> 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.
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.