They had already quashed all prior commentary.
The timing of the renewed commentary is such that it is the direct result of this defector. They are now in damage control.
That is the only reason they are currently crawfishing
The timing of the renewed commentary is such that it is the direct result of this defector.
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He defected sometime in mid-February. Well before that time however, an important article appeared in NY Mag laying out the evidence that COVID-19 may have originated the Wuhan lab. Then about a month later Senator Tom cotton got vocal about China’s duplicity and dishonesty with respect to the origin of the disease. In the months since then even more evidence has come out and the credibility of the leak theory has grown. Recently 18 scientists signed a letter published in Science magazine calling for an open investigation into the virus’s origins. Even the NYT has progressively softened its earlier charges of it being a conspiracy theory.
The point is, there has been a long lead up to the ‘renewed commentary’. The defector may be a significant game changer (that remains to be seen) but other players were on the field before he was.