Stuntman and action designer Eric Jacobus joins EconTalk host Russ Roberts for a no-holds-barred discussion of the biological basis for violence and how to avoid the worst of it, the value of violence as spectator sport, and the vast superiority of duels to feuds–Alexander Hamilton notwithstanding. (0 COMMENTS)

Stuntman and action designer Eric Jacobus joins EconTalk host Russ Roberts for a no-holds-barred discussion of the biological basis for violence and how to avoid the worst of it, the value of violence as spectator sport, and the vast superiority of duels to feuds–Alexander Hamilton notwithstanding. The post Eric Jacobus on the Art and Science of Violence appeared first on Econlib.

I’d like to first demonstrate how we know that the economy did much better in 2021 than in 2009, and then explain why the outcome was better this time around.In 2009, the main problem was unemployment. Today, the main problem is inflation. So “who’s to say” which economy was better?To answer this question, we need to also look at real GDP. Inflation doesn’t directly reduce living standards, as when one person pays more for a good it just means that another person receives more. The real problem with inflation is that it may be associated with falling RGDP. With less output, living standards will suffer. By this measure, we are doing far better in 2021 than in 2009. But average per capita real GDP (i.e. efficiency) isn’t everything; people have drowned in lakes with an average depth of only three feet. What about equity?  How has the pain been spread around? We need to consider the famous “equity-efficiency trade-off”.Surprisingly, the results are exactly the same when we add equity to the equation. Inflation imposes a small amount of pain all across the economy. In contrast, the pain from high unemployment is highly concentrated. If you want a simple explanation of why 2021 is much better than 2009, consider that unemployment today is 4.6%, whereas it was 10% in October 2009. That’s an enormous difference, and it represents the main cost recessions. A whole generation of young people faced a hostile job market during and after the Great Recession. Today, in contrast, there are more job openings than ever before.OK, but why did the economy of 2021 end up much better than in 2009? In 2021, there are still enormous challenges related to Covid, such as the difficult problem of “re-allocating” output from the service sector to the goods sector. This reallocation problem is far more difficult than in 2009, when we merely faced the challenge of reallocating output away from residential construction, a much smaller sector than consumer services. So why are we doing better this time around?In 2009, the bad economy was caused by the Fed’s decision to allow NGDP to languish at a level far below the previous trend line. I recall speaking with one prominent new classical economist back in late 2008, who argued that pumping up NGDP would just lead to more inflation without boosting real GDP. It would have led to more inflation—that part was correct—but it would also have led to much more real GDP, and a much stronger labor market.This time around the Fed has learned its lesson and pushed NGDP quickly back to the previous trend line. Indeed the current risk is that they’ll overshoot and produce too much NGDP, too much inflation. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. PS.  I don’t know what public opinion polls would say about the relative performance of the 2009 and 2021 economies, but they are not the best way to look at the issue.  Imagine a group of 100 people.  At exactly noon today a mosquito bites 99 of them, while the 100th recovers from cancer.  Is this group of 100 people better off or worse off?  If you polled all 100 people and asked them if they felt better than a few minutes earlier, what would most say?  What is the change in aggregate welfare? (0 COMMENTS)

Covid has killed millions, and trampled the freedom of billions.  For me, the main horror has been the paranoid reaction to the disease, rather than the disease itself.  Much of the social life I built for myself before Covid evaporated during 2020.  But since this is Thanksgiving Week, I’m reflecting on all the ways that my life has improved since Covid.  And the list is not short.   Necessity is the mother of invention – and never before have I felt such an urgent need to reinvent my life. Here are my top positive changes since March, 2020. 1. As a direct result of Covid, I spent about three months in Texas with my family.  A great chance to savor this beautiful and action-packed state – and to escape most of the Covid madness of northern Virginia. 2. During my visits, I made dozens of new friends, and taken several pre-existing friendships to the next level. 3. My best friends in Texas made herculean efforts on my behalf.  The great Steve Kuhn lent my family his house, and my friends at UT offered ample office space and lunch companionship.  And they were happy to let their kids play with my kids before any of us were vaccinated.  The same goes for Ben Powell over at Texas Tech. 4. I’ve spent far more time than ever before with successful entrepreneurs.  I’ve gotten to see first-hand how they think – and how much they do for all of us.  Quick version: When I hear normal people tell me their business ideas, my reaction is almost always, “That’s a terrible idea.  Don’t waste a penny on it.”  When I hear brilliant entrepreneurs like Steve Kuhn tell me their business ideas, my reaction is almost always, “Maybe!” 4. My six-year homeschooling experiment came to a resounding success when Vanderbilt accepted my twins with full scholarships.  Hear more about it on Freakonomics. 5. I worked out a new deal with the Cato Institute to write another graphic novel.  Just finished the storyboards.  This will definitely be the most exciting book ever written on housing regulation!  More educational graphic novels may follow; wait and see. 6. I worked out a deal with Middle Tennessee State University’s Political Economy Research Institute to visit eight times per year.  A great chance to make new friends, exchange ideas, see my sons, and get to know Nashville very well.  All thanks to one of my star students, Dan Smith! 7. I ran an online art contest to illustrate my first fictional graphic novel, Amore Infernale.  The winning artist was excellent, and I hired him to draw the whole book.  Progress has been slow, but time will tell. 8. My first art contest was such a great experience that I’ve run several more, meeting a bunch of promising artists in the process.  One of them, Ady Branzei, is illustrating Build, Baby, Build. 9. Another contest winner, @sengsavane, is drawing book covers for an eight-volume series of my all-time best EconLog posts.  Mike Huemer had a great experience self-publishing his new intro philosophy text on Amazon, so I’m going to try the same approach. 10. I homeschooled all four of my kids during the first 15 months of Covid.  While aggravating in some ways – I was clearly not born to teach arithmetic – it did bring me even closer to my four favorite humans.  Furthermore, homeschooling allowed us to take long trips to Texas and the Yucatan. 11. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”  I used the crisis to convince my wife to get a second freezer, which I quickly filled with bulk meat purchases from CostCo.  I was shocked to discover that their bulk meat tastes a lot better than their regular meat.  Indeed, bulk CostCo steak tastes better to my family than anything we get in any restaurant. 12. Closely related: My cooking skills improved markedly during Covid.  Besides cooking the best steak of my life, I mastered the grilling of fish.  And I added multiple side dishes to my repertoire, including grilled peppers and Texas toast. 13. Early in Covid, I started doing about five minutes of weight-lifting per day, and was amazed by the dose-response function.  Now I do about ten minutes a day, and seem to be in the best shape I’ve been in thirty years.  I got much less bang for my buck back in high school, when I averaged about thirty minutes of weight-lifting per day.  Odd, but fortunate.   Yes, I know awful stuff has happened all over the world.  I suspect more awful stuff will happen this winter.  There will probably be another seasonal Covid spike, leading to another grotesque overreaction.  Still, I strove to make the best out of a bad situation, and things have worked out far better for my family than I expected.  Remember: Self-help is like a vaccine!  If tried, it works. P.S. I’m hosting an unofficial Econ BBQ at GMU’s Fairfax campus today from 4-7 PM.  At the grill by the Harrison and Wilson dorms.  All are welcome. (0 COMMENTS)

Can you tell me who said the following quotations?   I’ll give you a hint: The work was published in 1891.   Was it Henry George? Auberon Herbert? Benjamin Tucker? Wordsworth Donisthorpe? Carl Menger?   [T]he socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself… The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.   And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.   [I]t is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such unequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition.   [On the particularism of working conditions:] How many and how long the intervals of rest should be must depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who work in mines and quarries, and extract coal, stone and metals from the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year should be taken into account; for not unfrequently a kind of labor is easy at one time which at another is intolerable or exceedingly difficult.   Now a State chiefly prospers and thrives through moral rule, well-regulated family life, respect for religion and justice, the moderation and fair imposing of public taxes, the progress of the arts and of trade, the abundant yield of the land-through everything, in fact, which makes the citizens better and happier. Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference – since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them.   These quotations do not fully represent the document drawn from, but they fairly represent the overall drift, which is to proffer a course between the universal human propensity of pecuniary greed and the delusions of socialism. Indeed, the document suggests that socialism is itself greed of an especially baneful sort: If any there are who pretend differently – who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment – they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present.   The document is here. (0 COMMENTS)

  In my recent article on the Biden administration’s many-pronged assault on economic freedom, I pointed out that comparisons of President Biden with former president Jimmy Carter are inaccurate and unfair to Carter. In 1980, Carter, along with Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, deregulated surface freight transportation. Deregulation of trucking, with the 1980 Motor Carrier Act, and of railroads, with the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, unleashed competition among truckers and railroads and between the two modes of transportation. Virtually everything that transportation economists anticipated and hoped for came about. But on July 9, 2021, in Executive Order 14036, President Biden proposed that railroads be reregulated. Specifically, he proposed that the chair of the federal government’s Surface Transportation Board (STB) “consider commencing or continuing” regulations on “reciprocal switching agreements” and consider other regulations on freight transportation. The parts of the executive order on rail and, indeed, the whole executive order, show a serious misunderstanding of competition on the part of the Biden administration. If the federal government were to move ahead with rail regulation, it would reverse one of the few major accomplishments of the Carter administration. It would create problems where few existed. This is from David R. Henderson, “Railroad Regulation’s Poor Track Record,” Defining Ideas, November 18, 2021. Notice the double entendre in the title, which was my editor’s idea. Another excerpt: Given the gains that regulation has created for railroads and their customers, why would President Biden want to reregulate? The answer, I believe, can be found in two things: (1) the narrow view of competition that many officials in the Biden administration hold, and (2) those same officials’ failure to understand what economists call “the information problem.” And the penultimate paragraph: One thing railroads have going for them is that their rails are private property. This gives them an incentive to take care of their property. Roads used by trucks, by contrast, are typically government property and governments don’t typically charge enough to heavy trucks to compensate for wear and tear. Ironically, therefore, new regulation could take one of the real virtues of the rail mode of freight delivery and whittle it away. Railroads would become more like highways and that’s bad, not good. Read the whole thing. (0 COMMENTS)

What is going on in England? There are long lines at gas stations and motorists are not allowed to fill ‘er up; they are limited to only a few gallons of gasoline, each. The fuel pumps are in operation. The refineries there are functioning well. There are plenty of trucks fully capable of transmitting the fuel from wholesalers to retailers. The problem? You had better be sitting down for this or you’ll keel right over: there are simply not enough drivers available to transport the fuel to where it is most needed. Say what? There are millions of motorists in that country. Of course, not that many are capable of driving the heavy tanker trucks; however, more than enough are! But, still, there is something rotten in Denmark, well, England. Either that, or what we teach in introductory economics is all wrong. What is the lesson stemming from econ 101? It is that whenever there is a shortage, as there is now for English truck drivers, this means demand is greater than supply. And what is supposed to happen when that takes place? Prices, or in this case wages, which are the price of labor, are supposed to rise. These, in turn, are comprised of money payments, salary, plus working conditions. But neither has occurred. Working conditions, in the form of clean rest stops for long distance haulers, have actually deteriorated, and take-home pay has not increased. Why not? Where is the money for these raises supposed to come from? They are presumed to emanate from the ultimate consumer in the form of derived demand from him. Well, there is indeed a shortage of drivers in England. Motorists are clamoring for more gas. There are long lineups at filling stations. Why haven’t prices risen there, so as to ration limited supply until more is forthcoming? This ordinary economic response has been rejected, and for two reasons. One, it would be considered price gouging. And that would be unconscionable in these politically correct times. Second, if the price of gas doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled, who would still be able to purchase it, and who would be left out in the cold? This much is clearer: the rich would get the lion’s share, and the poor would pretty much have to do with their leavings, or do without. But we can’t have that, not in this epoch. In the absence of government intervention, the price of gasoline would have risen. This would have financed higher wages and better working conditions for the drivers. End of problem. It never would have occurred in the first place. Any incipient tendency in this direction would have been nipped in the bud. Market prices are a signal. If they are squelched, they cannot do their jobs. Economics chaos of the sort we now see in England results. Suppose we all decide we are too fat. We want to go on diets. We don’t desire as much ice cream, cake, cookies, and instead demand more carrots, apples, string beans. But the farmers, bakers, manufacturers have as yet no idea of our change in tastes. Do we have to petition the government to get entrepreneurs to produce more rabbit food and less of what makes life worth living? No. We simply buy more of the former and less of the latter. This raises the prices and profits in veggies and lowers it for sugary substances. Business is led by an “invisible hand” to do our bidding. This is despite the fact that some don’t like it since some get rich (low calorie food producers) and some suffer a loss (the producers of high calorie food). But if this market signal is not allowed to function, we stay obese. There are analogous signals in numerous other walks of life. If your bridge partner opens with a one heart, he is signaling something different than a three diamonds bid. If these signals are disallowed, the game is ruined. The conductor of the orchestra also signals. He indicates he wants the music to go faster, slower, louder, softer, etc. If he is not allowed to gesture, wave his arms about, if his signals are truncated, the quality of the music is reduced. Words, too, whether spoken or written, are signals. So are musical scores, facial expressions and hand gestures. Communication depends upon signals. Most people appreciate all this, and would be horrified if they were rendered impotent. Temple of Babble, here we come. But prices, too, are every bit as much a signal as any of these others. The only difference is that they are not at all generally appreciated. Rather, we tolerate rent controls, minimum wages and outlaw price “gouging.” All this at the loss of a civilized order. Who wants to wait on line for several hours for two gallons of gas at an artificially lower price? Which was the chicken and which the egg in this case? It is unclear as to whether the low price and restrictions on quantity were the cause or the result of the problem. What is clear is that one way to ameliorate the problem is to allow market prices to operate. When they do, in a shortage, initially prices will rise. But that will attract greater supply, and prices will fall once again. Meanwhile, no shortages. Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans (0 COMMENTS)

In a blow to arguments that a federal paid leave law would harm small businesses, a new study co-authored by Stanford’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds that support for paid leave among small employers is not only strong, but also increased as the pandemic added new strain to the work-life juggle. “The big roadblock to passing paid family leave legislation is a concern that small businesses are not supportive and that it would be challenging for them,” Rossin-Slater says. “We find that’s not the case.” The research, released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research as a working paper, finds that 71 percent of New York and New Jersey employers surveyed during COVID-19 said they backed paid family leave — up from nearly 62 percent in 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak. What’s more, the study finds the jump in support was driven by employers that were previously opposed to the policy, and not just neutral about it. This is from Krysten Crawford, “Paid family leave support grew during COVID-19, Stanford study finds,” Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), November 17, 2021. Both the press release excerpted above and the actual study stop short of saying that their findings are a good argument for mandated paid family leave. That’s good because it’s not a good argument; it’s a bad one. To the extent employers and employees want paid family leave, they are free to negotiate that. Nothing is stopping them. So a mandate isn’t necessary. But to the extent there are employers and employees who don’t want paid family leave, a mandate is undesirable. It’s not just undesirable to employers; it’s also undesirable to employees. Employers and employees agree on overall compensation packages in return for employee productivity. These packages include monetary pay, vacation leave, sick leave, usually health insurance, and sometimes paid family leave. If an employee wants paid family leave strongly enough to give up even a few dollars more than the cost of that leave to the employer, then both sides will benefit if such leave is provided. If we observe  a pay package that doesn’t include paid family leave, that strongly suggests that the cost of providing it exceeds the value to the employee, making it a non-optimal pay package. So if the government mandates paid family leave in situations where employers don’t provide it, those mandates, once various other components adjust, make both employers and employees worse off. I hope the authors understand that.   (1 COMMENTS)

Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) said he was struggling with conflicting sentiments. “One is I believe in the equality of women and I want to communicate that men and women are equal,” Mr. Romney said. “At the same time, I don’t want to put women in harm’s way in a way which would impair their safety. So these conflicting sentiments have kept me from reaching a final decision.” This is from Lindsay Wise and Nancy A. Youssef, “Congress Debates Requiring Women to Register for Military Draft,” Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2021. (Print edition is November 19, 2021) This is an issue on which I agree with Senator Romney. Both sentiments–I would call them values–are important. Is there a way for them not to conflict? Yes, and the solution is presented later in the news story. Wise and Youssef write: Some Democrats and Republicans have managed to find common ground on legislation that would eliminate the Selective Service entirely, ending registration for both men and women. That would do it. Men and women would be treated equally and neither would be put in harm’s way against his or her will. By the way, I’m so old that I remember when no one had to register for conscription. President Ford ended it on April 1, 1975 in what is probably the most beneficial April Fool’s action in history. President Carter renewed it in July 1980. Note: Former USMC Major Chad W. Seagren and I wrote on this for Hoover 5 years ago. The picture at the top is of Elvis Presley’s draft card. (1 COMMENTS)

In the early 2000s, the US government exaggerated evidence in favor of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program in order to whip up war hysteria. There is increasing evidence that in 2020 the US government exaggerated evidence for a “lab leak” being the origin of Covid in order to justify a cold war with China.A new paper in Science by Michael Worobey provides strong circumstantial evidence that Covid originated at the Huanan animal market in Wuhan, China. The paper showed that previous claims that “patient zero” has no connection with the Huanan market were false, and that the actual earliest known patient was a woman who worked in the market.The paper also shows that the original cluster of cases was centered on the Huanan market, and that this clustering cannot be due to reporting bias: Keep in mind that Wuhan is not a unified city like Paris, with a small river running down the middle.  The Yangtze is a giant river, roughly a mile across, and Wuhan feels like two separate cities.  (I was in Wuhan in mid-2019.)  In fact, it was originally multiple cities, Wuchang on one side and Hanyang on the other.  The name “Wuhan” was constructed out of those two names, and one other city.  As you can see from the map, the famous Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 12 kilometers from the animal market and on the other side of the huge river.   Now of course it is possible that the virus originally spread via a lab leak and the Huanan market was the site of the first “superspreader” event.  But that theory has exactly the same problem as lab leak opponents used to justify their claims that a natural origin was implausible.  Lab leak proponents once asked, “How likely is it that the virus would first emerge in a Chinese city with a virus research institute?”  Worobey turns that argument on its head: Perhaps Worobey is part of some sort of vast Chinese propaganda effort, which is trying to cover up the origins of Covid.  If so, why did Worobey previously sign a letter complaining that the WHO investigation had not taken the lab leak hypothesis seriously enough: In May, two months after the report by the W.H.O. and China was published, 18 prominent scientists, including Dr. Worobey, responded with a letter in Science complaining that the W.H.O. team had given the lab-leak theory short shrift. Far more research was required, they argued, to determine whether one explanation was more likely than the other. Lots of lab leak proponents jumped on this letter in support of their claims of a cover-up.  And yet Worobey’s Science paper shows that (in at least one respect) the WHO actually gave too much credence to the lab leak hypothesis by wrongly reporting that the first known patient had no links to the Huanan market. Ironically, the Chinese government may have encouraged lab leak speculation with a clumsy attempt to downplay the animal market hypothesis.  The previous SARS epidemic began in a Chinese animal market (in 2003), and early in 2020 China received heavy criticism for allowing these markets: Paul McCartney has called Chinese wet markets “medieval” and blamed them for the spread of coronavirus, using a comparison with the abolition of the slave trade when calling for them to be banned. So-called “wet markets” in Asia trade in fresh meat and produce, and sometimes feature live animals. (They take their name from the frequently hosed-down floors.) A common theory – though far from confirmed – is that Covid-19 originated in a live animal market in Wuhan, with the disease being transmitted from illegally traded bat or pangolin meat. These kinds of news reports in the Western media were deeply embarrassing to China, and their government destroyed valuable evidence that might link the animal markets to the pandemic by killing all the animals in the Huanan market. In a rational world, the animal market theory would be far more embarrassing to China than the lab leak hypothesis.  Western countries also have labs doing gain-of-function research, and lab leaks have occurred in the West.  But Western countries do not have Chinese style animal markets.  My own view is that the Chinese government is partly to blame for the Covid pandemic, but if I were convinced the lab leak theory were true then it would make me less likely to blame China.  Therefore I consider this to be an “anti-CCP post”. So why did the US government use the lab leak hypothesis as a tool for whipping up anti-China hysteria?  Perhaps because most people look at the issue in a more emotional way.  The term ‘lab leak’ conjures up images from “mad scientist” films, whereas wild animal markets seem like an old Chinese tradition, a part of their culture.   I see the US government’s attempt to promote the lab leak hypothesis as being part of a longstanding tradition going back to the sinking of the Maine, the Tonkin Gulf incident, and the Iraqi WMD fiasco.  The more things change, the more they stay the same. PS.  Other so-called “evidence” has been cited for the lab leak hypothesis, such as three WIV workers supposedly being infected with Covid in November 2019, and the “fact” that the virus supposedly looks manmade.  Those pieces of evidence have been shot down long ago. (0 COMMENTS)