Respectfully, I challenge you to show that it's any more "in the conspiracy theory category" than zoonotic crossover in a wet market.
I don't mean to say that it's proven, because to my knowledge it is not. There is a great deal more evidence pointing to it being likely than necessary for it to be considered a mainstream theory.
> One of the contentions in support of this theory was that the furin cleavage site on the virus has never been found in nature. Therefore, to some, that meant it must have been created in a laboratory... Recently, Wu and coworkers identified a bat virus (Bat CoV CD35) that harbored a furin cleavage site identical to that found on SARS-CoV-2 (Zhu W, Huang Y, Gong J, et al. A novel bat coronavirus with a polybasic furin-like cleavage site.
> There is now abundant evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was an animal-to-human spillover event that occurred in the western section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market that housed several live animals that were susceptible to the virus. Indeed, the early cases of COVID-19 centered on that section of the market.
> The hunt for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic has new leads. Researchers have identified half a dozen animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people, by reanalysing genomes collected from an animal market in Wuhan, China1. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.
That's not how the burden of proof works. If you are putting forth the lab leak origin, it is you who must provide reasonable evidence in support of it.
I did not put it forth. The other user asserted that it was “conspiracy”. That’s the assertion that I’m challenging, not the veracity of the theory itself.
I am not sure what you are trying to say. It is a conspiracy theory at this point because it is believes, in spite of the existing evidence, the covid absolutely came leaked from a lab rather than starting being of zoonotic orign. It also asserts a coverup by both the Chinese and American government, as well as cover ups and complicity from the entire Chinese and American virology community.
This, despite the possibility seriously investigated by (at least the Americans) and finding very little evidence to support it, and far less than the zoonotic origin.
That's why it's a conspiracy theory, because it alleges a conspiracy.
The specific origins of the virus have not, to my knowledge, been confirmed.
I am not asserting that it was a lab leak; I’m merely asserting that it is not unreasonable to consider it possible.
Nowhere did I suggest that I believed it more likely to be the source than zoonotic spillover, nor did I assert anything about a coverup by any party.
Frankly, this whole discussion is a great example of why I commented. It should absolutely not be discouraged to consider less-likely explanations when the most likely has not been conclusively proven.
Okay okay I don't think we're getting through to each other.
Which is more likely
(a) Some oriental man fucked a pangolin with pangolin-COVID at a market pangolin brothel, which mutated from a cosmic ray to now become super turbo COVID in humans, a one step transformation
(b) the virus research institute 20 feet from the market, which had the stated goal of cooking up super turbo COVID, had an oopsie and it got out and was pinned on the market to save face.
Of course, the true answer is obvious - (a)!!! To even imagine such an unscrupulous politician engaging in such scapegoating. The right honorable chinese and american leadership dutifully investigated the cause, found to be pangolin-man-sex, and that's the start and end of it. full stop.
I’m sorry but no, I consider myself quite rational and I simply didn’t stay up to date on the subject, to me it was still a possible theory with others. When a theory was seriously considered not too long ago you can’t suddenly label it conspiracy.
