If you think back over the last three years, we’ve had a series of epic socio-cultural smackdowns over COVID: Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, schools. Each of these have tended to array broadly similar groups against each other, though with some key variations. But whatever you made of those fights, the public debate had really immense and immediate real world consequences. That is what is so odd and mystifying about the intensity of Lab Leak Discourse. It doesn’t actually matter. Or rather there are basically no real-world implications to either side being “right” or “winning.” I was talking to someone today who said how incredibly important it was. But after thinking about it for a bit, I thought, why? Now it’s much better for people to think up is up rather than up is down. And there are probably important secondary effects of getting this wrong, whichever way is “wrong.” But in any direct sense it’s not clear it has any real impact on anything.

I just wanted to flag for you that we’ve got our annual sign up drive coming up in a couple weeks. It’s a very important one. So if you’ve been a member and lapsed or if you’re a TPM Reader who’s never taken the plunge please consider becoming a member during this drive. Before we kick it off I’ll be sharing a few more thoughts with you about our membership business model, why we do these drives and what we’re doing more broadly today as an organization.

At present, my main contribution to Lab Leak Discourse is making fun of it. I say this operating on the distinction provided to us by TPM Reader JS a couple weeks ago, noting that Lab Leak Discourse is now entirely autonomous from the actual ongoing research into the origins of COVID-19. Indeed, I noticed yesterday that it has now taken a new turn focusing on public opinion surveys showing that a majority of Americans believe COVID began with a laboratory accident at the virology lab in Wuhan, China. The “wisdom of crowds,” one Lab Leak advocate told me, should be given its own weight along with the judgments of those with domain expertise in virology, genomics and other fields.