The scientific community is doing the studies, all the studies, every possibility is be analyzed & tested, even the most outlandish claims are being thoroughly tested in many many scientific studies/trials. Every scientist in any related field wants to be the one to find a cure, or find the source, or find any other relevant information on this disease (for the career advancement, the citations, the bragging rights). That the scientific community is correctly trying (and unfortunately failing) is to suppress the spread of false and/or misleading information that is not supported by the science, like the following:
1. Sensationalist press releases that are not supported by the underlying scientific paper.
2. Press releases propping-up weak new papers/studies that are less statistically powerful than the current consensus and therefore don't change the consensus.
3. The general press proping up scientific pre-prints without peer review.
This is misinformation. A group of prominent virologists wrote, early in the pandemic:
> The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
It's nice to _believe_ that scientists are pursuing every possible theory. But in actual reality, some scientists are demanding that other scientists not pursue certain theories. That's what's happening in the real world that we live in. Don't let your idealized mental image of "science" blind you to the facts.
If the narrative that it was an accidental lab leak took hold (even if that really is the case), China would likely cease all cooperation on the rest of the science.
It is both reasonable and rational then for the virologists to condemn such theories, to avoid harming the more important research into how infectious the disease it, what the symptoms are, what mitigations might be effective, etc, all of which could be helped by cooperation with China.
(2) The correspondence of the authors behind the initial Lancet article which dismisses non-natural origin investigations as conspiracy theory (seeking to build the consensus view and much cited by the above jornalists) has been obtained by FOIA. It reveals the authors engaging in conspiracy and collusion: the managing editor bypassed the normal editorial process, the authors decided not to have some people sign so the statement would look less partisan and chose wordings that they knew were not supported by evidence, in particular deciding to ignore concerns about the very unlikely codons at the furin cleavage site. Moreover, none of the authors declared conflicts of interest. (And still, after much outcry, only one has made such a declaration.)
In short, any consensus for a natural origin is very much artificial and should be considered irrelevant.
Personally, I think we should just quietly let the origin research happen and all of the political fervor should be immediately leveraged towards preventing any future zoological or lab leak pandemics.
edit: the Aztec empire is an example for this. The religion was politically enforced and thus the political system became part of the religion.
So the question is, isn't religion a case that refutes the parent's hypothessis.
one of the central problems of organizations is control/coordination, and religion (through normalizing and centralizing beliefs) provides a very convenient avenue for that (especially because the locus of power is perceived to be beyond any given tribal member). force can be used for control but that's adversarial (also limits size, and therefore power), and a cognizant leader eventually realizes its easier to have the people control themselves than always exert force on them (something most children eventually learn, at least subconsciously, during play).
politics isn't necessarily negative by the way--it's simply a part of the bargain when people aggregate into larger bodies and need to coordinate. it's also a relatively recent innovation that we try to separate government from religion, the intertwining of which had been a long-established norm across cultures.
This has been the case since Global Warming was coined, then the models didn't line up so they called it Climate Change and castrated anyone who questioned the science.
It's pretty clear that the vast majority of humans prefer reacting to understanding.
Or put another way: If you assume that people will take the time to understand what you're saying, you're going to be disappointed. Sure, some will, but it will not even be close to the majority.
I think it's pretty natural to try to avoid that outcome, and it's a much better hypothesis given hanlon's razor.
In fact YouTube just banned someone for posting self DIY COVID vaccines for this reason.
And on top of it we have social platform that aim to cause discontent harm to earn profits as their stated goal, FB in particular.
ITS not Censorship when are responsible for the things we talk about!
Do you post jest about doing a felony? No of course not. is it censorship because you exercised responsibility?
Be [precise with wording as those who want a darker future want everyone to delve down to non precision as a way to hide their own dark intentions.