zlacker

>>codech+(OP)
It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums.

Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.

>>kaesar+ca
Kevin Drum had a good summary of this a couple of weeks ago, much shorter. His take? There's no more evidence for the lab leak theory now than there was a year ago, BUT what has changed is that the cross-over theory implied that we would find certain evidence for the vectors, and that evidence has not shown up. KD's take was that it's not so much that the lab leak theory has become more likely, it's the that biological origin theory has become less likely.

>>PaulDa+1c
Haha. No. It’s because of politics and TDS. People were taught that this was a Trump theory. That’s all the media needs to say to ensure that nobody will take it seriously and nobody will tolerate anyone else who takes it seriously.

>>lawnch+td
Except that it was a Trump theory.

That doesn't mean it cannot be true. It does mean that after 3 years and several thousand fully documented outright lies, the presumption of truth was no longer being granted.

>>PaulDa+Ld
Except he was proven right yet again that social media and old media orgs will censor others and lie to the public when it fits their political agenda.

>>fragil+Oe
Right - instead of trying to debate the veracity of the argument, it was immediately cast as a political battle, and being on the same side as Trump in most urban and most media circles was asking to be ostracized. It’s absolutely poisonous.

>>kaesar+Lf
How as anybody going to "debate the veracity of the argument"? What information was anybody going to use?

Even so, in the intervening period, even when Trump was still president, several US agency reports concluded that the virus likely did not originate from a lab, and one assumes that they had more information than anybody else.

>>PaulDa+gh
>What information was anybody going to use?

I used these three pieces of evidence to come to this conclusion for myself last year.

1. Wuhan is the epicenter of the outbreak.

2. Wuhan has a lab that works with bat covid.

3. China initally tooks steps to hide the virus from the world until that was no longer possible.

>several US agency reports concluded that the virus likely did not originate from a lab.

Keep that in mind next time.

>>willci+gn
Do you believe in anything else considered a "conspiracy theory" by the scientific or academic community? This is roughly the level of reasoning people use when arguing that 9/11 was an inside job.

>>knowav+Dq
Why did you say “anything else”? This isn’t a conspiracy theory. They only detail that is even in question is whether or not one of their samples leaked. Nothing else about what that lab is, or what that lab does, is even in question. They go 1000 miles away to get bats and bat poop and bring it to the WIV to study bat coronaviruses and they modify them to be more transmissible. This is basic virology in 2021 and they have been proudly telling the world that they do this for years. None of that is speculation.

The question of whether one of their viruses leaked out again (yes, again!) that was a bat coronavirus found right by the bat coronavirus lab, or whether it was a remarkable cascade of coincidences that still has no viable complete hypothesis (the “modified” virus doesn’t infect bats anymore), is not one of “conspiracy”.