My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.
It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates...
Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?
Really? I usually see a lot of plain disagreement based on reasonable lines of thinking, but only a very small proportion of "_extremely_ strong" wording. Are you sure you're not just interpreting a multitude of similar opinions as creating a feeling of that opinion being "extremely strong"? Or that you're not just thinking of the cases where people are responding to the overtly political conspiracy hyperbole that sometimes comes as a wrapper around the proposal?
This is not just me being salty about reactions to my own comments, I've personally never made a comment on the origin of the covid on Reddit, as I don't feel like I have anything of value to add yet. It's just something I've witnessed over and over again.
Like the GP of this thread I've never understood why such a relatively harmless claim would be so contentious. I've always assumed it was something political that as a non-American I simply don't know the context of. It reminds me of the drama around hydroxychloroquine, where mentioning it on Reddit would get you tarred-and-feathered as a loony Trumpist, even though it seemed like a non-issue to me. Obviously HCQ doesn't really work, but believing it does never seemed to deserve such harsh treatment, which I'm again assuming has roots in a political context I don't fully understand.