[kaesar14]

Right - instead of trying to debate the veracity of the argument, it was immediately cast as a political battle, and being on the same side as Trump in most urban and most media circles was asking to be ostracized. It’s absolutely poisonous.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

How as anybody going to "debate the veracity of the argument"? What information was anybody going to use?

Even so, in the intervening period, even when Trump was still president, several US agency reports concluded that the virus likely did not originate from a lab, and one assumes that they had more information than anybody else.

[willcipriano]

>What information was anybody going to use?

I used these three pieces of evidence to come to this conclusion for myself last year.

1. Wuhan is the epicenter of the outbreak.

2. Wuhan has a lab that works with bat covid.

3. China initally tooks steps to hide the virus from the world until that was no longer possible.

>several US agency reports concluded that the virus likely did not originate from a lab.

Keep that in mind next time.

[knowaveragejoe]

Do you believe in anything else considered a "conspiracy theory" by the scientific or academic community? This is roughly the level of reasoning people use when arguing that 9/11 was an inside job.

[willcipriano]

Not really. I believe Armstrong walked on the moon, Oswald shot Kennedy and 911 was a bunch of mostly Saudis flying planes into buildings. I question the attribution of hacks to Russia that often happens, not because I trust Russia or anything but because I'm capable of pulling off some of those attacks myself and I can do so without leaving evidence of what nation I'm in. I assume a team of elite Russian hackers would be more capable than me and could do the same.

[lawnchair_larry]

Why did you say “anything else”? This isn’t a conspiracy theory. They only detail that is even in question is whether or not one of their samples leaked. Nothing else about what that lab is, or what that lab does, is even in question. They go 1000 miles away to get bats and bat poop and bring it to the WIV to study bat coronaviruses and they modify them to be more transmissible. This is basic virology in 2021 and they have been proudly telling the world that they do this for years. None of that is speculation.

The question of whether one of their viruses leaked out again (yes, again!) that was a bat coronavirus found right by the bat coronavirus lab, or whether it was a remarkable cascade of coincidences that still has no viable complete hypothesis (the “modified” virus doesn’t infect bats anymore), is not one of “conspiracy”.