"An Engineered Doomsday": How The New York Times Reversed Itself To Get Trump

By Hans Mahncke & Jeff Carlson

It may seem hardly believable given its coverage of the origin of Covid, but there was a time when the New York Times was a staunch opponent of Fauci’s gain-of-function experiments. Even more incredibly, the paper also issued a very early and very loud warning about the real possibility that a lab leak resulting from Fauci’s gain-of-function experiments might kill millions of people. However, when their prophecy came true, they denied that a lab leak was possible. There is perhaps no better illustration of the New York Times’ disintegration from a serious newspaper to a regime propaganda rag than the story of how the paper reversed itself on dangerous virus experiments. 

Starting in early 2020, the New York Times has been leading the charge in promoting the fraudulent narrative that Covid came out of nature. An early article that set the narrative in stone–and served as a warning to anyone who deigned to disagree–was the February 17, 2020 smear piece directed at Senator Tom Cotton. Its headline read: “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.” 

All that Cotton had done was to mention the fact that a novel coronavirus happened to have emerged in the same city that had a lab specializing in creating novel coronaviruses. He noted this fact in a tweet, while also mentioning that Covid could well have come from nature. The New York Times' article accused Cotton of spreading a conspiracy theory but failed to provide any evidence to refute Cotton's point. But it didn’t matter. The narrative was established that the lab origin theory was a fringe conspiracy theory, and for the next four years, all major media organizations would follow the New York Times’ lead and adhere to the false narrative. 

Another highly visible, and highly notable, Covid origin propaganda piece penned by the New York Times was its Wuhan seafood market article of February 26, 2022. The paper deemed the article so important that it not only appeared on the front page but they even held the presses for it, preposterously claiming that Covid “very likely twice spilled over into people working or shopping at the market.” The New York Times went on to claim that “[t]he researchers said they found no support for an alternate hypothesis that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan.” The paper failed to mention that those purported researchers included a group of Fauci-funded scientists who had been commissioned by Fauci to dismiss the lab leak theory. The New York Times also did not mention that these purported scientists were later handsomely rewarded by Fauci with huge grants. Nor has the article been corrected to reflect the fact that the Wuhan seafood market “studies” have been thoroughly debunked. 

Those are just some of the most egregious examples. There are plenty of other New York Times natural origin propaganda articles, including a glowing profile of one of the supposed scientists who was commissioned by Fauci to push the fraudulent natural origin narrative. It goes without saying that the New York Times also propagandized the fraudulent raccoon dog story, a story that claimed that Covid originated with raccoon dogs. The story was so ridiculous that it was completely debunked right out of the gate.

So why are we revisiting the long list of New York Times natural origin articles? Because it wasn’t always this way. In fact, before the New York Times went all in with the natural origin hoax, they were warning their readers about a lab made pandemic. 

Incredibly, a newly unearthed editorial from 2012 titled "An Engineered Doomsday" contains so many prescient statements about a man made pandemic that it is hard to believe that the New York Times editorial board wrote it. Yet they did. 

Here are some examples:

• “scientists financed by the National Institutes of Health…created a virus that could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped confinement or was stolen by terrorists”

• “It is highly uncertain, even improbable, that the virus would mutate in nature along the pathways prodded in a laboratory environment”

• “the research should never have been undertaken because the potential harm is so catastrophic”

• “the consequences, should the virus escape, are too devastating to risk”

As we have painfully learned over the past few year, the entire field of manipulating viruses in order to prevent pandemics is a scam and a grift. A virus can mutate in countless ways. To modify it in a lab in one or the other way tells us absolutely nothing about what might happen in nature. As renowned molecular biologist Richard Ebright put it in 2015: “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk.”

What is surprising, though, is that the New York Times knew this in 2012 and spelled it out in no uncertain terms. Yet, when the man-made pandemic arrived, the paper suddenly decided that what they previously knew no longer applies. 

So why go to such lengths to cover up what they themselves had correctly foreseen? 

One word: Trump.

There is no rational reason for the New York Times to have suddenly flipped on its own prophecy. The sane response would have been: We told you so and now let’s make sure it does not happen again. But they did the opposite. The disavowed their own previous reporting, reporting which proved to be presciently accurate. The only discernible reason why the New York Times did this is because its previous reporting matched what Trump was saying. They could not let that happen. The New York Times could not allow Trump to be right.