Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

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> I mean, unless I've created a false memory

I'm pretty sure your memory is very faulty. Of all those saying it could be a lab leak, very few were talking it being a bio-weapon.

> Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it was a WIV lab leak seem to completely misremember what was actually being discussed in April-May of 2020

Not at all. You are trying to rewrite history.

Here's the bill from Congress, march 2023:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619...

    It is the sense of Congress that--
    
    (2) there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may 
     have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;

People saying "people called us crazy" do deserve apologies, not downvotes.

EDIT: just to be clear... I'm not saying it was or it wasn't a lab leak. I'm saying that there's a Congress bill from march 2023 saying there's reason to believe it was a lab-leak. And hence all those who said it was a lab-leak and who were called "conspiracy theorists" do deserve apologies.

Not disagreeing with the overall premise, but:

> I'm saying that there's a Congress bill from march 2023 saying there's reason to believe it was a lab-leak.

Congress writing up a bill asserting stuff like this isn't exactly something I consider persuasive either way.

Until a cause is completely identified, there will always be "reason to believe". That doesn't mean that it's the most likely source or the most reasonable hypothesis.

The President was also claiming the virus came from WIV back in May 2020. It was a common theory in some media circles

That same president also claimed it would be gone by the summer of 2020. The same president even claimed it would never make it to the USA! Maybe this will be a case of a broken clock being correct twice a day but it was certainly thrown in with quite a bit of incorrect information that was being spewed at those daily briefings. I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical of the information coming out of the Trump administration during that time.

I don't blame people for doubting either, especially because it was mixed in with assertions on the right that COVID was a bioweapon gone rogue.

My point isn't whether it's credible, just that one of the most powerful people in the world expressed support for Lab Leak very early on

Isn’t it equally truthful to say there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated elsewhere? Josh Hawley writing this into the bill does not make it anymore valid than the counter point to that statement.

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