Political viruses
Back in May, the Wall Street Journal released a series of “hypothetical” articles rehashing the hackneyed yarn that the SARS-CoV-2 was linked to a Wuhan lab, from which, it claimed, the virus could later “escape”. By citing a weak report held up by unsubstantiated claims and quoting from officials whose personal views pointed to the exact same conspiracy theories, those pieces have effectively blurred the lines between facts and opinions, between truth and misinformation, and between accusations and convictions.
Similar conspiracy-based stories have since resurfaced, as right-wing media outlets like FOX News have somehow become emboldened by their “foresight” in circulating such theories early on. Fox News has criticized CNN and NYT for their previous dismissal of the “lab leak” idea while pressing for Anthony Fauci’s immediate “firing or resignation” due to his about-face on the conspiracy theories and a lack of resolution on the federal mask guidance.
US media outlets, and those like Fox News in particular, should know best what conspiracy theories have brought America. The country is still haunted by the January capitol riot that was incited by Trump’s claim that the election was “stolen”; the former president’s reference to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China Virus” also ignited spiraling and continuing hate crimes targeting the Asian American community…
But sadly, the needed lessons have never been learned. A close review of the media’s conspiracy-based stories in the U.S. will lead us to the unchanging pattern of “fake news masquerading as facts.” All the relevant pieces are based on one unconvincing report and multiple “well-selected” bigoted allegations, and worse still, they are quoting each other as sources.
When baseless allegations meet more baseless allegations, when a flawed report is compounded by another flawed report, it sends a deceptive signal to readers that the theory could or must be plausible. Although the media doesn’t fire bullets, they have pointed their muzzles at the presupposed target and loaded their sugar-coated bullets, only waiting for readers to themselves pull the trigger.
The new low of America’s misinformation campaign happened not on the day when U.S. media decided to rehash the baseless and farcical lab leak conspiracies, not on the day when Senator Rand Paul confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci, suggesting that the National Institutes of Health was funding “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a claim Fauci vigorously denied, but on the day when Joe Biden, the president of the U.S., ordered American intelligence agencies to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan.
By doing so, he handed down the death sentence for the last traces of truth and facts regarding the origin of COVID-19. He has allowed American intelligence agencies, which were responsible for concocting the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” hoax in Iraq, to speak for science, stealing the spotlight from scientists, while weaponizing and politicizing a matter best left to rational and scientific inquiry.
It’s not hard to find similarities and a convergence among the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and conspiracists in American society—they are the inevitable products of the American melting pot, in which all anti-science noises can buzz about, so loud that they cover up the voices of truth and fact and make the drive to save lives irrelevant. As long as the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and conspiracists don’t stop stealing the spotlight and continue their campaign to pump out lies and distractions, the U.S. will continue to remain trapped in an endless loop of coronavirus and political viruses, infecting the whole world all the while.
