[throwawaysea]

> extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. there is zero evidence of a lab leak besides circumstantial.

The claim is not exactly extraordinary - you have a lab with a history of poor controls, performing gain of function research relating to SARS-like viruses, knowing that SARS (the first one) had broken out of labs multiple times. That's not hard evidence, but it is a strong set of priors that makes the lab leak theory an obvious candidate for an origin story. It shouldn't be surprising that there isn't hard evidence when the world hasn't been allowed a timely and transparent investigation. And why would China allow such an investigation when there's no pressure to do so, when people are rushing to their defense to dismiss the valid lab leak theory as a "conspiracy theory"? Their work was done for them by news media and tech giants who institutionalized that dismissive attitude, again motivated by their own political biases. You can't have evidence until you take the speculation seriously and perform the necessary investigation properly, so I'm not sure how you could for "extraordinary evidence".

> weird how that works, huh?

You're ignoring the point I was making, which was that the people opposed to Trump were desperate for any way to attack him, given that he was on a clear path to re-election. Since this was the only crisis at the time that they could leverage, they did so (and did so viciously). That included dismissing any scrutiny directed at China, even though it was valid.