calling it a “very destructive conspiracy” theory.

Yeah, well, not so much anymore.

Dr Francis Collins, former head of the National Institutes of Health, testified in a closed-door session with the House coronavirus subcommittee on Friday about his role during America’s pandemic response.

Dr Collins was involved in suppressing the theory that Covid likely escaped from a Chinese biolab, a theory which implicated the sprawling agency he headed up. It was previously revealed that the NIH oversaw grants funding risky ‘gain of function’ research to make viruses more transmissible and/or deadly.

In a significant U-turn, House Republicans who led the hearing revealed that Dr Collins, 73, told them that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.

None of this should surprise anybody who figured out that the government and the MSM has been lying from the beginning, but a huge percentage of Americans still want to and mostly do trust the people who control the Narrative.

Dr Collins served as Fauci’s boss during his tenure as head of NIH from 2009 to 2021.

The sainted doctors are said to have pushed for the publication of an influential scientific paper that shaped the narrative that Covid originated in nature while discrediting the theory that gain of function was the cause.

The centerpiece of questioning pertained to the March 2020 ‘Proximal Origins’ paper, in which scientists said the theory that gain of function research triggered the release of a genetically modified coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was ‘improbable.’

Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup, who heads the Covid subcommittee in the House, said: ‘Dr. Collins acknowledged that Dr Fauci invited him to attend the infamous February 1, 2020 conference call that prompted the “Proximal Origin” publication.

‘This testimony directly contradicts Dr. Fauci’s previous statements and raises further concerns about the U.S. government’s role in suppressing and vilifying the lab-leak hypothesis.’

He added that Dr Collins said the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy.

Dr Collins, along with Dr Fauci, sat in on a confidential conference call four years ago, ahead of the 2020 paper’s publication, which would set the tone for the public’s perception of the pandemic’s origins for years to come.

Before you express contempt for those people, realize that the consequences of not being able to trust any of the information fed to you is not just dispiriting but incredibly burdensome and destructive to a society that depends on social trust. We all depend on trust to a great extent, especially in complicated societies like our own. Capitalism and our Republic depend on reasonable levels of integrity; corrupt societies like Russia stumble along and are always on the brink of failure.

We shouldn’t have to research everything. We have lives to live and families to enjoy.

Which makes the betrayal of our elites a calamity. We can’t trust anybody anymore. Our government is corrupt. Our medical institutions are corrupt. Our bureaucracies are corrupt. And, worst of all, the media is corrupt–because we need the media to hold everybody else in check.

The likeliest explanation for why the NIH and Fauci hid the origins of the virus is that they paid to develop it through grants to the EcoHealth Alliance. It’s no shock they would move heaven and earth to cover that up–most people would cover it up. Who wants to be held responsible for mass murder, even if it was an accident?

If we had real media they could help us discover the truth and hold people responsible. But we don’t.

The MSM sees itself as allied with the elite against the people, so they go along with the coverups. It’s dystopic.

But it is the reality today. No wonder so many people want revenge against the Establishment.

It isn’t a healthy thing to want, of course, but it is very human. After all, Americans deserve so much better.