[sva_]

> I am really interested in the social-political dimension of this. Was the initial hypothesis of a lab leak suppressed during the initial part of the pandemic primarily due to Western government's fear of a diplomatic breakdown (like Russia) with China? The economies are far more interdependent than compared to Russia and there is a far more economically important Chinese diaspora in the West.

I wonder to what extent the hypothesis has been shutdown because the people who were considered to be qualified to make that assessment are interested in the continuation of gain-of-function research.

> What would it take to get a honest investigation within China? Presumably not under the current regime

You answered it yourself, impossible under the CCP. It seems that they convinced their population that the virus has actually emerged somewhere in the west, and that was the end of it for them.