A Wall Street Journal article published on 8 January 2020 is a very early example of how the lab leak versus versus wet market battle was foreshadowed
Jessica Hockett, PhD
Many analysts, including myself, have pointed out that the “lab leak” hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2 was presented in English-language media in the latter half of January 2020, with mainstream and alternative outlets casting the storyline as either the stuff of conspiracy theorists or a state-suppressed incident wrought by unsafe science.
But an earlier, subtler mention came in The Wall Street Journal, first with the atmosphere created by its 6 January 2020 reporting on a “mystery virus outbreak,” and then more explicitly two days later in “New Virus Discovered by Chinese Scientists Investigating Pneumonia Outbreak.”
Toward the end of the latter piece, reporter Natasha Khan wrote, “In Wuhan, which has China’s first Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory — a specialized research laboratory that deals with potentially infectious agents like Ebola — the market at the center of the investigations has been shut since Jan. 1.”
Regardless of Khan’s awareness or intentions, or that of her co-contributors, the statement plants a seed in the reader’s mind: There is a high-security virus lab in Wuhan that works on dangerous things…
A potential “leak” was being foreshadowed.
More importantly, the soil for the infamous lab leak/wet market false binary was being tilled. A novel spreading pathogen was presumed, shutting out doubt and begging (if not directing) the desired question: Where did ‘it’ come from?
The intrigue of a pathogen escaping a lab and racing around the world with remarkable speed, striking geopolitically strategic locations while carefully avoiding others, endures. The Telegraph reiterated the mysteriousness last year with “Somehow, it must have escaped.”
Both WSJ pieces are reminders of how quickly COVID-19 narratives and counter-narratives were constructed and launched an ultimately mis-directive “Scooby-Doo” Origins Search that protects official claims about a sudden-spreading virus emerging from a point source from closer scrutiny.
The event was framed with numbers high enough to pique public interest, induce low-level anxiety, and signal investors: 59 people sick, seven in critical condition, no deaths. Quarantines being underway, health alerts issued in Hong Kong and Singapore, and a sense of urgency attached to upcoming Lunar New Year travel further conveyed that something worth paying attention to was occurring (or about to occur).
The 6 January article also set up another theme: China is hiding information and punishing people who are trying to tell the truth. Readers were told that Wuhan police had dealt with eight people accused of spreading false information online and that social-media users were worried authorities would not be transparent.
Outbreak, suppression, secrecy, the possibility of forbidden knowledge. In true movie-trailer style, the language helps establish the alluring “hidden things” motif: hidden causes, hidden accidents, and hidden truth-tellers trying desperately to warn the world.
By 8 January, WSJ was reporting that a “new type of coronavirus” had been genetically sequenced from one patient and subsequently found in others. The same article said Chinese authorities “haven’t concluded that the strain is the underlying cause of sickness in all the patients.” So something novel had allegedly been identified, but causation was not officially resolved. Readers were told again about the wet market connection, given a zoonoses lesson, and warned that the disease could become a bigger threat unless evasive actions were taken. It was all part of laying the groundwork for the something-wicked-this-way-comes message.
Unsurprisingly, references and comparisons to SARS are woven into both pieces. One line in the 8 January article says SARS “spread widely,” eventually killing 774 people globally. Super-scary, allegedly widespread, linked to the deaths of almost no one on Earth — and extremely effective propaganda years later.
Taken together, the two early WSJ articles help show that the most notorious double-bluff of the COVID-19 event apparently wasn’t set into motion by dramatic tabloid headlines or the word conspiracy. Elite legacy media led the way, with nearly-imperceptible nuance.
The takeaway, perhaps, is that the start of a sophisticated military-grade psychological operation is far more covert than overt, and not easy to detect, even with 2020 hindsight.