ERICKSON: The Republican Secret Weapon

Apoorva Mandavilli is The New York Times’ COVID-19 reporter. “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here,” she tweeted — not last year, but just a couple of days ago. The “lab leak theory” has always been the most likely theory for the release of the virus into the world.

Ironically, the alternative theory that Mandavilli seems to think is less racist is Chinese citizens in wet markets eating bats or some such. When Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton raised the lab leak theory last year, he was roundly attacked for racism. Members of the press, helped by some fringe conspiracists on the right, claimed Cotton was claiming an intentional release of a bioweapon, which Cotton never claimed. A year later, it looks like Cotton and former President Donald Trump were right. Intelligence does suggest workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got infected and accidentally began a global pandemic.