[munk-a]

There have always been conspiracy theories but I think it's more relevant to note how quickly this theory was co-opted by anti-asian racism and converted into a version where that lab escape was interpreted to be an intention action to cause a world wide pandemic.

I really sympathize with both sides here - I think it's quite possible a lab accident was involved with the virus escaping into the world... but the benefit we'd get from knowing that would mostly involve labs being a lot more careful with PPE and I think we've seen PPE usage tick way up and the dangerous involved with disease handling get a lot larger of a spotlight. And, I also think that beating up or harassing Asian-Americans is wrong and if we need to tell a big societal level lie to people to get them to stop then I'm okay with that.

[throwaway316943]

Seriously? We should lie and deceive on a global scale in order to prevent a tiny number of people from being assholes when you know very well that they’re just going to find another reason to be hateful. Lying to everyone isn’t going to prevent hate, I really don’t understand this reasoning. Any time I’ve come across people who express hateful opinions about other groups of people it’s always due to the fact that a) they don’t have any close interactions with people of that group and b) their own social group is similarly isolated and ignorant. Lying to people in situations like that will never change their opinions, the only thing that will is direct face to face communication where trust can be built with them and their peers.