[kaesar14]

You’re conflating two different things. Peter Daszak’s original statements and articles about COVID and its origins last year led to a significant amount of pressure within the scientific community to not even look for a possible origin involving human error coming from a lab leak. The Lancet letter, being published by one of the most prestigious journals in the world, firmly established that COVID had a natural origin, and the media picked that up as evidence to rail against any possibility of a lab based origin. You can look at many of the articles published in the wake of the Lancet letter discrediting the lab leak, like Vox’s here: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus... that literally quotes Daszak and Dennis Carroll, another signee of the Lancet letter who directly and without question say a lab leak is preposterous and unlikely. Is that good enough direct evidence for scientists pressuring the global discourse against a lab leak?

Direct evidence of guilt is going to be hard considering the CPC’s reticence to allow an independent investigation, which honestly is another point in my opinion towards a lab leak. But regardless, regardless! When you combine the following facts:

1. There was a lab in Wuhan studying bat-related coronaviruses in gain of function research.

2. The virus was well adapted to humans at the beginning of the pandemic, very uncharacteristic of a zoonotic spillover.

3. The virus had no evidence of a natural origin then and it still doesn’t despite ones being found for MERS and SARS-1 within a few months.

4. Of the first 40 or so cases, not all could be definitively linked to the wet market that the CPC said the virus originated in.

How could we not take a lab leak seriously? All 4 of those facts were true even last year, though 3 was a bit weaker since we’d only had a few months since case 0 and not the year and a half we do now. Our social media platforms should NEVER have been silencing this debate, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that its still even remotely controversial to bring it up. Calling it a conspiracy theory, when the questions I’m asking are profound and grounded in science that’s well agreed upon, does nobody any favors.

Edit:

For those who don’t read my original source, Daszak is the head of an organization EcoHealth Alliance that directly partnered with the WIV to study gain of function using bat-originated coronaviruses.

[slg]

>Is that good enough direct evidence for scientists pressuring the global discourse against a lab leak?

No, because your accusation wasn't that they simply impacted global discourse. Your accusation was that they maliciously silenced discourse as an effort to avoid their own personal culpability. Where is the evidence for that?

All four facts you list are circumstantial and you even admit that one of them wasn't truly known at the time this theory was first being popularized. To repeat myself, I don't think it is unreasonable to want more than that before leveling these accusations, especially when it is known ahead of time that some people will use your "questions" to support their own political and anti-scientific motives.

[kaesar14]

My original claim was that the scientists who wrote that letter and went to the press saying it was a natural origin helped frame the debate in a political lens rather than a scientific one. It became politically expedient for many mainstream media outlets to claim the lab leak was a conspiracy theory based on statements made by scientists with clear conflicts of interest, in direct response to a sitting President claiming it was a lab leak. Should Trump have just gone out and said that without presenting a coherent argument? No, but the media shouldn’t have called lab leak discussion the talk of crackpot conspiracy theorists either.

The evidence I listed is so strong that it’s now being seriously considered by many scientists, including Fauci who originally said it was far fetched. Saying its circumstantial to deride its importance is anti-scientific. And I’d clarify that even last year it was remarkable that the incredibly effective Chinese govt couldn’t produce evidence of a biological spillover 4 to 5 months after the first reported cases.

I’m not saying any of these scientists were directly responsible. Was gain of function research irresponsible? Probably, yes. Should these scientists go to prison? Of course not, not without evidence of bad intent. But should we at least have been these discussions last year? Yes! That’s all I’m saying.

Edit: I will point out that there is some serious evidence against Daszak for authoring that Lancet letter and declaring no conflict of interest when his org was partnering with WIV, which was the lab coming under scrutiny. That alone does deserve some serious investigation into why he’d lie about that. Him and any scientists who signed the letter who were also involved with Daszak or WIV.

[slg]

The strongest fact that you listed was the one that wasn't evident at the time this theory was first popularized. We are talking about what was known in early 2020. The opinion of the scientific community today has changed as our understanding of the facts change. "Well the outbreak happened in the same city as the lab" is not strong evidence and it is reasonable to dismiss a theory that uses that as one if its primary pieces of supporting evidence.

It is perfectly reasonable for the media to put more trust in the word of scientists in comparison to the words of the last President due to the literally thousands of times he has publicly lied for a variety of motives.

>I’m not saying any of these scientists were directly responsible. Was gain of function research irresponsible? Probably, yes. Should these scientists go to prison? Of course not, not without evidence of bad intent. But should we at least have been these discussions last year? Yes! That’s all I’m saying.

You certainly seemed to imply "bad intent" in your original comment when you said the following:

>Members of the scientific community with a potential culpability in a lab leak helped silence discourse by framing it as a political issue as opposed to a scientific one

[kaesar14]

They are all quite strong of facts. There's an easily explainable origin of the virus, being the lab. If you read the article there is even an explanation about the exact virus this seems to be quite similar to that was discovered in 2013 and sent to WIV. In fact, I would say that an animal origin for the virus being in Wuhan is MORE outrageous in this case if you were to actually look at the natural ranges of bats in China. Bats dont exist in Wuhan. Their natural ranges are in the Southern provinces of China, which makes sense considering that's where SARS originated. Wuhan makes absolutely 0 sense if you're evaluating a natural origin from a scientific perspective.

We have a complete aberration in viral behavior that defines all known facts of how viruses jump from species to species. It's an extraordinary exception that we haven't seen in any other similar virus.

We have no known a natural origin, went over that already.

The strongest fact may actually be the last one. A majority 40 victims could not be in any way linked to the place that the CPC claims the virus had started. That's actually really, really extraordinary. Think about what this means - there's either missing viral victims in the early outbreak (a whole lot of them) or there's transmission vectors we missed. So why should we default to the natural origin as the default explanation and call everything else a conspiracy theory, which you're continuing to do?

So yeah, when you take all 4 of those facts together and try to explain them with a natural origin hypothesis, it just falls apart. If you frame them from the perspective of a lab leak, it's far easier to link them together and explain them.

The mainstream media shouldn't have taken the scientists at face value when their conclusions were baseless! There was even less evidence for a natural origin than a lab leak, but we accepted it as common fact! It's not as if a natural origin is the default explanation we should fall back on when we have no other explanation - we need to have probable cause to declare that and establish anything else as a conspiracy theory that early on. It was irresponsible on the scientists involved and it was irresponsible of the media. And it was even worse for the tech platforms to silence people for daring to talk about this just because Trump said it, and everything Trump says is bad.

Yeah, that statement is still true, by the way. Peter Daszak had a conflict of interest, lied about it, and now it looks like his conclusions were wrong. So, yeah. That's at least one actor with some "bad intent".

[slg]

Once again, we are talking about what was known at the time and not today. You need to stop using evidence that we know today as support that the theory should have been believed from the start.

>The strongest fact may actually be the last one. A majority 40 victims could not be in any way linked to the place that the CPC claims the virus had started. That's actually really, really extraordinary. Think about what this means - there's either missing viral victims in the early outbreak (a whole lot of them) or there's transmission vectors we missed. So why should we default to the natural origin as the default explanation and call everything else a conspiracy theory, which you're continuing to do?

You are mixing different theories together and the evidence for and against them. You need to keep the specific evidence matched with the specific theory. The lab theory is not "the virus didn't originate in the market". The lab theory is the virus originated in the lab. Therefore victims not being linked to the market is not evidence of the lab theory. How many of the victims are linked to the lab? That would be evidence in support of the lab theory?

>Yeah, that statement is still true, by the way. Peter Daszak had a conflict of interest, lied about it, and now it looks like his conclusions were wrong. So, yeah. That's at least one actor with some "bad intent".

And yet again you are assuming intent not proving intent. Someone being wrong doesn't guarantee that were intentionally wrong. Someone not disclosing a potential conflict doesn't guarantee that a conflict exists and is impacting their behavior.

[kaesar14]

The only fact that wasn’t known at the time was how long we hadn’t figured out a zoonotic origin for the virus. That’s the only one.

To your second point, if there are things that cant be explained about the theory using available evidence we need to conduct an independent investigation. The CPC is not allowing us to do this. It raises questions as to why.

And to your last point, Daszak directly lied about having no conflict with the research in question, it wasn’t a failure to disclose without prior prerogative. It was a direct lie.

I understand your skepticism and I’m not even saying that WIV was the source. I’m trying to present you an argument that shows it’s just not that outrageous of a thing to raise questions about. We need to be able to have these discussions. The original linked article was about censorship, and I hope you’ll agree that we need to be able to talk about these things without being accused of racism or having an agenda.