I mean the only person in my life expressing an interest in this was my mom and she got it from the radio program coast to coast. Which is almost entirely crackpot conspiracy UFO bullshit. Still. I didn't tell her it couldn't have come from the lab. I said there isn't really enough evidence to conclude that. I think that was the mainstream opinion. Not that it couldn't have come from the lab, but that there wasn't enough evidence to support that conclusion. It's normal that something like this can take years to sort out especially when the authoritarian government controlling the area would prefer not to have that particular conclusion.
Shutting them up doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The lab leak theory has continued to be discussed in all kinds of media and many parts of the culture over the last year.
Several media organizations (washington post, buzzfeed) submitted FOIA requests for the emails, and as per federal law, they were released. No leak, normal federal government policy process, driven by mainstream-y media outlets AFAICT.
Twitter has not banned discussion of the theory. Here's a thread from May 27th (Nate Silver) discussing it in some detail:
They did have policies related to the lab leak theory, but it seems like a mischaracterization to say that the banned discussion of it.
The only person I can find who has lost their account over related matters is a NY Times reporter who closed her own account after making some fairly dumb remarks about the theory.
>Shutting them up doesn't appear to have been particularly successful.
The goal posts will move on this, I guarantee it. Suddenly institutional media will claim they've been working on this story the entire time, and all of their pronouncements cajoling people into not thinking about this explanation will be completely memory-holed. I'm not being hostile to you, I'm expressing frustration here because this really does call into question nearly all of the reporting on the broader Pandemic response when we're just fully admitting here that they did this "because Trump". What other stories did they fuck up on "because Trump"?
Go back and look at the reporting on every American war of the last 70 years. You will see the same pattern, and yet Trump had nothing do with any of them.
Go back and look at the reporting on every major environmental disaster of the last 70 years, from DDT to oil tanker spills to lead in gasoline to anthropogenic climate change: same pattern. Trump had nothing do with any of them either.
Hint: the media is pro-status quo. On every story, there are a few outliers who provide contrarian accounts, while the majority take a don't rock the boat (much) approach. Eventually, evidence accumulates, the culture shifts, the media changes direction.
Up thread you are literally arguing[1] that Trump is the "boy who cried wolf" and that his "lies" cost us proper reporting on this. I have no idea what past reporting on wars and environmental disasters have to do with the media making an explicitly political choice about how to cover the possible origins of the pandemic.
