3 ms·

I don't recall any big media stories pushing deliberate release. Now that I think of it, I DO recall many bullshit spouters, commenters, fringe blogs, "indepen

• redserk 2y ago
  There was, bluntly, a mountain of bullshit from many angles. When trying to keep tabs on stuff for my sanity, I determined there’s multiple variants of the lab leak theory: First, there’s the question of if it was an accident or a deliberate release Second, (and on top of the first) that it was a lab-engineered strain or research on a naturally occurring strain. The fringe sites seemed to overwhelmingly adopt the “deliberate release + lab engineered” theory. On the deliberate release+bio engineered front: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dean-koontz-book-predicted-coronavirus https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dean-koontz-book-predi... On the deliberate-release+bioengineered, but walking back the bioengineering, you have Tom Cotton (granted, the NYT editorial stance in this casts skepticism on Cotton) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru... There was a reasonable level of reporting stating that the wet market theory was one of a few possibilities, and that a leak was possible but couldn’t be conclusively determined. My takeaway and bias is that we’ll never conclusively know the root cause. It became a blame game. The effort would be much better spent preparing for the next pandemic.