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The deadline set by the Covid Origin Act of 2023 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619/text) to release names, symptoms, hospital visits, and roles of WIV researchers who had Covid-like symptoms in fall 2019 has come and gone. A Google News search for "Covid Origin Act" results in a single article released over the weekend:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/covid-was-not-developed-as-a-bioweapon-dni-finds/
This source is not mainstream. It suggests that the legally mandated report has been released, but puts a spin on the results of the report (Covid not likely an intentional bioweapon) without revealing the full text. Most importantly, it doesn't name any of the names that the Act required. So I went to the website of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence. Crickets. Twitter? There has been a post, but it is about Juneteenth.
Edit: I suppose it is possible that the DNI has made their mandated report to Congress, and that no congresspeople have leaked it yet. In which case one would expect articles in a few hours to days?
As an aside, when I mentioned I was excited about this disclosure to a deeply Blue family member, they suggested I've shifted right. I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.
The Left committed early to the "bat soup" theory and declared anybody who doubts it racist, and instituted a censorship blockade of any opposition (or even critical discussion) to this. While they were forced to roll it back a little because dissent went high and wide enough in scientific circles that it wasn't possible any more to block, the initial commitment still weights heavily on the topic, and was not acknowledged as wrong even at "mistakes were made" level, and this colors every critique of this position as attacking the Party Line.
I was always surprised and a little confused that the "bat soup" theory was labelled the non-racist theory.
I will attempt to steelman this distinction.
Zoonotic/'bat soup' hypothesis: "Chinese people are, at the deepest level, no different from us. If we had wet markets selling live bats/pangolins/&c., we would be at the same risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks; if they didn't, they wouldn't."
Lab-leak hypothesis: "The Chinese were doing the same kind of research we were. Are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with advanced technology?"
If one has these reactions, 'bat soup' seems less racist than 'lab leak', in the same way that Rudyard Kipling might
seemsseem less racist than Alexander Stephens.Still doesn't hold for me. In one situation you are implying that their culture eats unclean and diseased animals. To me, there are a few very common major insults for other races/cultures:
Denigrating their intelligence.
Saying they are prone to violence.
Saying they are dirty and unclean.
I guess the lab leak denigrates their intelligence a little bit. But the eating diseased creatures is clearly an example of calling them dirty and unclean.
And a nitpick on the lab-leak. They were specifically doing research that the US does not allow. Gain of function research was banned in the US, and was being carried out in other countries by US researchers to get around these restrictions.
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