If it later turns out that aliens HAVE landed but on a diplomatic mission not an invasion force you are still a crackpot who was partially right not by dint of sagacity but more or less by accident.
The lab story was usually promoted as part of a wider narrative where covid was either portrayed as a deliberate attack by the Chinese or the accidental release of a bioweapon a narrative designed not to explicate but to distract one from laying blame on the Trump administration for its incompetent response. It frequently mixed hypothesis, conjecture, and outright lies.
You can probably be forgiven for having not known there might be a useful hypothesis when it was largely being promoted by liars with corrupt motivation mixed with lies.
Now, it's an excuse to take the air out of conservative political sentiment.
If Facebook doesn't do what those groups demand, they will be smeared in the media, suffer internal strife, and face punitive antitrust probes.
And of course, many tech executive are true believers in left-wing politics and like that they can use their positions to advance those ideas.
Totally independent of that, the general scientific community seemed to be much more opposed to the lab theory early on than they are now. It still doesn't appear to be much evidence for it beyond circumstantial stuff, but it is a possibility that more people are engaging with.
Combine these two and it isn't surprising that these platforms cracked down on this type of talk early and are slow to allowing it to start happening again.
With Trump gone and even more time elapsing with no reasonable natural origin of COVID found, a lab leak is back in the mainstream, even though we should’ve been discussing it from the beginning based on circumstantial evidence. It’s plainly evident that allowing these platforms to regulate our speech in this manner is poisonous. But whatever it takes to silence Trump and his ilk, I guess.
Edit: I see I’ve been downvoted for this. I suggest people look at the facts themselves and decide whether a lab leak should’ve ever been dismissed as a crockpot theory.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
I don't think it is unreasonable to wait for direct evidence of guilt before signing off on blaming someone for millions of deaths. That is a heavy accusation that needs to come with a degree of confidence that goes beyond the normal conspiracy theory approach of "just asking questions".
Direct evidence of guilt is going to be hard considering the CPC’s reticence to allow an independent investigation, which honestly is another point in my opinion towards a lab leak. But regardless, regardless! When you combine the following facts:
1. There was a lab in Wuhan studying bat-related coronaviruses in gain of function research.
2. The virus was well adapted to humans at the beginning of the pandemic, very uncharacteristic of a zoonotic spillover.
3. The virus had no evidence of a natural origin then and it still doesn’t despite ones being found for MERS and SARS-1 within a few months.
4. Of the first 40 or so cases, not all could be definitively linked to the wet market that the CPC said the virus originated in.
How could we not take a lab leak seriously? All 4 of those facts were true even last year, though 3 was a bit weaker since we’d only had a few months since case 0 and not the year and a half we do now. Our social media platforms should NEVER have been silencing this debate, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that its still even remotely controversial to bring it up. Calling it a conspiracy theory, when the questions I’m asking are profound and grounded in science that’s well agreed upon, does nobody any favors.
Edit:
For those who don’t read my original source, Daszak is the head of an organization EcoHealth Alliance that directly partnered with the WIV to study gain of function using bat-originated coronaviruses.
No, because your accusation wasn't that they simply impacted global discourse. Your accusation was that they maliciously silenced discourse as an effort to avoid their own personal culpability. Where is the evidence for that?
All four facts you list are circumstantial and you even admit that one of them wasn't truly known at the time this theory was first being popularized. To repeat myself, I don't think it is unreasonable to want more than that before leveling these accusations, especially when it is known ahead of time that some people will use your "questions" to support their own political and anti-scientific motives.
If there are other writings or speeches from these 2 people that were talking about the lab leak theory where they were being racist, I would love to see it, but I don't think it exists (I'm happy to be corrected).
[0] https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/-cotton-op...
Pompeo also got into multiple spats with other diplomats for specifically pushing people to call it the "Wuhan virus" in order to deflect blame towards China. Promotion of terms such as that likely resulted in more racial tension in the US.
I didn't say the theory was only pushed by racists and I'm not going to call someone like Pompeo a racist just for supporting this theory, but he certainly fits in the opportunists category I mentioned in my previous comment. He clearly pushed the theory for political gain not some allegiance to finding the truth.
The fairest characterization would be to say both share some weight. We would expect China to have contained the outbreak to minimize the impact to itself and other nations, but we also expect the US to protect us from foreign viral/bacterial agents as a matter of national security.
For people talking about th lab leak theory, I found another piece I remember from the time from April 3 (18 days prior to Cotton's piece): https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...
I've seen no evidence of increased asian-related racial tensions aside from black people cold-cocking more Asians than usual. I don't think black street criminals are taking their cues from Trump or Mike Pompeo.