zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
This very irresponsible reporting, that you don’t see often on Reuters.

People get sick, especially in autumn. And they infect each other. Reporting that some people working at the lab were sick, without any knowledge about kind of sickness is only going to add fuel to the conspiracy theories.

>>justap+i1
The article says: ‘"the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."’

>... is only going to add fuel to the conspiracy theories.

That's a bad thing only if the conspiracy theory is false. At this point, the theory that the Chinese Communistic Party conspired to cover up a lab leak is not implausible. There are multiple known occurrences of pathogens escaping from laboratories.

>>nokcha+d2
The communist party has conspired to cover up worse, genocides perpetuated by their dictatorship for example. The people who claim it's an outlandish suggestion they might have covered up a lab leak are uninformed or CCP apologists.

It would not be in the least surprising if this was a lab leak, and it is no more "harmful" to speculate that it was than to speculate that it was a wild virus.