In retrospect, the error is clear enough all along. The origins of the pandemic were always murky, and the strongest reason to dismiss lab-leak out of hand — that the Wuhan lab supposedly had airtight security protocols — was more rumor than fact. What’s more, the notion that the theory was “racist” was always transparently dubious. A story in which the virus emerged from failed safety protocols at the Wuhan lab is not inherently more racist than a theory in which it emerged from a wet market. (If anything, blaming the pandemic on China’s people for eating bats lends itself much more easily to racism than blaming China’s government for lax security at its research labs.) Journalists make mistakes, especially operating in a chaotic atmosphere dominated by the ceaseless jabberings of a pathological liar with a giant megaphone. What’s concerning is that, even faced with undeniable proof of the error, many people still refuse to concede it... When scientists are openly arguing against the study of a scientific hypothesis, for non-scientific reasons, something has gone haywire. In this case, that something seems to be a hothouse atmosphere centered around social media, that has cultivated an ethos of moral fervor and political homogeneity.