Anti-vaxx industry ‘could be worth more than $1bn to social media giants’

The odds are quite large that a leak would have been a matter of incompetence or accident. Who's deranged enough to roll the dice on intentional germ warfare against your own people?

However, it's a very tempting narrative, especially since we've had an ongoing trend of demonizing China, frequently revolving around the premise of their population being infinite and disposable. Nobody wants to hear that it was some intern who threw used PPE in the dumpster instead of an incinerator. Boring and unsatisfying! Of course it's a grand and deliberate plan-- they'd be willing to kill a few million of their own people, for the sake of creating an emergency and crippling the rest of the world!

Even if we find 4k video of someone dropping a beaker and saying "Oh, shit" like some Simpsons outtake, the conspiracy crowd and war hawks will not be satisfied.

Finding the exact cause isn't going to bring back anyone we lost to the disease. There's probably nobody who can be punished in a meaningful and proportionate way. There's value in the research, for scientists and biosecurity experts, but I'm worried we're looking for succor for the general public and won't find it.

I wonder if by pushing the investigation back a few months, it was a "white lie" of omission. It bought time to cool down emotions-- so even if the result is disappointing or inconclusive, we'll hopefully avoid a violent overreaction.