The Covid Conspiracy Conspiracy

I'll set my sights a little lower as far as literary ambition is concerned. Kilroy set the precedent.

Fred, as Friedrich likes to be called to remind people that he studied in the States, doesn't answer my question because he still has faith. He knows about JFK (and MLK and RFK) and 9/11, the fantasies about lone gunmen and the 19 box-cutter-wielding Arabs who defeated the most powerful air force in the world, but he doesn't like to dwell on these topics. He knows about Wuhan, too, that the virus may have been - in my view almost certainly was - made there, with American help. (See here and here.)

He doesn't like to hear about this either. When I bring it up, he just shakes his big head of white hair and beard and says, "Tja," which according to the Duden expresses "thoughtfulness, misgivings, a hesitant attitude, embarrassment or resignation" - in other words, just about anything, or nothing. What it does not indicate is a desire to continue talking about the subject at hand. Since we are usually playing golf at such junctures, it is easy enough to segue into the next shot, which of course requires silence.

When I press him he explains that as a psychotherapist - retired now - he had to deal with mental and emotional "garbage" every day and doesn't want to clutter his mind with it anymore, especially since he's not getting paid for it. This is an argument to which I have no rebuttal. It's much easier to agree on the craziness of the anti-vaxxers, which has become the cover term for protesters against all the preventive measures (masks, distancing, quarantine, lockdowns), since these include a sizeable contingent of nut jobs (QAnoners, Querdenker, Reichsburger) as well as otherwise reasonable people who say, variously, that the "jabs" are more dangerous than the disease, that the disease doesn't necessarily exist because the virus hasn't been "isolated" yet (whatever that means), and/or that the pandemic is a gigantic hoax concocted by Big Pharma and billionaires like Bill Gates to reduce the world population and manipulate and ultimately enslave those who remain.

I am more open to this "Covid hoax" conspiracy theory than I let on. On a scale of one to ten, I give it a one. The lab-leak theory, on the other hand, which I give a nine, is not a conspiracy theory at all. As the word "leak" implies, if the virus escaped unintentionally from the Wuhan lab it was not a conspiracy, by definition. This in itself debunks the media narrative that sprang up immediately to discredit allegations of a man-made origin as "conspiracy theory."

A conspiracy is a plan by two or more people to do something bad. Plan implies intention, and this does not apply to the lab-leak theory. The ostensible intention of "gain-of-function" research, which is a euphemism for making existing viruses more infective and dangerous for humans, is to prevent pandemics, not to cause them. Likewise, research on bioweapons is supposedly justified by the need to develop antidotes to bioweapons that might be used by an enemy. That is why, for example, the US Defense Department requested funding for projects like this:

Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. [Dr. Donald Malcolm MacArthur, Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970."]

That was in 1969. AIDS appeared ten years later. But that's another story. My point is that if the intention of the "research" is construed as defensive and protective, i.e., as something "good," no matter how reckless and dangerous, it doesn't fit the definition of conspiracy. Even if SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the course of biowarfare research (which is not suggested by most lab-leak proponents), it would not fit the definition of conspiracy.

So all the blather about "conspiracy theories" concerning the origin of the virus is nonsense - of course deliberate nonsense, in order to make the lab leak theory sound nutty.

The "Covid hoax" theory, on the other hand, is a true conspiracy theory. I'm talking about the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdowners, and COVID-19 deniers, including "Chris Sky" and the "Freedom Convy," Robert Malone, etc. They think they're fighting for "freedom," but I have a theory about that which is also a true conspiracy theory: a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory.

"What if all these 'Covid hoax' and anti-vaxxers and so-called 'freedom' protesters are being played," I tell Fred. "What if they are being manipulated, the same way 'color revolutions' are manipulated, for example?"

"Why would anybody do that?"

"Distraction. To distract attention away from the really dangerous issue, which is where the virus came from. Just think what would happen if it became hard fact that the virus is a laboratory product. There would be hell to pay, to put it mildly. No government, not the Chinese, not the Americans or any other governments would ever admit being responsible for the pandemic. It's impossible. Whoops, sorry folks, millions of lives and trillions of dollars gone just because of a little lab screw-up. We didn't mean to do it! That's what a lab leak would mean. No government in the world can or will ever own up to that."

"Tja."

"So," I continue, "a relatively small and chaotic protest about masks, lockdowns, and vaccines is far more desirable. This can be dealt with, and is being dealt with. When the pandemic eases, the protests will also fizzle out. Imagine how much bigger the protests would be if they were about the pandemic coming from a laboratory. How much more of a threat that would be - to all governments, not just China and the US, since they are all toeing the line on this. Such innocent-sounding little words, 'lab leak' and 'gain-of-function," but such monstrous implications. Research that made the virus that made the pandemic! That is a thought that has to be controlled, repressed, by all means. And how? One way is just to say they didn't do it, or there is no way to know if they did it. They've already done this. That's the so-called 'intelligence assessment.' We tried and tried, and just couldn't answer the question, but we think it's No. Not a lab leak. Another way is to get people excited about something else. Something related but in fact completely different. Let's talk about vaccines and Bill Gates and The Great Reset. A little fire, easily controlled, to keep away the big fire. Damage control."

Fred seems about to say something but instead addresses the ball and sends it, despite his terrible baseball swing, straight down the fairway.

"Tja." It's me saying it now.