"The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities."
This is a fantastic article, but amazingly almost all of it is year-old news. Most of this was known in March 2020, and nearly all of it by the end of 2020. How does it take so long for the truth to win?
I published a meta-analysis covering much of the same ground in November 2020 and this was only after waiting and expecting for several months that someone with a better platform would do so first. The article above covers the most important points but the story does go deeper: https://followtheplot.org/covid19
Would the logical conclusion from the "escaped a lab" theory be that China shouldn't be allowed to have virology research? Should any nation? Who gets to decide? Exactly what actionable conclusion depends on knowing if the origin of the virus was a lab or not?
There are maybe one in a dozen proponents of the lab theory that are legitimately interested in these questions. For the remaining 11 out of 12, the Wuhan Lab theory is just a belief that they wear in public to signal "China bad". An alarming number of people think China created the virus and released it on purpose. I once heard someone say China released the virus just to prove that our healthcare system is bad. Let me highlight the absurdity here. This person believes China engineered a virus and then released it on their own people in a city most foreigners were unaware of so that it would eventually make it to the US. They did all this just to prove some politically left point about socialized healthcare. That's not a real belief about how the world works. That's thinly veiled "I hate liberals and China".
Most of these people are trying to reach a conclusion that the world should punish China with sanctions or (in extreme cases) war. More than a few of them are using the lab theory as a fig leaf over blatant racism. There's a huge overlap between people who believe the lab theory and people who insist on calling it the "China virus" or "Wuhan Flu". That's not a coincidence. In short, the majority of the people agreeing with your theory aren't actually on your side. When you say "How does it take so long for the truth to win?", they have a very different idea of what "the truth" means.
Don't give them legitimacy or talking points. Being honest about the lab theory in the face of people who will use your words dishonestly is a fools errand. Don't be the fool who thinks he can be nuanced enough to pull it off. Until you know you are talking with someone who cares about the lab theory for the right reasons, the correct thing to say is "it absolutely evolved naturally and did not escape a lab".
> "Don't give them legitimacy or talking points. Being honest about the lab theory in the face of people who will use your words dishonestly is a fools errand. Don't be the fool who thinks he can be nuanced enough to pull it off. Until you know you are talking with someone who cares about the lab theory for the right reasons, the correct thing to say is "it absolutely evolved naturally and did not escape a lab"."
This kind of second order thinking and attempted manipulation is a big reason the mainstream press has lost all of its trust.
The same nonsense was why people tried to justify saying "masks don't work" was okay. "Well, we need the masks for healthcare workers so just lie to the public so they don't try to buy too many".
There are a lot of problems with this.
1. First I think it's largely a lie, the people making these arguments are not masterminds working on 3 levels, they're making stupid tribal arguments of a similar depth to the people blaming China out of "China bad".
2. It fails, the attempted manipulation is obvious and comes out as wrong - this further discredits the press and weakens the trust of the public in institutions. This plays directly into the hands of the 'people who will use your words dishonestly'.
3. We should give a shit about the truth independent of tribal affiliation, second order manipulations are stupid - people that act to cover that up are not as clever as they think they are.
As the sister reply to your comment suggests, there should be consequences for negligence that leads to a global pandemic killing millions.