Please stop with the raccoon dogs

Guest Post by Alex Berenson

Last night, The Atlantic – of course it was The Atlantic – had BREAKING NEWS!

And by BREAKING NEWS I mean yet another migraine-inducing story purporting to show that Sars-Cov-2 emerged naturally, rather than leaking from a lab.

Before we get to the story, which takes about two seconds to debunk, it’s worth nothing that even Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is in the process of giving up on the natural origins theory. On CNN on Sunday, he claimed that even if Sars-COV-2 escaped from a lab after scientists found it in a cave and transported it for research, he would consider that a naturally occurring outbreak.

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What?

I say again, what?

Assume this version of events is true. It’s not. Chinese scientists were definitely performing “gain-of-function” research on coronaviruses in Wuhan, and the odds are overwhelming that it was one of those viruses that leaked. We know this for several reasons, including that Sars-Cov-2 has certain features that largely do not exist in wild bat coronaviruses but are common in engineered coronaviruses.

Further, Fauci’s theory makes no sense because if the Chinese had found Sars-COV-2 in a wild bat and transported it, they would have had every reason to go back to the cave where they’d found it the first time and get it again, thus PROVING it was naturally occurring. They’d know exactly where to get it! They wouldn’t have to look. They could have done so immediately (or after a couple of months had passed and they’d destroyed all the evidence that they’d ever found it before).

But let’s pretend Fauci’s theory makes sense. Let’s say that researchers found Sars-COV-2 in a wild bat, and brought it to a lab, where it leaked.

How can he, or anyone, call that a “natural occurrence”? The virus was stuck in a cave in a bat, like innumerable other coronaviruses since time immemorial. Where is the evidence it ever would have infected a human, much less caused a worldwide epidemic, had virologists not given it every possible opportunity to do so, by bringing it to the middle of a 10-million-person city and then trying to grow it?

If SARS-Cov-2 leaked from a lab, that’s a lab leak. Even Tony Fauci can’t spin that reality away.

But back to the Atlantic. Which breathlessly reported yesterday that we now have genetic evidence that raccoon dogs and the coronavirus were both at the “Huanan Seafood Market” – the live animal market in the middle of Wuhan where some early coronavirus cases were reported – in December 2019.

“The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” the Atlantic proclaimed.

Except.

Hold up.

WE ALREADY KNEW THAT RACCOON DOGS WERE KEPT AT THE HUANAN SEAFOOD MARKET. We’ve known that for years. And of course we already knew that infected people came to the market; that’s why the people who don’t want to admit that Sars-Cov-2 leaked from a lab keeps proposing it as a source.

In fact, we went through this very nonsense MORE THAN A YEAR AGO.

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As The Scientist (who better to tell you about The Science?) wrote about an earlier round of nonsense in February 2022, “one of the studies shows that raccoon dogs were sold in a section of the market where coronavirus samples were detected.”

Which is more or less precisely what yesterday’s “scoop” said.

I’ll leave you with this from The New York Times.

The Times has not exactly been aggressive about covering the potential lab leak, and it followed up on the Atlantic’s piece today with one of its own. But even the Times couldn’t avoid telling the truth, four paragraphs in:

The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected. And even if a raccoon dog had been infected, it would not be clear that the animal had spread the virus to people. Another animal could have passed the virus to people, or someone infected with the virus could have spread the virus to a raccoon dog.

Someone infected with a virus?

Gee, I wonder where they got it? Maybe the giant lab working with bat coronaviruses a couple miles away –

Nah, impossible.

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