06/03/2021 / By Nolan Barton
Mainstream media and Big Tech effectively admitted that they were wrong to dismiss the lab-leak theory of the Wuhan coronavirus’s (COVID-19) origin with their sudden change of narrative to fit with the Biden administration’s stance.
New York Times reporter David Leonhardt said on CNN that he thinks people “leapt to dismiss” the theory too quickly because it was being endorsed by then-President Trump. Meanwhile, Jon Karl of ABC News told Martha Raddatz Sunday morning, May 30, that “a lot of people have egg on their face” for changing their narrative on the lab-leak theory.
Social media giant Facebook is also now open to claims that COVID-19 is man-made, changing its policy on the same day President Joe Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leaked from a Wuhan lab.
In April last year, Facebook announced that it was imposing limits on “harmful misinformation about COVID-19.” In February, the company announced that it was expanding its crackdown to include claims that the virus was man-made.
But on May 26, the day Biden ordered a probe on the lab-leak theory, Facebook announced the lifting of the ban in a blog post.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,” Facebook stated.
In a series of tweets on Saturday, May 31, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin slammed journalists for suddenly changing their narrative. (Related: Left-wing media conveniently “forget” they claimed lab origin theory for covid-19 was “debunked.”)
“Most MSM reporters didn’t ‘ignore’ the lab leak theory, they actively crapped all over it for over a year while pretending to be objective out of a toxic mix of confirmation bias, source bias (their scientist sources lied to them), group think, TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] and general incompetence,” Rogin tweeted.
Replying on his initial tweet, Rogin noted that the lab-leak theory didn’t change. “It didn’t suddenly become credible. It didn’t jump from crazy to reasonable,” he wrote. “The theory has always been the same. The people who got it wrong changed their minds. They are writing about themselves, with zero self awareness.”
In another reply to his original tweet, Rogin wrote: “All these reporters scrambling to defend their own records on the lab leak theory are exposing their own hypocrisy and ignoring their basic error. Just report the facts. Don’t act like it’s your job to tell us what’s OK to think or talk about. Own up to it when you fail your readers.”
That thread was re-tweeted more than 1,000 times, garnering several thousand likes.
Mainstream media outlets have made it a habit to contradict Trump’s view, losing their credibility and looking downright foolish in the process.
On April 10 last year, NPR published a story headlined “COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home In ‘Disconcerting’ Move.” The news came out as Trump brought up hydroxychloroquine as a promising potential treatment for COVID-19.
“President Trump has been an enthusiastic champion of hydroxychloroquine, calling it a ‘game-changer.’ But some of the nation’s most respected health officials have said there is insufficient evidence showing that the 80-year-old drug, which is typically used to stave off malaria or treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, is a viable treatment in battling the new virus,” the NPR reported.
If Trump liked it, then it had to be bad.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently revisited the story and showed how it should be delivered. It wasn’t a horror story with an evil doctor at the center. It was, in fact, a story of heroism.
It was about Dr. Robin Armstrong from the Galveston area saving the lives of elderly people living in a nursing home in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak. The disease took thousands of lives in nursing homes across the country. But Armstrong wasn’t going to let anyone die under his watch.
He treated his patients with hydroxychloroquine in a last-ditch effort to save them and he made the right call. His informed judgment saved the lives of a building full of nursing home patients, and no one reported bad side effects.
Doctors who advocated for hydroxychloroquine, such as Dr. Stella Immanuel, who treated 350 patients with it and saved all of them, were censored on social media platforms. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook removed all evidence of their testimony from their sites, effectively silencing them. (Related: Minnesota doctor decries censorship, says he is under investigation for COVID-19 opinions.)
The Democrats have also done their part, censoring their own for taking hydroxychloroquine and remembering and thanking Trump.
Michigan Democratic State Rep. Karen Whitsett survived COVID-19 last year with the help of hydroxychloroquine. But instead of supporting her, Detroit Democrats unanimously passed a resolution to censure Whitsett for crediting Trump with advocating for the drug that cured her of COVID-19.
“This is something that I did not expect. I started out with a simple thank you to the man that is the president of the United States. It’s a thank you. I didn’t know that thank you had a political line. I didn’t know thank you belongs to one political party over another, and that if you’re in one party you cannot say thank you to another person. I had no idea,” Whitsett said at the time.
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Tagged Under: Big Tech, Censorship, coronavirus, covid-19, COVID-19 outbreak, democrats, Donald Trump, hydroxychloroquine, Joe Biden, lab-leak theory, mainstream media, nursing home, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, Trump Derangement Syndrome
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