AD1184
Celestial
There was also the effect that Trump had on the left wing intelligentsia, which revelled in contradicting Trump. Anything that Trump espoused as a fact had to be false, in the view of the press and academia, for the very reason that it was Trump espousing it. We saw this elsewhere, for example, when Trump began promoting hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment and prophylaxis for Covid.Detailed timeline of the ups and downs of the "lab leak" theory.
Fact check: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory for pandemic origin suddenly became credible
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
[...]
The Trump administration also sought to highlight the lab scenario but generally could only point to vague intelligence. The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.
[...]
The press were very keen to point out that this was not so, even before there was good evidence either way. The Lancet even went to the extent of publishing a study purporting to demonstrate that HCQ was not effective, and potentially worsened Covid outcomes in patients, after a rushed peer review, and which turned out to be fraudulent. This fraudulent study was promoted far and wide by left wing media outlets in English-speaking countries. More recent evidence suggests that HCQ is not particularly good at treating Covid, but the lengths that the press went to discredit the mere idea of it were fairly extreme, and seemingly hinged on the fact that Trump was involved in the public awareness of HCQ.
OpEds chided against the irresponsible promotion of experimental medical treatments, while before the pandemic many of those same outlets were frequently heralding cannabis and cannabis oil products as some sort of miracle cure for all ailments despite scant scientific evidence, as part of the left's wider campaign to de-criminalize recreational cannabis use.
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