> then Fauci and Straszak shifted funding to continue it in Wuhan

A nested conspiracy theory is just what we need for some more political polarization in the USA. Score!

This information is publicly available and was mentioned in Wade's article. It wasn't against the law to fund it, there were loop holes in the rules that allowed circumvention with sign off from Fauci and likely another guy Collins from the NIH. So no need to dismiss this with the tired conspiracy claims.

The convenient use of the word “conspiracy theory” usually indicates a lazy evaluation of the facts from what I’ve observed. The threat of “polarization” adds even more to the lack of rigor. Should we just ignore concepts and discussion if it is not generally agreed upon or upsets a group of people?

Unfortunately that's the way the game seems to be going. Have a huge interest in statistics and want to comment against the election results - better be very careful if you make unpopular assertions and need funding. Same thing appears here.It would be a very career limiting to make claims that are similar to the orange man's claims around the origin, the ability of otc medications like HCL or invermecithin to help early on decrease the severity.

Thanks for mentioning the election example. The word “lies” is a proxy for lack of rigorous journalism as well. When journalists claim that opinions / criticism about something as complicated as an election are “lies”, their bias is quite obvious. It’s as if there is no nuance allowed.

In the case of the election, "lies" is a perfectly appropriate word, since the people claiming voter fraud were lying about the possibility of fraud. No fraud was actually found, and everyone investigating found nothing to suggest any fraud was happening or likely.

So yes, if you stand up and claim that there was rampant voter fraud that changed the outcome of the election, you are at best misinformed, and at worst lying.

I wouldn't even call this voter fraud stuff "conspiracy theories". It's gaslighting and destabilizing propaganda by an administration that failed to get reelected.

Your second paragraph is more reasonable but it is in conflict with the first.

Do you deny as stated by many news agencies that the CIA stated or leaked that Russian agents impacted the 2016 election? What about the 2020 election? Is the CIA lying? Did Russian agents or other hackers just sit that one out?

There is so much evidence of election fraud and odd irregularities throughout the United States … the question is whether there was enough of it to impact the results. Arizona came down to 0.3% of the vote and Georgia was razor thin as well. States like these are decided by how votes are counted in a single county (Fulton and Maricopa in these cases) due to the high population concentration in a region of the state. Questioning the results (regardless of which political party) is not lying especially given the thin margins; it is healthy for democracy and gives more confidence in future election results.

> gaslighting and destabilizing propaganda by an administration that failed to get reelected.

That's it, right there. And then when cornered like the lying rats they are, they will claim "people are saying", "a lot of people feel", and "we're just asking questions." No, sorry. I thought the rightwing in the US was the ones don't care what people are saying, how they feel about things, because facts are facts? Oh, and I also thought it was part of the responsibility of being an elected political leader to tell the damn truth and not just "ask questions".

Actual facts are now a conspiracy theory?