zlacker

>>codech+(OP)
You know the story of the boy who cried wolf?

Trump was the boy.

Everybody knows how that story ended, but as a reminder:

"This tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock. When a wolf actually does appear, the villagers do not believe the boy's cries for help, and the flock is destroyed. The moral of the story is that liars will not be rewarded; even if they tell the truth, no one believes them. "

There's a cost to lying. Sometimes it's your own flock. Sometime's its everybody's flock. Maybe Trump was right, maybe he wasn't. The boy was right about the wolf, eventually, too. The moral remains the same.

>>PaulDa+ob
This is a weak and frankly shameful rationalization. Just take the L. People who dismissed this fucked up. People who were jerks about it fucked up even more. Trump Derangement Syndrome is your fault, not Trumps. None of the people who were looking into this or following it were getting their information from Trump. Most of the detractors just assumed they were.

>>lawnch+jc
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.

>>breaky+Jg
I don't doubt your account --but that's a distraction.

There were many people in bioscience, virology, etc. who said it was possible and should not be discounted, but those people were hounded and shut up.

>>mc32+4h
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.

>>PaulDa+Ai
This claim is laughable. It was all labeled conspiracy theory, fringe, even racist.

Twitter and FB had policies against it and even now, today Twitter suspended the account for the Fauci email leaker(s). So much for open discussion.

>>mc32+Uj
Fauci's email was not "leaked".

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:

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1397869883585708034

Here's Ryan Delk from May 23rd saying it even more clearly:

https://twitter.com/delk/status/1396583148524212226

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.