[weaksauce]

you can just call it covid-19 instead of the insert racist nickname here for it and then discuss where the origin it may be from. those two things are not mutually exclusive. hell, the spanish flu is generally not thought to be originated in spain but they were the only ones talking about because the other countries had a gag on discussing it.

[enchiridion]

Maybe. Based on the circumstantial evidence and the lack of viable competing hypotheses, I firmly believe that it escaped from the Wuhan lab.

What does an unstable person do with that info? It seems like calling it the "Chinese virus" is relatively benign by comparison.

Does censoring do anything here?

[weaksauce]

> Does censoring do anything here?

perhaps. I mean having the leader of the free world spout conspiracy theories and give credence to them certainly hurts.

in the past you'd have crackpot conspiracy theorists spouting off their "knowledge" at the bar to anyone that would listen but most would shy away from the crazy person. now you have a mainstream leader saying crazy stuff and have a huge following of people spouting that off because you can get misinformation and half truths at the speed of sound. yeah some vetting of information should be there.

a lot of the "proof" I've seen have been from being ignorant of what scientific terms mean, deliberate mis/disinformation, and wholly not understanding cause and effect. the other thing that lets these propagate is the downright innumeracy of our societies.

my brother has gone down a dark path of this shit to the point that I am very disgusted by the "truthers" poisoning the minds of people. he used to be a decently intelligent man but he's gotten hit with the gish gallop of disinformation and lies.