[sorcerer-mar]

This is partially why I think the whole "they're conspiratorially lying to us and it was for sure a lab leak!" is a huge distraction. First, we have literally hundreds of pages of emails of scientists saying they believed (correctly or incorrectly) it was not a leak. Second, there is approximately zero chance we will ever know that it came from a lab. Third, it doesn't actually give us any more information: it could have come from any one of countless labs doing work on viruses like this.

Dangerous GoF research should be outright banned regardless!

Insofar as there is huge ambiguity in what we did or didn't know at the time, I can fault scientists for covering their own asses and their preferred research directions (which I agree are dangerous), but I can't fault them for biasing themselves against statements that leaned on the side of ambiguous that might have, at the time, literally sparked a war.