> No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus
Half this very thread. "you couldn't mention the lab without being called a racist" and then they proceed to talk about china bioengineering weapons instead of an accidental lab leak.
The constant "the news suppresed this because of trump" is also a pretty loud dogwhistle.
The idea that a lab could have a leak was studied, there were multiple papers on it. The evidence did not add up to much, other than the circumstancial. The zootropic evidence had a bit more weight but still came up with "we might not have enough data to come up with a conclusive answer".
Because scientists said they leaned on that evidence the popular science outlets explained it as "origin is a bat not a lab leak" which should have had more nuance in the headlines but popular science outlets try to summarise hard science into easy to understand articles and they are fairly guilty of clickbait (how many times have we cured cancer, or some physics experiment done something close to a black hole). And between that and a number of bad actors starting conspiracy theories about the lab being a hidden bioweapon lab and China releasing it intentionally the discourse got all sorts of distorted.
The problem is Bioweapon dudes hid behind lab leak concerns and the lack of evidence from a scientific prespeective gave the wet market Patient 0 more visibility. To this day, half this thread is people with conspiracy theories hidding behind the lab leak. Makes a conversation about it almost entirely useless when you engage with someone and a few messages in they say the media is jewish and wanted to destroy the economy with lockdowns to make trump lose (this is a comment on this very thread further up, although i think they have been shadowbanned already)
Half of this very thread is saying that China intentionally released this virus? Let’s grant you that half of this thread is saying that China likely engineered Covid as a weapon (very arguable). Are you unable to distinguish that assertion from the assertion that the engineered weapon was intentionally deployed? I don’t understand why you’re conflating the two.
> Half of this very thread is saying that China intentionally released this virus?
I was being slightly hyperbolic. A good chhunk outright said it, another good group was using plausible deniability, which means if pressed they might say thats not what they meant. Makes separating them quite hard
> Are you unable to distinguish that assertion from the assertion that the engineered weapon was intentionally deployed?
I am not. The issue is not that either. The issue is "The origin of COVID-19".
When it came out two main theories appeared. Either the wet market where it was first noticed, or a lab leak in a lab over an hour away that was studying coronaviruses.
The two were studied by the scientific community, china put a lot of hurdles and the best availeble evidence pointed towards the wetmarket.
While this was happening, a number of conspiracies started, many of which pointed towards China as a bioweapons manufacturer (something that is very illegal). Those theories included that china was not studying viruses but manufacturing them (that is a very key distinction) and the theoreis then spawn over if China leaked it to test it, or infected its own population etc. Theories adjacent to this were heavily repeated by a number of news outlets, mayorly OAN a far right news station. The great smoke screen was that when pressed they could always fall back on "the lab leak theory" which is way more sensible.
Essentially the problem is the lab leak theory meant two very different things. It should have been called the accident leak and the bio weapon theory, but both were called lab leak and people who mean bioweapon hide behind the larger, more defensible lab leak umbrella.
Half this very thread. "you couldn't mention the lab without being called a racist" and then they proceed to talk about china bioengineering weapons instead of an accidental lab leak.
The constant "the news suppresed this because of trump" is also a pretty loud dogwhistle.
The idea that a lab could have a leak was studied, there were multiple papers on it. The evidence did not add up to much, other than the circumstancial. The zootropic evidence had a bit more weight but still came up with "we might not have enough data to come up with a conclusive answer".
Because scientists said they leaned on that evidence the popular science outlets explained it as "origin is a bat not a lab leak" which should have had more nuance in the headlines but popular science outlets try to summarise hard science into easy to understand articles and they are fairly guilty of clickbait (how many times have we cured cancer, or some physics experiment done something close to a black hole). And between that and a number of bad actors starting conspiracy theories about the lab being a hidden bioweapon lab and China releasing it intentionally the discourse got all sorts of distorted.
The problem is Bioweapon dudes hid behind lab leak concerns and the lack of evidence from a scientific prespeective gave the wet market Patient 0 more visibility. To this day, half this thread is people with conspiracy theories hidding behind the lab leak. Makes a conversation about it almost entirely useless when you engage with someone and a few messages in they say the media is jewish and wanted to destroy the economy with lockdowns to make trump lose (this is a comment on this very thread further up, although i think they have been shadowbanned already)