zlacker

>>alwill+(OP)
The amount of censorship, especially among the qualified scientific community in just about every facet of this disease is alarming. Even if the origins were accidental or lab-born or whatnot, the response has been so politicized worldwide that pure science has been largely thrown out the window. Every possibility should be analyzed & tested, even if it goes against the interests of a ruling party and all parties are guilty of exploiting this.

>>dogsbo+O8
I don't believe it is fair to call what the qualified scientific community is doing as "censorship", in fact I would go even further and say that calling it as such is purely political propaganda.

The scientific community is doing the studies, all the studies, every possibility is be analyzed & tested, even the most outlandish claims are being thoroughly tested in many many scientific studies/trials. Every scientist in any related field wants to be the one to find a cure, or find the source, or find any other relevant information on this disease (for the career advancement, the citations, the bragging rights). That the scientific community is correctly trying (and unfortunately failing) is to suppress the spread of false and/or misleading information that is not supported by the science, like the following:

1. Sensationalist press releases that are not supported by the underlying scientific paper.

2. Press releases propping-up weak new papers/studies that are less statistically powerful than the current consensus and therefore don't change the consensus.

3. The general press proping up scientific pre-prints without peer review.

>>Skeuom+Jl
The whole point of the present article is that the "current consensus" has been astroturfed, and is based on no evidence whatsoever. If you allow me to get more cynical, several journalists have now written about how (1) natural origins was initially popularized as a "consensus" view by just a few scientists on Twitter an effort to smear Tom Cotton. Due to the political valence, this messaging caught on with journalists.

(2) The correspondence of the authors behind the initial Lancet article which dismisses non-natural origin investigations as conspiracy theory (seeking to build the consensus view and much cited by the above jornalists) has been obtained by FOIA. It reveals the authors engaging in conspiracy and collusion: the managing editor bypassed the normal editorial process, the authors decided not to have some people sign so the statement would look less partisan and chose wordings that they knew were not supported by evidence, in particular deciding to ignore concerns about the very unlikely codons at the furin cleavage site. Moreover, none of the authors declared conflicts of interest. (And still, after much outcry, only one has made such a declaration.)

In short, any consensus for a natural origin is very much artificial and should be considered irrelevant.