Elizabeth Stauffer of the Washington Examiner reminds readers that facts have refuted left-wing arguments again.
The Left has perpetrated too many hoaxes over the past several years for us to remember them all. But one of the most consequential was the lie that COVID-19 had zoonotic origins, meaning that it jumped from an animal to a human.
Without evidence, Democrats claimed this theory was settled fact, just as they did when they claimed former President Donald Trump was an agent of Russia or when they dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as the product of Russian disinformation. And those who had the temerity to reject their narratives were quickly targeted by the press and smeared as “conspiracy theorists” responsible for spreading “misinformation.”
But as is so often the case, it turns out the conspiracy theorists were right all along. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Energy Department had revised its assessment on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic based on new intelligence. Sources who were familiar with a “classified intelligence report” told the Wall Street Journal the agency now concludes with “low confidence” that the virus came from an accidental laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.
This was always the most logical conclusion.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) was one of the first to raise the possibility of the lab leak in 2020, pointing out during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that Wuhan, where the virus first broke out, is home to “China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens, including yes, coronavirus.”
Cotton was widely mocked by the liberal media over these remarks. He wasn’t alone. Everyone who thought it was possible the virus may have escaped from the WIV where gain-of-function research was being conducted and that the disease may have been enhanced, or made more lethal, during these lab experiments was smeared as racist and xenophobic.