I don't see why this would be the case. It could be a lab leak with nobody at the being aware or having evidence. Why must people be in on a secret coverup?
Many activities that make evaluating the lab leak hypothesis difficult were done in the open: Destruction of early virus samples and deletion of Gene sequencing from public databases.
>Add to that the fact that covid is a close cousin of already-known endemic viruses and that nothing about it looks engineered at all, and... this is still just a natural virus, sorry.
The virus does not need to have been engineered to have leaked from a lab. Natural viruses can and do leak from labs as well.
I hadn't considered this before, but you're right that most of the people dismissing the 'lab leak' theory seem to believe that their intellectual opponents are proposing that a 'premeditated conspiracy' took place.
In any case, if I were a PRoC official, I would try to reduce the chance of any (direct or circumstantial) evidence of a lab leak came to light. That said, even suppression of circumstantial evidence is not necessarily evidence of either a lab leak or pre-meditated conspiracy.
Please don't resort to personal insults on HN. It's a violation of the guidelines[1] and makes for poor and uninteresting discussion.
Instead...
> It's extremely hard to figure out who we're talking to.
...don't resort to personal attacks, and assess the argument that the individual is making, without setting up a straw-man argument. If you're unclear what their assumptions are, then ask.
Why are you insulting me? I honestly don't know where this virus came from, and am more interested in what the polarized discourse says about our current state of affairs.
Maybe. And? Dozens or hundreds of internationally-relevant people would have been knowledgeable about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's specific involvement in 9/11, but that didn't stop it from being covered up for almost a decade.
Basically: totalitarian governments suppress everything. It's what they do. It's not like the west had clear access inside facilities like WIV before the pandemic, so why do we expect different behavior now?
I remain really dubious, personally. Imagine it was a leak. Dozens or hundreds of people -- researchers with PhDs and international cred and travel ability -- would have had to be knowledgeable about the research and in on the coverup. Someone would have swung themselves an appointment at UCSF or Johns Hopkins or wherever in exchange for blabbing.
It's an attractive conspiracy, but really that's all there is. The existing circumstantial evidence is a big nothingburger (Chinese Institute of Virology studies known Chinese Viruses; News at 11!).
The ONLY significant evidence, itself still just a single source, is that the Journal reported that it was known to western intelligence agencies at the time that there was an outbreak of something flu-like among WIV employees in October 2020. That's I guess a little suspicious, but still unconfirmed and... really not enough to move the needle.
Add to that the fact that covid is a close cousin of already-known endemic viruses and that nothing about it looks engineered at all, and... this is still just a natural virus, sorry.