In another blow to the benign theory of Covid-19’s origins, Judith Miller in City Journal reports that a senior U.S. defence official and bioweapons expert, Robert Kadlec, has concluded the virus was deliberately engineered as part of a Chinese government bioweapons program. Kadlec believes release of the newly created bug from the shoddily-run Wuhan institute was probably accidental. (Article is paywalled at City Journal; above link is to Miller’s blog.)
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.


