As more infectious variants of COVID-19 arrive on the scene, an answer to the question about exactly how the world finds itself in this mess might become even more of a matter of life or death than it is now.

At first it was the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Most experts, and certainly the bulk of the public, believed that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started as a result of someone eating a bat in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. There were whispers that the virus had been manufactured in a laboratory in that city and that somehow the little spiky ball that has killed millions and brought the world’s economy to its knees escaped. But nobody much believed it and certainly what’s known as the mainstream press for the most part ignored it.

Until now.

No one would accuse New York magazine of being a fringe publication, as a cursory glace at its Wikipedia page makes clear. Yesterday, New Yorkmagazine published a lengthy article by Nicholson Baker, in which he posits that scientists in a laboratory in China purposely created a hyper-virulent strain of a coronavirus as part of an anti-pandemic program.