Why are Republicans so obsessed with trying to further the theory that COVID-19 originated in some form from a laboratory setting? Republicans have spotlighted the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is located in China, and supporters of their assertions have pointed to circumstantial evidence like sicknesses experienced by staff members there that it’s actually impossible to conclusively connect to any kind of early COVID-19 emergence.
A subcommittee of the House Oversight panel that deals with COVID-19 held a hearing this Tuesday with witnesses including a pair of scientists who have furthered the assertion that it’s substantially more likely the virus had a natural origin. Entirely unqualified Republican members of Congress went after these scientific experts in what was frankly an embarrassing display of ignorance. That list included Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), who misrepresented past comments from one of the witnesses and failed to grasp that witness’s most recent informed stance on the likely origin of COVID-19.
In the first instance, Jordan characterized Dr. Kristian Andersen as having had a sudden change of heart in less than a week and suddenly referring to theories of a lab origin as nonsense. What the scientist was specifically discussing in that earlier instance were theories of the intentional creation of a bioweapon underlying COVID-19’s emergence. “I think the plausibility of this having come from the lab, given the evidence, I don’t find that plausible at all,” Andersen told Jordan. “It is possible. As I’m saying, I don’t find it plausible. Maybe I should say probable, given the evidence that we have available to us. Again, anything is possible… it is currently impossible to prove or disprove any version of the origin, whether a lab or not.”
Why do Republicans who are not qualified to speak authoritatively about delicate matters of science act as though, well, they are? Watch below:
