COVID Proved We’re Unprepared to Handle China’s Dictatorship
I owe Sen. Tom Cotton an apology. Early in the pandemic, I called a theory he was pushing—that COVID leaked from a Wuhan lab—“hot garbage.” I should not have. The partisan heat of the 2020 elections got the better of me, and shame on me for that.
A recent estimate from the Department of Energy reported (with low confidence) that COVID’s origin can be traced to a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It’s brought the “lab leak” issue back to public debate.
Partisan talking points from the right include “apologize to me” and “Fauci lied about everything.” From the left, it’s “the theory was plausible, but we don’t like that Trump and Republicans put it forward,” and “it’s only a low confidence estimate, so whatever.”