No, that's just not true. The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario and boosted a handful of experts were favored a wild reservoir for the disease.

Our "intellectual elites" have a bad problem now with moral/intellectual fashions, which are constantly changing. Social media has considerably exacerbated this problem.

>The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario

Do you have any links?

How many do you want? If I post one link, you'll likely say it's not enough. Same with two links, etc. I'm hesitant to engage with this kind of request, but I did.

In any case, I can tell you that there was a definite narrative in the media that the lab escape scenario was not only very unlikely, but "xenophobic" and "conspiratorial".

Perhaps the most telling example of all my links below is this one, which is very open to the possibility of a lab escape. The latter half of the article is full of example of the efforts of the media and scientific establishment (for whatever reason, mostly political) to quash the lab escape hypothesis. One key quote:

"Antonio Regalado, biomedicine editor of MIT Technology Review, put it more bluntly. If it turned out COVID-19 came from a lab, he tweeted, 'it would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom.'"

Article:

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-br...

And here is a handful of links, of many:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intellig...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavi...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-lik...

I still remember this article which seemed to conflate lab escape with bioengineering:

"Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...

"After the story published, Cotton as part of a series of tweets made a distinction between the possibility the coronavirus is a man-made result of biological weapons research – which experts say should be dismissed – and other possibilities such as a lab accident. He also continued to list the engineered virus as a “hypothesis.”

So doesn't this imply it was Tom Cotton himself who was initially conflating an engineered origin with a lab leak (which could be wild type or engineered virus)?

Clarifying something he said previously doesn't imply retraction, disavowal, or even modification of the prior statement.

It shows that he was previously conflating two distinct concepts (genetically engineered virus and lab escape) and then got called out on it. One is wrong and one could be correct.

That is not true.

He suggested that the virus may have come from the Wuhan lab.

NYT slammed him for this "fringe theory" in February 2020:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru...

You are conflating multiple theories to maximize outrage. The article is clear that the origin theory described as ‘fringe’ is that the virus was a manufactured bio weapon and intentionally released. It even mentions that Cotton had to ‘walk back’ his support for this theory.

While unlikely, it's also premature to call the genetically-engineered scenario "wrong". I agree it appears improbable at this point, but when the most likely scenario appears to be a lab escape, I'm hesitate to categorically rule out that the virus had been genetically altered at all.

> I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab.

For the better part of a year now, the lab leak theory and the genetic engineering theory have been lumped in together by those trying to discredit them as conspiracies. The issue is that every time someone would point at circumstantial evidence of a potential lab leak, people would point at the scientists saying there was loads of evidence it wasn't genetically engineered, when those two things aren't remotely the same thing.

No, this was the sleight of hand by the media. Almost all people dismissed as conspiracy theorists said most likely lab escape doesn’t mean genetically engineered. But straight away that’s how it was reported in the media. Basically twisting words and lying. Shameful.

Tangentially related, I have another comment from a separate post observing some additional media (NYT specifically) sleight of hand WRT the Damore "memo":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877

>> [Damore] argued that biological differences and not a lack of opportunity explained the shortage of women in upper-tier positions.

> This is an unfortunate way of characterizing Damore’s argument. It’s technically true in that Damore IIRC was arguing that there was more variation among men than women (more men at the top and at the bottom but fewer in the middle, but Google hires from the top hence more men). So yeah, technically biological differences, but when the average person hears that they’re going to assume he was arguing that women in general are dumber than men in general or some such. That said, this also represents much more earnest coverage of Damore considering the initial coverage overtly lied on many accounts (calling it an anti diversity screed, claiming he sent it as a memo to the company, etc).

I doubt if there's little doubt if you go with the lab theory that this virus wasn't genetically modified to be more virulent to humans (or possibly some species similar to humans). I think the big one is whether it was a lab accident, which seems like the most likely scenario barring jumping species naturally which still seems to be the most likely scenario.

I know this is confusing, but gain of function genome alterations is one class of genetic engineering.

Other approaches involve literally trying to change the codon sequence in a supercomputer to see what happens in the folding and conformation changes, but it is very esoteric since bio is so complicated.

So my understanding is that GoF can involve genetic engineering (editing the codon sequence/geneotype) OR serial passaging (growing successive generations of microorganisms under various conditions to influence phenotype).

The disregarded conspiracy theory, as I understood it, was that Chinese researchers were doing the former, NOT the latter. It is also my understanding that the virus' genetic code does not show any evidence of the former (editing codon sequence).