Don't forget that they ban-hammered anyone who advanced the lab leak theory because a global entity was pulling the strings at the WHO. I first heard about Wuhan in January of 2020 from multiple Chinese nationals who were talking about the leak story they were seeing in uncensored Chinese media and adamant that the state media story was BS. As soon as it blew up by March, Western media was manipulated into playing the bigotry angle to suppress any discussion of what may have happened.
I believe having Trump as president exacerbated many, many things during that time, and this is one example. He was quick to start blaming the "Chinese", he tried to turn it into a reason to dislike China and Chinese people, because he doesn't like China, and he's always thinking in terms of who he likes and dislikes. This made it hard to talk about the lab leak hypothesis without sounding like you were following Trump in that. If we had had a more normal president, I don't think this and other issues would have been as polarized, and taking nuanced stances would have been more affordable.
I’m undecided on the issue, but… if I were trying to cover up an accidental lab leak I’d spread a story that it was a giant conspiracy to create a bio weapon. For extra eye rolls I’d throw in some classic foil hat tropes like the New World Order or the International Bankers.
If it was a lab leak, by far the most likely explanation is that someone pricked themselves or caught a whiff of something.
A friend of mine who lived in China for a while and is familiar with the hustle culture there had his own hypothesis. Some low level techs who were being given these bats and other lab animals to euthanize and incinerate were like “wait… we could get some money for these over at the wet market!”
> My memory is that the "lab leak" stuff I saw back then was all conspiracy theories about how it was a Chinese bioweapon.
No, that was just the straw man circulated in your echo chamber to dismiss discussion. To be clear, there were absolutely people who believed that, but the decision to elevate the nonsense over the serious discussion is how partisan echo chambers work.
That was one of the main arguments by some of my coworkers and friends when COVID came up socially. I specifically remember a coworker at a FAANG saying something along the lines of "It's a bioweapon, so it's basically an act of war".
Because that is a bold claim to make. There is no proof of a lab leak and evidence leads to the wet market as the source. There is a debate out there for 100k to prove this. Check it out.
> Because that is a bold claim to make. There is no proof of a lab leak and evidence leads to the wet market as the source.
A novel coronavirus outbreak happens at the exact location as a lab performing gain of function research on coronaviruses... but yeah, suggesting a lab leak is outlandish, offensive even, and you should be censored for even mentioning that as a possibility. Got it.
This line of thinking didn't make sense then and still doesn't make sense now.
But the first cases were all linked to a wet market far enough from the lab that it would be highly improbable for the cases to come from the lab itself.
Their containment protocols are known to be lax. A staffer could have been a vector for the initial transmission. Remember they tried to pin it on US military personnel early on. The CCP wants the market to be the focus of attention and we'll never get believable evidence that suggests otherwise.
You're talking about a country where freedom of speech is openly not existing. Imagine your chances of finding out that they accidentally spread a virus they were researching about.
The same country with 1 billion people and 6-8 covid cases per day. Sure.
To be honest I don't even understand why this is a topic anymore. Conspiracy or not, it's plausible that they screwed up. Why are people nitpicking, I don't get it.
> There is no proof of a lab leak and evidence leads to the wet market as the source
Because WHO worked with CPC to bury evidence and give clean chit to wuhan lab. There was some pressure building up then for international teams to visit wuhan lab and examine data transparently. But, with thorough ban of lab leak theory, WHO visited china and gave clean chit without even visiting wuhan lab or having access to lab records. The only place that could prove this definitively buried all records.
The topic at hand is not whether it's a bold claim to make. The question is: should organizations that control a large portion of the world's communication channels have the ability to unilaterally define the tone and timber of a dialog surrounding current events?
To the people zealously downvoting all of these replies: defend yourselves. What about this is not worthy of conversation?
I'm not saying that I support lab leak. The observation is that anyone that discussed the lab leak hypothesis on social media had content removed and potentially were banned. I am fundamentally against that.
If the observation more generally is that sentiments should be censored that can risk peoples lives by influencing the decisions they make, then let me ask you this:
Should Charlie Kirk have been censored? If he were, he wouldn't have been assassinated.
> "Should Charlie Kirk have been censored? If he were, he wouldn't have been assassinated."
On the other hand, if he were, then whoever censored him might have just as easily become the target of some other crazy, because that appears to be the world we live in now. Something's gotta change. This whole "us vs them" situation is just agitating the most extreme folks right over the edge of sanity into "Crazy Town". Wish we could get back to bein' that whole "One Nation Under God" "Great Melting Pot" "United States" they used to blather on about in grade-school back in the day, but that ship appears to have done sailed and then promptly sunk to the bottom... :(
> Because that is a bold claim to make. There is no proof of a lab leak and evidence leads to the wet market as the source.
It was not a bold claim at the time. Not only was there no evidence that it was the wet market at the time, the joint probability of a bat coronavirus outbreak where there were few bat caves but where they were doing research on bat coronaviruses is pretty damning. Suppressing discussion of this very reasonable observation was beyond dumb.
It is not as cut and dry as you think. Also it is rather hard to get any evidence when you aren't allow to visit the "scene of the crime" so to speak and all data is being withheld.
Even Dr Fauci said in 2021 he was "not convinced" the virus originated naturally. That was a shift from a year earlier, when he thought it most likely Covid had spread from animals to humans.
(..February 2023..) The Department of Energy, which oversees a network of 17 U.S. laboratories, concluded with “low confidence” that SARS-CoV-2 most likely arose from a laboratory incident. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it favored the laboratory theory with “moderate” confidence. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from natural zoonotic spillover, while two remain undecided.
WHO says that "While most available and accessible published scientific evidence supports hypothesis #1, zoonotic transmission from animals, possibly from bats or an intermediate host to humans, SAGO is not currently able to conclude exactly when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 first entered the human population."
However "Without information to fully assess the nature of the work on coronaviruses in Wuhan laboratories, nor information about the conditions under which this work was done, it is not possible for SAGO to assess whether the first human infection(s) may have resulted due to a research related event or breach in laboratory biosafety."
WHO paraphrased: We have no data at all about the Wuhan Laboratory so we can not make a conclusion on that hypothesis. Since we have data relating to natural transmission from animals we can say that situation was possible.
