Essay Grading: F

When grading Daszak's Guardian essay, it's important to remember that the author is promoted as a world-leading expert - the best-of-the-best science intellects on the planet.   Backed by millions of dollars in (taxpayer) funding & research resources, he is representing the World Health Organization on behalf of us all to understand the origin of a disaster that killed millions whilst precipitating draconian restrictions on all human freedoms.

Now, if the goal was to create a fog of irrationality to cover up the origins of Covid & spread CCP disinformation, then i'd have to give you A for effort. Though the Guardian deserves part of the credit as the mainstream mega-platform promoting you

But if it's meant as an academic argument, then even if it was written by a Year 10 student,  you couldn't in all honesty give it a pass mark.  Here's a recap as to why:

You've provided no evidence to support your contention that Richard Dearlove's call to investigate a lab-origin makes him a crackpot conspiracy theorist.  

A barrage of immature name-calling doesn't make it so, Pete, i'm sorry.   It's unscientific.  It only diminishes you.  If that's the best that you, one of our (supposedly) brightest scientific minds can muster, in the world's moment of need, then that's very disturbing. 

Your use of the pejorative term Conspiracy Theorist four times (like it means something) in the one article (& dozens of more times in other writings) betrays a lack of substance.  

Your labeling of a call to investigate the possibility of a lab-origin by Dearlove & Sorensen (& other researchers) as an outlandish claim equivalent to saying Covid came from aliens,  is nothing more than a silly Strawman.

Your only evidence to support your case is that Scientist just know.   But no explanation of how they know.  The WIV database was taken down & we haven't even had the investigation yet!  If one of the chief investigators is claiming it's a foregone conclusion even before it's happened, then straight-away we can deduce that the WHO Investigation is a sham. 

The implications of that are frightening: our world-leading experts, that we pay for, rely on, that are meant to serve us - they are happy to betray us, & every principle of science (& ethics) to commit a global, academic fraud.  Why?  To protect a totalitarian regime - & their own self-interests.

I have this home-spun (non-expert, i admit, but bear with me) theory:

‘When a person resorts to name-calling - they have an insecurity about that topic.’

For example a homophobe might be insecure about their own sexuality, or a racist about their personal value as a human. Often, the language used in emotive outbursts is revealing, as with your "fears that dissolve logic and reason” tirade.

Logic is your insecurity. You see it as the enemy. Logically, the investigation would include what was going on at the labs. Logically, you would not be part of the investigation due to your conflict of interest.

Hence your fixation on labeling anyone who asks a logical question as a conspiracy theorist.

Using my theory, that irrational reaction tells me you're covering something up. Judging by the volume of your media output, i'd say Something Big.