All conspiracies depend on giving less credence to what is obvious in favor of a remote preferably hidden or secret explanation. The expression “if you hear hoof beats think horses rather than zebras” is appropriate for the latest virus origin story. It emanates not from someone wrapped in tinfoil but as usual from our President and his right-wing dissemblers. The new explanation for the presence of a new corona virus is not the well known pattern of animal corona viruses jumping to humans but instead supposedly a secret and suppressed lab accident in China. It is so secret in fact that the President can’t tell us the evidence for it. A more likely reason he can’t say how this is fact not fiction is that this is nothing more than another head-spinning effort to direct the public’s attention away from the tragic clown-car response that has left America reeling with the most total infections and deaths of any nation in the world.
That the virus was not man-made nor deliberately released is admitted. So, what is the point here? Why is lab vs animal meat-market even relevant to how to respond? It isn’t. Virologists and other scientists agree this coronavirus like others almost certainly jumped from an infected animal to humans and that most likely happened in the usual way at an open-air meat market in the unsanitary environment there rather than at a carefully controlled lab. The lab gambit is just another in a long string of false narratives and extravagant promises of testing for all and/or new treatments, both designed to get Americans to take their eyes off the abysmal response to the crisis by this administration.
Like the much ado being given to Joe Biden being a sexual harasser the obvious speaks for itself. Making it the number one issue on Fox News doesn’t change the known fact that after being thoroughly vetted and serving in the second highest office in the land for eight years, if Biden had a “me too” problem, we would have heard about it by now. There would be other stories other complaints, some more recent than twenty-seven years ago. There would have been rumors and other incidents as there were in the cases of Bill Clinton and Kavanaugh, as well our current President. The zebra hoofbeats are exceptionally faint in the Biden story.
Meanwhile what about governance? Diversion and blame do not fix the roads. Nor do they provide healthcare; put food on the table, create jobs, or accomplish anything at all except to turn our heads away from what is in front of our eyes. That’s well documented compulsive lying and revolving door government incompetence like we have never seen before. The last three years have taken America backwards. Student debt is higher than ever. So is debt in general. Educational achievement is lower than ever. College educated young people are postponing marriage and living with their parents. Those without a college education can’t find decent paying jobs either.
In 2020, we need to hear hammers building housing, and children going to school, not the hoofbeats of zebras. It is time for change not four more years of serial lying, conspiracy theories, finger pointing and a rubber stamp Senate,
