Scientists: All Signs Point to Lab Leak

“The most compelling reason to favor the lab-leak hypothesis is firmly based in science,” physician Steven Quay and physicist Richard Muller declare in The Wall Street Journal. There was already plenty of circumstantial evidence to support the theory, not least the fact that the only Chinese laboratory capable of handling coronavirus experiments happens to be located at the pandemic’s ground zero. But more “damning” is the presence of a foreign gene sequence that makes the COVID-19 virus more lethal to its victims. Such a sequence could only be artificially added in what’s called gain-of-function research. Those who cling to the notion that the virus jumped naturally from animals to humans must explain why the coronavirus “replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made.” Random mutation is hard to believe, and “the scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.”

From the left: Left & Right v. Media Priesthood

Outrage in liberal circles that lefty journalist Glenn “Greenwald appears on and helps provide content for — gasp! — right-wing media” prompts Matt Taibbi at TK News to explain that “Trump conservatives and ACLU-raised liberals like myself, Greenwald and millions of others do have real common cause, against an epistemic revolution taking hold in America’s political and media elite.” The common enemy “believes knowledge is too dangerous for the rabble and must be tightly regulated by a priesthood of ‘experts’ ” — as in the long suppression of valid concerns that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab and of The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting. “It’s anti-democratic, un-American and naturally unites the residents of even the most extreme opposite ends of our national political spectrum.” 

Iconoclast: The Middle-Class Uprising

A “middle-class rebellion against the excesses of the left” is “gaining steam,” cheers Joel Kotkin at Newsweek. The media love the left’s “focus on ‘systemic racism,’ coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of ­impending ‘climate emergences,’ ” but “the progressive base is limited,” just 8 percent of voters. “Party-line journalists” see President Biden as the “champion of the middle class,” but “he undermines his pitch” by ­repeatedly adopting far-left policies. Only 3 percent of Americans “view climate as their primary concern,” but Biden’s fixation on it will “accelerate the current surge in ­energy prices.” And “citing systemic racism won’t clean the streets of New York, San Francisco and central Los Angeles from drug addicts, the mentally ill and the destitute,” while not even a third of African Americans support defunding police. In short, progressivism is in trouble.

Foreign desk: China’s Big Baby Problem

In a bid to reverse China’s rapid demographic decline caused by the one-child policy, Xi Jinping’s regime last week loosened its anti-natal policy to allow married couples up to three children — but, warns Cindy Yu at Spectator USA, it’s probably “too little, too late.” For one thing, small families have become culturally ingrained: After decades of the one-child policy, “brothers and sisters [are] something . . . on dubbed American sitcoms, as foreign and exotic as blue eyes and blonde hair.” Then, too, “raising children in China is extortionate,” with public education unavailable to many and private schools pricey — “not to mention the English and math tutoring; the music and dance lessons; all the sports clubs. For middle-class parents, there is immense social pressure to compete with each other. And now times that by three?” Finally, there’s the restless work culture. “The notorious ‘996’ regime, which refers to ‘9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week,’ is spreading from China’s tech sector to other white-collar industries. It’s hardly a family-friendly life.”

Hate watch: Keep Anti-Semitism Out of America

At JNS.org, Len Khodorkovsky reflects on how “shocking” it is for a Jewish refugee like himself “to witness the recent outbreak of anti-Semitic violence on the streets of the country” where tolerance used to be “mundane.” To keep America’s promise alive, we must redouble our commitment to resisting Jew-hatred.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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