[tomschlick]

> Hope Youtube doesn't become just another mouthpiece for only government approved narratives like TV.

This is already the case. Things like the lab leak theory were getting people banned for months before it suddenly became ok to talk about once the mainstream news channels started talking about it. This is why the label "misinformation" is dangerous. Anything can be deemed misinformation depending on who the fact checker is or the sources they use.

[marmarama]

In 2020, the lab leak theory was dangerous and unhelpful. The incumbent at the White House was easily swayed into acting rashly without thinking too hard, and the whole world was dependent on very limited supplies of PPE and biotech equipment that mostly came from China.

In 2022, the lab leak theory isn't so dangerous to talk about, and China is making waves about Taiwan.

It's all about the time and the place. Sometimes it's better to keep quiet for now. That's not a conspiracy, it's strategy.

[SpicyLemonZest]

What does "conspiracy" mean to you, exactly? If the biomedical research community covered up an idea they thought might be true in order to support a political strategy, I'd consider that almost the canonical example of a conspiracy. Maybe it was a good political strategy, maybe it was serving an important goal - the bottom line would still be that you can't trust what they say because they might have secretly decided that it's best to deceive you.

[tomschlick]

Ah so lets suppress the truth when it's convenient and bring it back out when it's politically advantageous for your party. That doesn't seem dangerous to you? It's quite literally propaganda and the stuff that tin foil hat loonies have been warning about for years... If that's where we are at politically I guess they weren't so crazy after all.

[zozbot234]

Lab leak theory is not "the truth". It's still very much a minority POV. And either way, it seems clear by now that the virus has originated in an animal reservoir and that similar things happen all the time.

[tomschlick]

In my experience, its very much not a minority POV. Almost no one I talk to thinks its a coincidence that a novel coronavirus with unique characteristics just so happened to pop up in a city with the only BSL-4 laboratory in hundreds of miles which works specifically with bat coronaviruses.

I don't think anyone reputable is saying that anything was intentionally released, but I think its quite obvious at this point that something was accidentally released and the CCP is very focused on covering it up to save face.