Commentary: Dan Bongino: Wuhan Lab Leak Report Proof Fact-Checkers and Media Need To ‘Wrap Up Shop and Go Home’

Remember back to that halcyon period in the pandemic nightmare where we could mention that, you know, it's just a little strange the Wuhan Institute of Virology was just a few hundred meters from the wet market where we were told the novel coronavirus originated, that the institute did work on coronaviruses and that a leak could be plausible reason for the outbreak? It wasn't just the tinfoil headgear wearers saying this. “A more troubling explanation is that the coronavirus was inadvertently spread from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had carried out research on bat coronaviruses and possessed a biosafety level 4 facility, the most secure for handling highly pathogenic and infectious diseases. It is not beyond possibility that an accident or spill occurred," The Washington Post's editorial board noted on April 17, 2020. Then that became a conspiracy theory. Express it on social media and your posts were deleted. Express it in the mainstream media and that'd be the last time you'd appear there. China said the lab leak theory was bunk without producing evidence, the World Health Organization took China at its word, and questioning that explanation meant you ran afoul of Big Tech's fact-checkers . Well, guess what? Those halcyon days are back! It seems all of the censors may have been wrong all along -- and anyway, they're letting us talk about the lab-leak theory again , because it appears to be viable. And Dan Bongino , frequent Fox News guest and radio host, has six words for people who shut down discussion of the topic in the first place: "Wrap up shop and go home." First, a quick explanation for the clueless: Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence had ascertained three individuals from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had sought hospital care in November 2019 for symptoms that closely resembled COVID-19. This was roughly the date that epidemiologists believe the disease started circulating. All of a sudden, "fact-checks" dismissing the lab-leak theory were deleted or retracted. Facebook, which would take down posts that mentioned the possibility it was a lab leak, stopped censoring them. The Biden administration announced a 90-day review of the evidence surrounding the lab-leak theory, although further statements from the White House made the review appear amorphous and directionless. On Friday's edition of Fox News' "The Five," Bongino went off on the double standard of "fact-checkers" that dismissed the lab-leak theory. “I don’t want to hear another peep from a liberal or a talking head media buffoon ever again about a conspiracy theory, OK?” Bongino said. “They never produce evidence about any of this stuff,” Bongino said, noting the media's obsession regarding the Russian collusion theory. “There was no evidence that this thing ever came from a bat or a pangolin or whatever ... What’s even more infuriating about this is anyone with common sense who is outside the liberal media ecosystem would’ve seen from the start that this was probably a lab leak.” He then pointed out how the Wuhan Institute of Virology studied bat coronaviruses, had security issues in the past and did so-called "gain of function" research -- making a virus more transmissible, deadly or something similar. [firefly_embed] [/firefly_embed] And yet, as Bongino pointed out, the conclusion from the left was that it "must be natural!" “This has got to be one of the most infuriating stories in modern history, and it’s all the media’s fault,” he continued. “One more quick thing on this, what was incredible about it is when the Chinese government put out propaganda — ‘Don’t you dare say that this was a lab leak. Somebody ate bat soup.' And then, people commented about, 'people eat bat soup?'" Bongino said. "Everybody was called a racist for even commenting on bat soup for a story that was obviously Chinese propaganda. This is an infuriating mess. The media should just wrap up shop and go home.” But what were we supposed to think? After all, the World Health Organization conducted a thorough investigation , right? All of that censorship, all of that pegging the lab-leak as a conspiracy theory, this is the WHO we were supposed to trust: Biden wants the WHO to lead the investigation into whether COVID came from a Wuhan lab.

The WHO’s lead investigator admitted he took China’s word on COVID’s origins, saying: “Well, what else can we do?” pic.twitter.com/ZVBXIkJ3nj — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 26, 2021 Chines officials won't let WHO conduct a full investigation and the world's premier health body is just supposed to take China's word for it? Well, what were they supposed to do? We can't pretend The Wall Street Journal's report changed everything. In fact, all it changed was that it confirmed we didn't know enough to make a determination about the origin of the virus one way or the other -- and we certainly didn't know enough to fact-check it out of existence via the liberal media or Facebook fascism. The lesson, alas, wont be learned. That's why it might be best, in this situation, to wrap up shop and go home.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal .