THERE ARE NO POINTS AWARDED FOR BEING RIGHT TOO EARLY: The Media Owe Senator Tom Cotton an Apology. “One of the biggest issues people have with the mainstream press these days is that some of its members are so insulated that they end up buying into and promoting false narratives without actually checking these narratives’ veracity. That seems to be exactly what happened in mid February, when major outlets overwhelmingly smeared Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) as a conspiracy theorist for asking legitimate questions about the origins of the current COVID-19 pandemic.”

The process is this: A Republican said it, and it’s not like what all my friends are saying in unison, so it must be crazy.

UPDATE: Did coronavirus leak from a research lab in Wuhan? Startling new theory is ‘no longer being discounted’ amid claims staff ‘got infected after being sprayed with blood.’

Senior sources in the British government say that while ‘the balance of scientific advice’ is still that the deadly virus was first transmitted to humans from a live animal market in Wuhan, a leak from a laboratory in the Chinese city is ‘no longer being discounted’.

One member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s emergency committee said last night that while the latest intelligence did not dispute the virus was ‘zoonotic’ – originating in animals – it did not rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.

The member of the ‘Cobra’ comittee, which receives detailed classified briefings from the security services, said: ‘There is a credible alternative view [to the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted.’

Well, I very much doubt that the Chinese will come clean on this, but it’s another reason to isolate China from the world community, both as punishment and precaution.