It's interesting how, not that long ago, just mentioning that the lab leak hypothesis was worth investigating was enough to get someone banned from social media.

Now, nothing really changed except a certain administration, and suddenly it's ok to discuss it and potentially investigate it?

The Lancet letter was very effective in terms of defining the narrative and branding lab leak as a conspiracy theory. It took a while for the letter to be recognized as more advocacy than science. Proponents of the lab leak theory (Tom Cotton) were unattractive to the Washington Post and other media sources who were happy to label them as conspiracy theorists.

Though I understand how some traditional media sources and social media companies (like many Americans) may have felt that Trump's reelection had to be stopped by any possible legal means (as per Time magazine's story), I don't understand precisely why suppressing the lab leak theory would need to be part of that.

> The Lancet letter was very effective in terms of defining the narrative and branding lab leak as a conspiracy theory. It took a while for the letter to be recognized as more advocacy than science. Proponents of the lab leak theory (Tom Cotton) were unattractive to the Washington Post and other media sources who were happy to label them as conspiracy theorists.

A certain foreign government might have had interests in having the lab leak theory dismissed as a conspiracy. I'm wondering if The Lancet and Washington Post might have been swayed in that direction by investors/employees with double allegiances who were interested in said foreign government "saving face" so to speak.

In other words "lying was justified".

Most people aren’t researching deep into stuff. Most people are taking cues. Sort of justifiable given how complex the world is.

That’s not a dig at either side though — it’s a dig at both. I’m for vaccines but I’ve heard “just look at the science!” from both sides and I know they’re both equally uninformed, because that is not how you determine credibility. It’s the dumbest line I hear consistently.

Nobody looks at a bridge and says 'just look at the structural engineering calculations!' before crossing it.

The whole thing is a fuckup on an international scale. All the bio-tech organizations from different countries involved in it (including the US and China) are responsible for this. Instead, the governments initially try to hide it and make it look like a natural phenomenon, and then start to blame each other with nationalist propaganda once that doesn’t work. Absolutely appalling.

I made a comment here on hacker news that there were repeated code inserts in the gene sequence that meant it may have come from a lab and everyone criticised me angrily.

I’ll dig out the comment

There’s a difference between it being leaked from a lab and it being created in a lab.

I said came from , I did not differentiate between whether it was modified or created. I was referring to the gene inserts. I have no idea what your point is please do elaborate thanks

Modified and created are the same thing.

When people talk about the "lab leak theory", usually they mean it was being studied in a lab.

>Modified and created are the same thing.

No.

Censorship is real and very scary.

To be fair, the narrative in the media changed just a little, coincidentally at the same time.

> The DARPA proposal stated that scientists would introduce furin cleavage sites into lab-created versions of SARS-related coronaviruses, recovered from bats in Yunnan.

> SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus known to possess a furin cleavage site in its section of the coronavirus family tree. “We now know that there are full-length bat CoVs similar to SARS-CoV-2 that bind well to human ACE2,” Bloom said, referring to the Laos viruses, “but only lack the furin cleavage site.”

Yikes.

I thought furin cleavage sites naturally occurred in coronaviruses? See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...

The bizarre and entirely unlikely coincidence that the lab and the wet market were in the same city will make this impossible to solve. If it was one or the other it would be easy. It’s JFK all over again. How depressing