Note to the media: Even a broken clock can be right about COVID-19 virus origin

Early in 2020, the idea that the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology was “debunked.” Even before an investigation could begin, the Washington Post declared the idea “a fringe theory” and “unhelpful.” The New York Times noted that the “conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists.”

There was not yet enough evidence to prove or disprove anything — and the Chinese government tried to make sure that there never would be — but the lines were already being drawn.

The idea that the virus came from a wet market — an open-air market selling produce and meat, including sometimes live animals — was what “respectable” people believed. That it might have spread from one of the only two biosafety level 4 labs in China, the one that was located right near the origin of the virus, well, only “bad” people said that. Not sophisticated. Not helpful. Even racist, somehow.

The CDC told social media companies that the theory was “theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely,” and the companies used that pronouncement to prevent anyone from even talking about the idea on their networks.

Three years later, the fever has begun to break.

» READ MORE: Trump’s blame game with China can’t disguise his massive COVID-19 failures | Trudy Rubin

The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees many high-security laboratories of its own, has determined that the “lab leak” hypothesis was the most likely explanation for the source of the pandemic, according to a report obtained last month by the Wall Street Journal. Although the department says this conclusion was made with “low confidence,” it believes it more likely than any other explanation. The report follows the FBI’s analysis from 2021 that said the same, which the bureau confirmed after the Energy Department findings were made public.

Why did much of the media establishment come down on one side of a question before it was even possible to investigate it? Because President Donald Trump believed the opposite.

The previous four years had already seen a relationship between Trump and the press (outside of Fox News) that was brutally adversarial on both sides. So much so that it actually distorted coverage of the news, as Jeff Gerth recently detailed at length in the Columbia Journalism Review. That 2020 was an election year just made it worse. When Trump said the virus leaked out of the Wuhan lab, his opponents just knew it had to be false, and many media outlets were happy to give them air time. Trump’s reaction was to say it even more.

It was a vicious spiral of partisanship and tribalism — none of which bore any relation to the facts, which remained largely unknown. Appeals to credentialed experts were used not to investigate, but to confirm what all “right-thinking” people already knew: Trump was bad and wrong.

If you mock people who unquestionably believe every word that comes out of Trump’s mouth — and you should — consider how it sounds to believe the opposite of every word the former president says. Both are examples of people who outsourced their critical thinking, but the former at least outsourced it to someone they like. Reactionary Trump haters have outsourced their opinions to someone they hate.

There is a figure of speech you used to hear more often: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” The Onion’s satirical website Clickhole had a newer take on it with the 2018 article that became a meme: “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point.” The phenomenon being described is simple enough. Sometimes you can agree with people on one thing while still not accepting their entire worldview, or even agreeing on anything else at all. Not every discussion requires us to be in line with our political tribes.

If you have a yard sign telling everyone that you “believe in science,” you should also ask yourself: Would you still believe scientists if they told you something you didn’t want to hear?

» READ MORE: Political discussion should never come down to ‘owning the libs’ | Kyle Sammin

No one among Trump’s opponents wanted to be seen to agree with him on anything, but the lab leak was always the most obvious answer as the likely source of the virus. That is not to say that it could not have been disproved, only that it wasn’t disproved.

Occam’s razor is the name philosophers give the principle that the least complicated answer is usually the right one. Not always! But usually. Comedian Jon Stewart — definitely not a Trump fan — summed up how Occam’s razor applied to the viral outbreak in Wuhan back in 2021: “Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pa. What do you think happened?”

The explanation always made sense, but we are easily blinded by partisan tribalism. Had things gone a different way in 2016, we might have seen President Hillary Clinton pushing the lab leak theory and private citizen Donald Trump taking to Twitter to say she was lying. The madness is not just on the left.

Nor is it restricted to COVID theories. Plenty of people who inveighed against the military-industrial complex now fly Ukrainian flags and support our proxy war with Russia. And many on the other side who favored a strong military and support of liberal democracies around the world now have second thoughts when President Joe Biden wants to send weapons to Ukraine. Nothing about the facts and theories has changed, only the occupant of the White House.

Living in a republic means we get to choose our own leaders, but it also means we’re duty bound to do our own thinking.