Was the Covid-19 virus a chance case of animal-to-human transmission, or a deliberately engineered virus escaping from a gain of function laboratory? In the latest sign of a deep shift in America’s underlying political tectonics, the New York Times has published an op-ed complaining that “We were badly misled” about the origin of Covid-19. The lab-leak theory was always plausible, we’re now permitted to say; but groups of supposedly neutral and independent scientists colluded to produce independent-sounding denials, so as to make it seem like a fringe position. Now, apparently, we need “an honest conversation” so that nothing similar happens again.
