12 Blake, “How the Covid Lab Leak Became the American Public’s Predominant Theory.”
13 Leana S. Wen, “How to Investigate the Lab-Leak Theory Without Inflaming Anti-Asian Hate,” Washington Post, June 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/we-need-investigate-lab-leak-theory-without-inflaming-anti-asian-hate.
14 Meta’s moderation policy on the lab leak hypothesis shifted over time. The date of the origin of the policy is elusive, but by May 2021, they had begun to step back from moderating origin claims. See Elizabeth Culliford, “Facebook No Longer Banning Posts Calling the Coronavirus ‘Man-Made,” Reuters, May 27, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/facebook-no-longer-banning-posts-calling-coronavirus-man-made-2021-05-27.
15 Early in the pandemic, as there was significant concern about transmission even outdoors, authorities made decisions about what could stay open and what had to close, about the kinds of gatherings that were approved and the kinds that were not. While some of these choices could be explained by public health officials simply not knowing where the lines should have been at that point, there was also what could be read as ideological bias to some of the policies (attending outdoor mass protests related to racism in the summer of 2020 was declared reasonable even as attending outdoor church services was banned in many locales). This seeming hypocrisy was quickly seized upon by partisan influencers and media, who saw an opportunity to reinforce ideological divides around “woke” capture of public health officials and institutions who were more concerned about looking antiracist or not offending China than undertaking a clear-eyed assessment of the facts and risks.
16 Roxanne Khamsi, “Coronavirus Is Bad. Comparing It to the Flu Is Worse,” Wired, February 8, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-is-bad-comparing-it-to-the-flu-is-worse.
17 Avery Hartmans, “Silicon Valley VC Firm Andreessen Horowitz Is Asking Visitors to Avoid Handshakes Due to the Coronavirus Outbreak,” Business Insider, February 7, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-coronavirus-fears-handshake-ban-2020-2.
18 Balaji (@balajis), “The Wuhan mayor is being pressed to resign after approving a group dinner with 40,000 people, knowing that a deadly virus was on the loose…,” Twitter, February 6, 2020, https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1225178842580619265.
19 See, for example, the March update note on this BuzzFeed article: Dan Vergano, “Here’s What We Do and Don’t Know About the Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak,” BuzzFeed News, January 28, 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-cases-deaths-flu.
20 Balaji (@balajis), “Don’t let these wokes rewrite history,” X, April 25, 2021, 9:48 p.m., https://x.com/balajis/status/1386391617167183872.
21 T. A. Frank, “‘The Coronavirus Crisis Was Built for Insurgent Information’: Why Some Early MAGA Adopters Went Against Trump’s Virus Doctrine,” Vanity Fair, March 23, 2020, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/why-some-early-maga-adopters-went-against-trumps-virus-doctrine.
22 Zeynep Tufekci, “Why Telling People They Don’t Need to Mask Backfired,” New York Times, March 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html.
23 Kerrington Powell and Vinay Prasad, “The Noble Lies of COVID-19,” Slate, July 28, 2021, https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-cdc-masks.html.
24 Lucy Tompkins et al., “Entering Uncharted Territory, the U.S. Counts 500,000 Covid-Related Deaths,” New York Times, February 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/us/us-covid-deaths-half-a-million.html.
25 Renée DiResta and Isabella Garcia-Camargo, “Virality Project (US): Marketing Meets Misinformation,” Stanford Internet Observatory, Freeman University Spogli Institute for International Studies, May 26, 2020, https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/manufacturing-influence-0.
26 Andrei Makhovsky, “Nobody Will Die From Coronavirus in Belarus, Says President,” Reuters, April 13, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-belarus/nobody-will-die-from-coronavirus-in-belarus-says-president-idUSKCN21V1PK.
27 Jason Burke, “Tanzania’s Covid-Denying President, John Magufuli, Dies Aged 61,” The Guardian, March 18, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/tanzanias-president-john-magufuli-dies-aged-61.
28 Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 29–30.
29 Hugo Mercier, Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 222.
30 Brian Kennedy, Alec Tyson, and Cary Funk, “Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines,” Pew Research Center, February 15, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines.
