Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
In short a few prominent people claimed it was racist to suggest that China's research or wet market contributed to the origins of COVID. They were mistaken but with the highly politicized environment, it helped distort opinions at a critical time. The claims of racism have since been demonstrated to be at least partly false (that is, there is a legitimate case to be made that China's researchers or wet market did contribute to the origin of COVID, and that China's leadership hid most of the evidence that would be used to make a case).
People who merely "suggested" the lab could have leaked, and asked to investigate more, were being called racist.
But not racism to declare that the virus must have come from a wet market where the savages eat uncooked bats and pangolin.
Now the goal posts have shifted to “lack of evidence” knowing full well china would nuke the city before admitting they caused covid by negligence.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/ralph-baric-wuhan-lab-...
So basically neither had real evidence, but one was favoured?
Animal origin still seems more likely to me, but less than 5 years ago, since we have a missing link one would expect to see.
It does favor an accidental lab leak over a targeted weaponization and release, but it doesn't contradict a lab origin.
There was no evidence for a zoonotic origin other than it was possible.
There was little evidence for a lab leak other than it was possible, but at least there was some.
Here's a technical article at NIH discussing the theory of no known natural origin for a nucleotide subsequence
"Dr Robert Redfield, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, told Vanity Fair that he received death threats from fellow scientists when he backed the Wuhan lab leak theory last spring. "I was threatened and ostracised because I proposed another hypothesis," Dr Redfield said. "I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science."[1]"
The US State Department were told to not to explore claims of Gains of Function research:
"According to an investigation in Vanity Fair magazine published on Thursday, Department of State officials discussed the origins of coronavirus at a meeting on 9 December 2020. They were told not to explore claims about gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to US government funding of such research, reports Vanity Fair.[2]"
We may never know the truth, but its clear that there was politics being played since the beginning of the pandemic to obscure the truth, and not just by China.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57352992
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
How can following a trail possibly be no better?
And with the main competing theory (covid spreading from a wet market in a city that contains a biolab) also being consistent with the hypothesis that it was an accidental lab leak, to me the balance of probabilities always seemed to favor the lab leak hypothesis.
Yet saying that Covid probably originated from a lab leak was once branded as dangerous misinformation, with seemingly no evidence to support that claim
https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
Exactly right. Remember any comment daring to question the authorities was shouted down to oblivion. Anyone daring to question lockdowns or other draconian measures were met with fire and brimstone. I lost a lot of respect for HN during Covid.
I feel it’s important to not forget the level of adherence to authoritarian rule that infected the population during Covid. Even places like HN were not immune. “Just following orders” was SOP even here.
Because of a lack of access and free speech it's hard to get verifiable evidence to it's origin being from a lab leak or a market in either direction.
Unfortunately, because of that lack of access mistrust and conspiracy theories spread like wild fires.
It's important with science to understand that there is what happened or what is observed and to separate that away from wishful thinking or feelings.