Let's look back at last year. 2023 was the year that ended up with a shortage of conspiracy theories.
When the COVID pandemic started back in 2019 in Wuhan, China, intelligent observers speculated that it came from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The World Health Organization and multiple U.S. Federal agencies insisted that it came from infected bats at a "wet market". That view was amplified by the government mouthpieces like the New York Times and the Washington Post. The rest of the mainstream media fell into line and condemned those pointing to the probability of a lab leak as conspiracy theorists. Early in 2023 both the Department of Energy and the FBI conceded that a lab leak was the most probable cause.
In 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in sworn testimony in the Senate, told Senator Rand Paul that no U.S. money was spent funding the Wuhan lab. In 2021, the National Institutes of Health acknowledged that they had channeled money through a non-profit called Eco-Health Alliances to the Wuhan laboratory, something long claimed by conspiracy theorists. Another conspiracy theory bites the dust.
President Trump was initially very skeptical about the dangers of COVID. But at some point, his advisers convinced him that it was a highly dangerous threat and that he could be a hero and easily win reelection if he shut down the country's economy, made everyone wear masks, required social distancing, stopped foreign travel and fast-tracked a miracle cure-all vaccine. Conspiracy theorists said those actions will kill his chances of reelection. Score one more for the conspiracy theorists.
Pfizer and Moderna claimed that their new vaccines had a 95% effectiveness rate and that they were proven safe. They did, however, demand to be protected from any and all liability suits if their claims turned out to be wrong. Seems they agreed with the conspiracy theorists on that point. The vaccines, really gene modification techniques, were nowhere near 95% effective and anecdotal evidence suggests they are probably not safe either.
Conspiracy theorists said that a disease which was 99%+ survivable and subject to natural immunity for reinfection by those who got it could be safely ignored by all but those whose health was already compromised and the elderly. Excess mortality figures for countries that locked down compared to those which didn't proved them right.
To ameliorate the severe economic effects of the lockdowns, the Federal Reserve went on unprecedented money printing spree. Conspiracy theorists predicted rip-roaring inflation. They were right once again.
Conspiracy theorists predicted that Russia would win its war against Ukraine and that U.S. sanctions would be ineffective and ultimately backfire. We're not quite there yet but we're well on the way.
Perhaps it's time for us conspiracy theorists to wear the smear proudly and tell the elitists who smear us to quit attempting to order us around based on faulty premises.
I'm Richard Fields and that's Report From the Fields. See you next week with our outlook for 2024.