But let’s not replace one nutty take ( The lab-leak theory is racist) with another ( We know for sure that COVID came from a lab). Three years ago, many journalists and scientists rushed to condemn a theory that deserved a fair and open trial. In fact, the deeper you dig, the more you realize that murkiness is the story. The deeper you dig into the details of each case, the murkier the story becomes. That settles things: The elites got everything perfectly backwards the lab-leak conspiracy theory was true, and the mask mandates were a fraud! But last month, the lead author of a comprehensive analysis of masks boldly and unequivocally asserted that “there’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.” What’s more, for the past three years, many scientists and writers- including me!-have reported that masks are effective at reducing the transmission of COVID. But recently The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the Department of Energy reversed its prior judgment by announcing that the coronavirus probably did emerge from a laboratory. I n the past few weeks, the conventional wisdom about COVID seems to have been upended.Įarly in the pandemic, several mainstream news outlets dismissed theories that COVID came from a Chinese lab.

This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems.

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