> 1. It was definitely zoonotic, and suggestions otherwise are racist conspiracy theories.
How is the zoonotic hypothesis (“virus originated in Chinese wet market” / “due to Chinese dietary practices”) any less racist?
How is the zoonotic hypothesis (“virus originated in Chinese wet market” / “due to Chinese dietary practices”) any less racist?
By contrast, knowing the origins of Covid doesn't, in fact, have a lot of relevance to preparedness against the next pandemic. Both spillover and biosecurity incidents happen regularly enough that we really need to protect against both. If the CCP is lying about lab leak and covering it up, that has political implications but not really public health.
It's also, I think, digging deeper into this to explore trustworthiness of news sources. Mainstream sources haven't done a good job, mostly parroting conventional wisdom (as they will do). Social media has been worse, often a source of plain misinformation (in either direction). Real science journalists have done a good job, but people don't pay much attention to them, and in many cases what they write has been distorted and misrepresented (see [1] for a recent and relevant example).
[1]: https://twitter.com/amymaxmen/status/1400648773169156097
- "Came from bats": "People in China ate bats" vs "Bats poop on things livestock/humans eat"
- "Came from the wetmarket": "Chinese wetmarkets are uniquely disgusting" vs "most wetmarkets are scaled up farmer's markets"