What are the facts that changed, in this lab leak story?
As far as I'm aware, our knowledge of the real-world facts haven't changed -- we're still in a position of great uncertainty. All that's changed is how various commentators are dealing with that uncertainty: they had been downplaying it, now they're acknowledging it.
The facts didn’t change, only who was stating them.
If the story was “Trump points to Covid leaking from lab in China, evidence is a sparse” then ok cool.
But the story was “Lab leak conspiracy theory has been proven false but Trump continues to claim it’s true increasing Anti-Asian hate crimes”
Then Biden starts to comment on it and like a light switch the theory becomes credible, even “likely”. And all the newspapers act like they had been saying that all along.
I feel the story was your former example, not the latter. If anyone dismissed it as "proven false", they were wrong. But at the time (and now) there still is no evidence for it, which is an important detail when discussing.
Man made virus leaked intentionally =/ nature virus that escaped by accident. The latter is what is being discussed as possible, the former was and still is a deranged conspiracy.
As far as I'm aware, our knowledge of the real-world facts haven't changed -- we're still in a position of great uncertainty. All that's changed is how various commentators are dealing with that uncertainty: they had been downplaying it, now they're acknowledging it.