The Human Race Can’t Save Itself

That's the real takeaway from the House subcommittee hearings on the origins of Covid, which has claimed some 7 million lives worldwide and drastically changed our political, economic and social lives. It's become increasingly clear that the deadly coronavirus leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, China that was conducting risky "gain of function" research. But what are we to do about it?

Yes, China is a closed society with a dictatorial regime -- which makes independent scientific investigation impossible. But before you go on a China-bashing rampage, remind yourself that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been financially supported by the U.S.-based nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance, as well as by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institutes of Health. Remember also that gain-of-function research on engineered, potentially dangerous viruses is also conducted at poorly supervised labs in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe.

If the U.S. public settles on a Covid origin theory, it will come from our spooks, not our scientists, because of China's authoritarianism. Washington's sprawling intelligence complex now seems to be leaning toward the Wuhan lab leak theory.
The Energy Department's intelligence agency (who knew that even federal energy bureaucrats have their own spy apparatus?) reports that it has "low confidence" in the lab leak theory. The FBI has "moderate confidence" in this theory.

At this point, let's give a shoutout to novelist Nicholson Baker -- who wrote a serious investigative article about the suspicious origin of Covid in New York magazine back in January 2021 -- and other critics of the establishment line, who were vilified for raising the right questions about gain of function research.

But here's the problem. Because Covid origin research -- from China's clampdown to Republican weaponization of the Congressional hearings -- has been so hopelessly politicized, we'll never derive the lessons we should about how to stop future pandemics.

Whether it's Covid or climate change, humanity seems unable to respond in the proper way. Science, logic and self-preservation are trumped again and again by greed, politics and stupidity.

We're fucked.