It has been three long and arduous years since the COVID-19 pandemic upended America; however, we are finally getting to the bottom of how the virus was actually released, the actual efficacy of mask mandates, and the actual effect of natural immunity.
Spoiler alert: The mainstream media was dead wrong on all three of these fronts.
First, lets unpack the origin of COVID-19 because, apparently, the wet market theory no longer carries water.
On February 26, The New York Times reported, “New intelligence has prompted the Energy Department to conclude that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic.”
Gee, you think? From the get-go, it was fairly obvious that the COVID-19 virus most likely emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where gain-of-function experiments using bats and coronaviruses had been conducted for years. After all, the lab is located less than a mile from the initial outbreak site.
What’s more, in 2017, the U.S. State Department issued a diplomatic cable warning about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, noting, “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
And, as of this writing, despite an extensive and exhaustive search, there still is zero evidence that an “intermediate host” such as pangolins transferred the virus from bats to humans. On the other hand, as The New York Times belatedly writes, there is ample evidence that the virus escaped from the WIV, which has a long track record of shoddy safety protocols.
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In short, as many of us suspected long ago, it appears as though COVID-19 was “manufactured” inside the WIV and was accidentally unleashed. After three years of obfuscation, it seems like the mainstream media is starting to come to the same conclusion.
Second, throughout the pandemic, the mainstream media perpetuated the now-defunct theory that cloth face masks prevent transmission of COVID-19.
Yet, we now know with full confidence that, “There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” according to The New York Times. The article also notes, “Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong.”
The Times article is based on a new study that refutes almost everything the mainstream media parroted throughout the pandemic concerning the efficacy of face masks. Although it’s three years too late, the Times is finally admitting, “States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.”
Of course, this long-overdue acknowledgment does absolutely nothing to reverse the damage that useless mask mandates wrought upon our nation’s children, who were forced to wear masks even while playing outdoor sports!
Third, the mainstream media relentlessly disseminated the outright lie that natural immunity to COVID-19 was vastly inferior to the “immunity” offered by the so-called vaccines. I refer to the “COVID-19 vaccines” in this way because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the definition of “vaccine” after it realized the experimental mRNA vaccines did not “produce immunity,” they could only “produce protection.”
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media were complicit in spreading the lie that the vaccines were the pandemic panacea. Does the term “pandemic of the unvaccinated” ring a bell? However, even as the legacy media were lying through their teeth about the vaccines and natural immunity, scores of scientists and virologists bravely bucked the groupthink trend.
Alas, many of these prominent experts were vilified, canceled, and universally mocked for daring to espouse the commonsense medical notion that natural immunity should be treated on par with “immunity” from Big Pharma’s experimental vaccines.
Yet, as we all now know, and NBC News only recently reported, “Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death.” Moreover, as the article notes, “The immunity generated from an infection was found to be ‘at least as high, if not higher’ than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.”
Again, I’m waiting with bated breath for the mainstream media’s mea culpa regarding their terrible treatment of those who chose not to be vaccinated because they had previously contracted COVID-19 or ardently believe in individual rights. Furthermore, I wonder if the talking heads will apologize to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs, were thrown out of school, or had their lives turned upside down because they simply refused to get the so-called vaccine.
So, three years after the media consistently lied about the COVID-19 origins as well as the efficacy of masks and vaccines, we are at least finally getting some kernels of truth. The mainstream media maintained the mountain of lies it espoused about the pandemic for three years, which means every American should question the credibility of the mainstream media from this moment forward. The only way we can keep the Fourth Estate honest is if we hold them accountable.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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