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To be fair, the lab-theory was hijacked from the beginning by conspiracy-believers who told everyone it was a bio-weapon and released on purpose. The idea of an

To be fair, the lab-theory was hijacked from the beginning by conspiracy-believers who told everyone it was a bio-weapon and released on purpose. The idea of an accidential leak of reasearch-material is poisoned till today, because any hint of a proof will be fuel for the nutheads. And at the moment there many nutheads and racists aiming at asians because of the pandemia.

yostrovs 5y ago
To be fair, you are exactly the type that the parent comment was referring to... People that effortlessly dismiss reasonable ideas. You add smears of racism on top of it to make sure the side that you disagree with is hated. Please reflect as the parent comment suggests.
- yanderekko 5y ago
  Precisely. "This theory is popular with crazy racists" leads to "if you believe this then I am forced to assume that you're a crazy racist and disparage you accordingly" pretty effortlessly in 2021. This sort of bad-faith ad hominem is the real problem.
- duckfang 5y ago
  You can say that, but I've heard the diatribes that the "China virus" was because they were playing with 5G and viruses and it escaped into bats and those chinamen ate the bats and...(cringe). Just go look up the conspiracies if you think I'm out of line - this is the mild version. Most of the mouthbreathers talking earlier about the "China virus" labs was predominately with pro-trump, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker individuals (well, starting with trump first). It was political grandstanding at its best, combined with 'us vs them' mentality, and a hefty scooping of conspiracy theory. So yes, the bulk of us thinking peoples justly figured this was what it appeared to be: yet another Anti-Chinese diatribe done by a white nationalist conspiracy nut (aka: trump).
  - eplanit 5y ago
    Your comment makes mostrovs point in the comment above.
    - duckfang 5y ago
      Easy to say that. But when you tear these claims down, they started with anything but factual or substantial. 1. COVID wasnt caused by 5G. Nor vice versa. 2. We've seen MERS, SARS, and other coronavirus diseases previously in the region. This isn't the only one, and wont be the last. 3. "Chinaman virus" is a point that comes from racism. It only highlights racist beliefs, and is no way any proof. (Why wasnt the "Spanish Flu" called "Kansas Kough" - it started on a Kansas military base?) 4. The most vehement supports of this conspiracy also loudly proclaim that masks don't work, and the vaccine is microchipped. 5. Masks work, of different efficacy depending on filter levels 6. No, the vaccine has no microchips. And if you want to dig deeper, go watch the "Plandemic" video. That's an hour or so of conspiracy, including the elites infected the plebes to make more money. When 1 conspiracy is chopped off, 2 take its place.
      - pseudo0 5y ago
        Constructing an extraordinarily elaborate strawman does not make your beating up of that strawman argument any more impressive. Plenty of reasonable people simply asked "isn't it possible a lab with a history of safety issues studying coronaviruses made a mistake" and were immediately hit with these sorts of disingenuous guilt by association arguments.
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    Smears, guilt by association, accusations of racism: this is what You chose to focus on and reject the lab leak theory. You didn't listen to the facts, the issues that seemed strange. The stunning thing is that you continue to cling to smears and accusations of racism as reasonable regarding this topic.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    This post is a great example of the prevailing "everything is political" mentality. You take an empirical question that has a definitive answer (whether or not we'll ever have that answer) and turn it into a political issue. To you, a theory is invalid if your political enemies embrace that theory.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Where exactly did I dismiss the Idea? Maybe you should learn to understand how people behave and what responsability is. BTW https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684
Zababa 5y ago
On the other hand, dismissing totally the idea to fight against conspiracy-believers and then go back on your words because of new evidence is exactly what creates more conspiracy-believers. An example of this was the WHO insisting that masks were useless and then telling everyone to wear masks. This is how you lose trust. Part of the solution would be to say something along the lines of "Right now we don't have enough evidence to make a statement about the origin of the virus, so we'll refrain from talking about it until further evidence is brought to light.".
- loopz 5y ago
  If you listen to sane people, they are saying just that. Though, media will report what various individuals and agencies report, and they will contradict eachother.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    They are, however these days they don't have much reach. The problem is that public institutions are losing trust, and on one hand they deserve it, but on the other hand people are preying on this paranoia.
jkingsbery 5y ago
There probably were conspiracy theorists doing just that. But there were also articles like the one by Jim Geraghty (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...). Compare what he wrote to what is in the recent Atlantic article. Geraghty: > And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definitive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city. > But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that “a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.” And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification. Engber: > Arguments in favor of the “lab-leak hypothesis” remain grounded, as they ever were, in the mere and highly suspicious fact that a coronavirus likely borne by bats, likely from a cave in southwest China, emerged 18 months ago, quite suddenly, in a city very far from southwest China—where researchers had assembled an archive of cave-bat-borne coronaviruses. As Geraghty recounts yesterday (https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/even-xavier-becerra-jumps-on-the-lab-leak-bandwagon/ https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/even-xavier-...), many in the media, rather than assessing the facts themselves, just resulted to name calling against a conservative-leaning but measured writer. I also haven't seen Geraghty (and again, other more measured writers) claim to have definitive proof of the lab-leak theory (as some conspiracy theorists might claim), only that it is a possibility that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It is illogical, irresponsible and unscientific to say "well, this theory was picked up by racists, therefore we should dismiss it" rather than evaluating a possibility on it's own merits.
- bingbong70 5y ago
  I do find it interesting that the idea of a foreign country dropping covid in China is not even considered. It's not even considered by the people who are aware of the history of mass anti-Sino biological warfare that took place around WW2 and the decades after.

yostrovs 5y ago

To be fair, you are exactly the type that the parent comment was referring to... People that effortlessly dismiss reasonable ideas. You add smears of racism on top of it to make sure the side that you disagree with is hated. Please reflect as the parent comment suggests.

yanderekko 5y ago
Precisely. "This theory is popular with crazy racists" leads to "if you believe this then I am forced to assume that you're a crazy racist and disparage you accordingly" pretty effortlessly in 2021. This sort of bad-faith ad hominem is the real problem.
duckfang 5y ago
You can say that, but I've heard the diatribes that the "China virus" was because they were playing with 5G and viruses and it escaped into bats and those chinamen ate the bats and...(cringe). Just go look up the conspiracies if you think I'm out of line - this is the mild version. Most of the mouthbreathers talking earlier about the "China virus" labs was predominately with pro-trump, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker individuals (well, starting with trump first). It was political grandstanding at its best, combined with 'us vs them' mentality, and a hefty scooping of conspiracy theory. So yes, the bulk of us thinking peoples justly figured this was what it appeared to be: yet another Anti-Chinese diatribe done by a white nationalist conspiracy nut (aka: trump).
- eplanit 5y ago
  Your comment makes mostrovs point in the comment above.
  - duckfang 5y ago
    Easy to say that. But when you tear these claims down, they started with anything but factual or substantial. 1. COVID wasnt caused by 5G. Nor vice versa. 2. We've seen MERS, SARS, and other coronavirus diseases previously in the region. This isn't the only one, and wont be the last. 3. "Chinaman virus" is a point that comes from racism. It only highlights racist beliefs, and is no way any proof. (Why wasnt the "Spanish Flu" called "Kansas Kough" - it started on a Kansas military base?) 4. The most vehement supports of this conspiracy also loudly proclaim that masks don't work, and the vaccine is microchipped. 5. Masks work, of different efficacy depending on filter levels 6. No, the vaccine has no microchips. And if you want to dig deeper, go watch the "Plandemic" video. That's an hour or so of conspiracy, including the elites infected the plebes to make more money. When 1 conspiracy is chopped off, 2 take its place.
    - pseudo0 5y ago
      Constructing an extraordinarily elaborate strawman does not make your beating up of that strawman argument any more impressive. Plenty of reasonable people simply asked "isn't it possible a lab with a history of safety issues studying coronaviruses made a mistake" and were immediately hit with these sorts of disingenuous guilt by association arguments.
- yostrovs 5y ago
  Smears, guilt by association, accusations of racism: this is what You chose to focus on and reject the lab leak theory. You didn't listen to the facts, the issues that seemed strange. The stunning thing is that you continue to cling to smears and accusations of racism as reasonable regarding this topic.
- slibhb 5y ago
  This post is a great example of the prevailing "everything is political" mentality. You take an empirical question that has a definitive answer (whether or not we'll ever have that answer) and turn it into a political issue. To you, a theory is invalid if your political enemies embrace that theory.
slightwinder 5y ago
Where exactly did I dismiss the Idea? Maybe you should learn to understand how people behave and what responsability is. BTW https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684

Zababa 5y ago

On the other hand, dismissing totally the idea to fight against conspiracy-believers and then go back on your words because of new evidence is exactly what creates more conspiracy-believers. An example of this was the WHO insisting that masks were useless and then telling everyone to wear masks. This is how you lose trust. Part of the solution would be to say something along the lines of "Right now we don't have enough evidence to make a statement about the origin of the virus, so we'll refrain from talking about it until further evidence is brought to light.".

loopz 5y ago
If you listen to sane people, they are saying just that. Though, media will report what various individuals and agencies report, and they will contradict eachother.
- Zababa 5y ago
  They are, however these days they don't have much reach. The problem is that public institutions are losing trust, and on one hand they deserve it, but on the other hand people are preying on this paranoia.

jkingsbery 5y ago

There probably were conspiracy theorists doing just that. But there were also articles like the one by Jim Geraghty (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...). Compare what he wrote to what is in the recent Atlantic article. Geraghty: > And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definitive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city. > But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that “a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.” And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification. Engber: > Arguments in favor of the “lab-leak hypothesis” remain grounded, as they ever were, in the mere and highly suspicious fact that a coronavirus likely borne by bats, likely from a cave in southwest China, emerged 18 months ago, quite suddenly, in a city very far from southwest China—where researchers had assembled an archive of cave-bat-borne coronaviruses. As Geraghty recounts yesterday (https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/even-xavier-becerra-jumps-on-the-lab-leak-bandwagon/ https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/even-xavier-...), many in the media, rather than assessing the facts themselves, just resulted to name calling against a conservative-leaning but measured writer. I also haven't seen Geraghty (and again, other more measured writers) claim to have definitive proof of the lab-leak theory (as some conspiracy theorists might claim), only that it is a possibility that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It is illogical, irresponsible and unscientific to say "well, this theory was picked up by racists, therefore we should dismiss it" rather than evaluating a possibility on it's own merits.

bingbong70 5y ago
I do find it interesting that the idea of a foreign country dropping covid in China is not even considered. It's not even considered by the people who are aware of the history of mass anti-Sino biological warfare that took place around WW2 and the decades after.