NY Times publishes op-ed admitting COVID likely originated from Wuhan lab

(LifeSiteNews) — The New York Times has published an opinion piece admitting that COVID-19 was likely leaked from the Wuhan lab in China and that key government officials covered it up.  

In a March 16 op-ed in The New York Times, writer Zeynep Tufekci acknowledged that COVID-19 likely originated in the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that government health officials in America purposely misled the public. The piece represents a major break from the paper’s previous reporting which denounced the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory.”  

“When Wuhan experienced an outbreak of a novel coronavirus related to ones found in bats and researchers soon noticed the pathogen had the same rare genetic feature that the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan researchers had proposed inserting into bat coronaviruses, you would think EcoHealth would sound the alarm far and wide,” Tufekci wrote. “It did not. Were it not for public records requests, leaks and subpoenas, the world might never have learned about the troubling similarities between what could easily have been going on inside the lab and what was spreading through the city.”  

Tufekci then highlighted that while health officials and experts publicly said the lab leak scenario was implausible, congressional subpoenas of conversations between these officials reveal that privately they knew the scenario was not only plausible but highly likely. However, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, who is now the head scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), made sure the theory was publicly denounced in a paper. 

“In his book, Farrar reveals he acquired a burner phone and arranged meetings for them with high-ranking officials, including Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. Documents obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know show that the scientists ultimately decided to move ahead with a paper on the topic. Operating behind the scenes, Farrar reviewed their draft and suggested to the authors that they rule out the lab leak even more directly. They complied,” Tufekci wrote.  

It’s worth noting that while Tufekci acknowledges that the virus likely originated in the Wuhan lab, she also took a jab at the proponents of the theory whom she vindicates in her article.   

“Some of the loudest proponents of the lab leak theory weren’t just earnestly making inquiries; they were acting in terrible faith, using the debate over pandemic origins to attack legitimate, beneficial science, to inflame public opinion, to get attention,” she wrote.  

The New York Times has long labeled the idea of the virus starting in the Wuhan lab to be nothing more than a “conspiracy theory.”   

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, after Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton claimed the disease originated in the Wuhan lab, the paper suggested the senator was promoting a “fringe theory of coronavirus origins.” In 2021, New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli even posted on social media that the lab leak theory has “racist roots.”  

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