[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.