Bats: Innocent Until Proven Guilty
April 1, 2020
Reports that bats are the likely villains behind the new coronavirus are doing harm to both bats and humans, a longtime bat expert argued in an Issues online exclusive. As an overly amped example, the Washington Times is out with a jumbled article declaring that the virus “mutated from bats” and “has been traced to bats,” and citing claims that the virus escaped from a Chinese government laboratory that studies new viruses “including deadly bat coronaviruses”—even while tucking in a brief acknowledgement that the exact origin of the virus “remains a mystery.”