Zach Hensel

This wasn’t said in a way that meant people turned him down. It meant “Daily Caller and things that aren’t Daily Caller”

“As far as I know, the only places in Wuhan with bats are labs.”

Kind of mind blowing this is something the Tufekci confidently declared for some time, thinking it was clever rhetoric.

Don’t need any expertise at all to ask people what exactly their lab leak theory is, as precisely as they can specify it. Three of these events, zero times is that question asked.

It’s wild they had Jason Bannan for the last event hot off the two stories on him in VF and WSJ, and now they have the people that wrote those two stories.

And still no one has any clue what Bannan’s “lab leak” theory is, but they know it must’ve been unjustly suppressed, whatever it was.

He certainly likes to make stuff up on top of what's true of course.

One interesting thing is that he's aware of facts that some on the panel are not aware of. E.g., Rogin seems to believe the myth that China hid some huge early wave of COVID-19 and Trump is clear that China acted quickly to prevent this.

Trump: Well I started hearing stories, that you have also, that there were lots of body bags outside of the lab, and people were saying there are a lotta people lying down in the streets of Wuhan and there were body bags...

There's never been any evidence; this guy would know if there was.

Rogin was so giddy to share his secret but this was old news; Trump said this in an interview with Sharri Markson who asks "What evidence were you presented with that convinced you that it did in all likelihood come from a lab?"

Patnaik: It is my pleasure today to welcome several distinguished journalists who have investigated the COVID-19 origins question in an objective manner ... we did reach out to a very broad range of media outlets to have a wide representation of media here today.

Me: 😕

Rogin was so psyched to reveal that he was one of the people Trump told that he believed "lab leak" because he "saw the body bags."

How in the world doesn't everyone in that room realize that the President would know of actual relevant secret evidence in that direction if it existed?

Patnaik: I like to compare the COVID-19 pandemic to a plane crash.

Me: I like to compare the Brookings series on COVID-19 origins to a train wreck.

Michael Gordon saying that NCMI concludes lab leak when their report was released and everyone who cares to read it can read it and find that it was a lab leak theory disproven 4 years ago was pretty revealing.

That was particularly rich coming from someone who won't correct errors in the 2022 story that was funded specifically to investigate "lab leak".

John Roberts (Fox News): Multiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States has high confidence that while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virusMultiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States now has high confidence that, while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan, that, because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend, and then went to the wet market in Wuhan, where it then began to spread.

Rogin's story was on April 14. Here's the question Trump was asked on April 15 that Rogin took credit for.

It was reported because the White House was pushing the story. Rogin had nothing to do with it other than helping them out.

Two hours of everyone on stage nodding along as people said things that were provably false, often because they've forgotten what the truth was in the first place. Rogin claiming credit for media suddenly taking lab leak seriously in the media on April 15 2020 was something else.

Raging against the wikipedia illuminati now bsky.app/profile/zach...

they're on good terms now

see -- everything just makes much more sense this way

I'm sure they know of much worse; I'll just stick with this to remind myself what's going on.

Here's some sort of social media character who thought it would be a great idea a year ago to buy a live pangolin a year ago and release it to get views.

Don't need to copy+paste any insults to go along with this to convince anyone why it's problematic.

Pretty boring and common -- making other people afraid to speak out of fear of "where there's smoke there's fire" -- happens all the time when there's an asymmetry of consequences for being associated with something ugly.

It's not much of a mental health issue if you get what you want out of it.

Really valuable and very normal feedback from Dr. Ebright the last two months.

Response from @philippmarkolin.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/10/25/s...

I was in high school in Kansas when this happened!

Rumsfeld said: there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. He oddly excluded unknown knowns which are important to consider for complex topics.

it's true

But when it comes to contributing to the toxicity... public accusations of cover ups based on the reporting of someone most recently reporting aliens-are-real is contributing to toxicity.

Here's the post in question if people are interested -- bsky.app/profile/dick...

I totally agree that Alina Chan's media strategy has been successful in many respects. It's a good example to follow for some depending on their goals.

"Less scientific, but more impactful" personified.

Obviously Reuters was in on it too -- how deep does this go?!?

Unredacted text from 2021 FBI "lab leak" investigation report reading: "A November 2020 Italian serological study claimed there was evidence of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in Italy pre-global pandemic; this was published in an obscure Italian medical journal and the research institute was the recipient of Chinese funding, per the DoS [Department of State].

Excerpt from State Department cable from 23 Nov 2020 released by FOIA. Text: The Possible Source 4. (U) In an interview with Italy's Corriere della Sera on November 17, one of the principal authors of the study tried to defend his results and said the group had tried to publish in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, or another more well-known journal but it was not accepted. He admitted to the interviewer that he had been in contact with both the WHO and Chinese authorities about the results. The story generated considerable enthusiasm among China-based social media users. PRC state media also seized on the story. Notably, the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily first covered the study on November 16, and T-House (part of China Global Television Network) interviewed one of the study's authors on November 18. And on November 23, PRC media company Xinhua published an article titled "Why COVID-19's origin story is still a mystery" that relied heavily on the Italian study's findings. 5. (SBU) NCI is a governmental institution overseen by the Lombardy regional government and funded by both the region and the ministries for health and research. NCI's website contains a July 2020 research cooperation agreement (attached) with the Italian Chinese Institute (ICI; Istituto Italo Cinese), an organization with no publicly known funding sources and whose principal work is establishing exchange agreements between Italian and Chinese entities. The agreement specifies further research cooperation with Chinese doctors, including the eventual presence of Chinese doctors and researchers at NCI. The NCI-ICI agreement outlines future agreements with the Chinese Ministry of Health to advance cooperation with Chinese researchers, institutions, and hospitals. ICI's scientific committee includes a researcher from NCI, and the ICI committee traveled to China in 2018 to explore further possibilities for cooperation. Italian Funding Issues [truncated...]

The FBI report concluding a "lab leak" origin is out by FOIA, mostly redacted. What's not redacted is a silly conspiracy theory in place of actual evidence.

First picture is the FBI report. Second picture is the DoS cable it's likely referencing here.