• since 30 Jan 2020: internet "conspiracy theorists" knew about "Wuhan virus lab leak origin theory"

• for 16 months, lab leak theory gets thoroughly deboonked by media journaloids and soyentists as a "fringe", "false", "far right", "dismissed", "debunked", "extremely unlikely", "conspiracy theory"

• media journaloid hacks, soyentists, CIA, and Media Matters, all aligned with the same anti-Trump, anti-lab-leak message, pure coincidence

• 17 May 2021, 16 months later, local NYT journaloid overlord deigns to allow the plebeian masses to speculate on "coronavirus lab leak theory"

Go fuck yourselves, you dirty, dirty smear merchants.

https://archive.ph/tD365 https:// www. bbc. com/news/blogs-trending-51271037

China coronavirus: Misinformation spreads online about origin and scale

By BBC Monitoring And UGC Newsgathering 30 January 2020

'Bioweapon' conspiracies

Another baseless claim that has gone viral online suggests the virus was part of China's "covert biological weapons programme" and may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

https://archive.ph/dMTw9

Ben Smith‏Verified account @benyt 17 May 2021

A good attempt to depolarize the lab leak arguments

https://archive.ph/tv1xq

Ben SmithVerified account @benyt

@nytimes media columnist. Fireworks enthusiast. Formerly @buzzfeednews. Beats working for a living. Send me scoops: ben. smith @nytimes. com.

Brooklyn, NY nytimes. com Joined October 2007

https://archive.ph/y5kC0 https:// donaldgmcneiljr1954. vmedium. com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-lab-leak-theory-f4f88446b04d

17 May 2021 17:04:31 UTC

How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab-Leak Theory*

Donald G. McNeil Jr. 6 hours ago·19 min read

For about a year, that was the general wisdom among science writers. The “lab-leak theory” migrated back to the far right where it had started — championed by the folks who brought us Pizzagate, the Plandemic, Kung Flu, Q-Anon, Stop the Steal, and the January 6 Capitol invasion. It was tarred by the fact that everyone backing it seemed to hate not just Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party, but even the Chinese themselves. It spawned racist rumors like “Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.”

China retorting to Trump administration nonsense with nonsense of its own — such as suggesting that U.S. military officers planted the virus during a visit to Wuhan in October 2019 — did not help.

__

https://archive.ph/qTDCO https:// www. cnet. com/features/how-the-coronavirus-origin-story-is-being-rewritten-by-a-guerrilla-twitter-group/

How the coronavirus origin story is being rewritten by a guerrilla Twitter group

The group, known as Drastic, has investigated, corrected, uncovered and agitated in a quest to uncover the pandemic's starting point.

Jackson Ryan April 15, 2021

Minutes after reading the abstract, he posted his find to Twitter, in a long tweet thread tagging members of a loosely defined group known as Drastic, a "Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19." The master's thesis had the potential to rewrite the origin story of the pandemic. 

A majority of scientists and experts agree that the coronavirus emerged after jumping from a wild animal to humans somewhere in or around Wuhan, where the first cases appeared in 2019. The pathogen is believed to have lived most of its life inside a bat, before acquiring genetic mutations, potentially through another species, and infecting humans.

But an alternative theory posits that the pandemic began after SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, potentially the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A joint study by the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists in January and February 2021 considered this scenario "extremely unlikely." From the earliest days in the pandemic, it was represented as a conspiracy theory built on misinformation and fear.

But Drastic, and an increasing number of scientists, are convinced it requires further investigation.

In searching for the complete and naked truth surrounding the origins of COVID-19, this motley group of strangers has challenged the prevailing theories of the virus' beginnings by picking apart inconsistencies and trading data in the highly polarized theater of Twitter. This unorthodox approach has seen them branded by scientists and researchers as maniacs, thugs and conspiracy theorists. They've also been accused of racism, and their scientific credentials have been questioned.

On Twitter, where access to world-renowned scientists is just a click away, members of Drastic have targeted virologists and epidemiologists who refuse to engage with the lab leak theory, and they've even falsely accused some of working for the Chinese Communist Party. As a result, some scientists have understandably dismissed Drastic's findings and investigation out of hand.

But over the past year the group's discoveries have proven too important to ignore.

Part of the problem is that the origins story has become entangled in geopolitics and conspiracy. Bad actors have seized upon the lab leak theory for political gain, sometimes attempting to shift the blame for catastrophic failures in managing the pandemic. Instead of remaining a scientific debate, the origin story morphed into a political one. For instance, in March 2020, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began propagating the idea that SARS-CoV-2 may have leaked from a Wuhan lab. The lab leak became intertwined with Trump, foreign policy and the right. Deigin says Trump weighing in "poisoned" the discussion. 

https://archive.ph/I1ZeW https:// www. mediamatters. org/martha-maccallum/fox-news-pushing-debunked-theory-origins-coronavirus

Fox News is pushing a debunked theory on the origins of the coronavirus -- again

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ PUBLISHED 02/19/20 11:24 AM EST

Two Fox News programs promoted a debunked theory about the origins of the coronavirus disease in Wuhan, China, echoing former White House adviser Steve Bannon and his billionaire benefactor Guo Wengui. The discredited speculation, which The Washington Post labeled a “fringe theory” and PolitiFact identified as “false,” posits that the coronavirus epidemic was engineered in a high-security laboratory housed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard Ebright told the Post that “based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus.”

https://archive.ph/bosEd https:// www. sciencemag. org/news/2020/02/scientists-strongly-condemn-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-coronavirus

Scientists ‘strongly condemn’ rumors and conspiracy theories about origin of coronavirus outbreak

By Jon CohenFeb. 19, 2020 , 7:00 AM

A group of 27 prominent public health scientists from outside China is pushing back against a steady stream of stories and even a scientific paper suggesting a laboratory in Wuhan, China, may be the origin of the outbreak of COVID-19. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins,” the scientists, from nine countries, write in a statement published online by The Lancet yesterday.

https://archive.ph/2Byk9 https:// www. nature. com/articles/d41586-020-01452-z 

27 MAY 2020

The epic battle against coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories

Analysts are tracking false rumours about COVID-19 in hopes of curbing their spread.

Philip Ball & Amy Maxmen

Politics and scams

As the pandemic shifted to the United States and Europe, false information increased, says Donovan. A sizeable part of the problem has been political. A briefing prepared for the European Parliament in April alleged that Russia and China are “driving parallel information campaigns, conveying the overall message that democratic state actors are failing and that European citizens cannot trust their health systems, whereas their authoritarian systems can save the world.” The messages of US President Donald Trump and his administration are sowing their own political chaos. This includes Trump’s insistence on referring to the ‘Chinese’ or ‘Wuhan’ coronavirus and his advocacy of unproven (and even hazardous) ‘cures’, and the allegation by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the virus originated in a laboratory, despite the lack of evidence.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” says The Lancet statement, which praises the work of Chinese health professionals as “remarkable” and encourages others to sign on as well.

https://archive.ph/ELNjU https:// www. scientificamerican. com/article/nine-covid-19-myths-that-just-wont-go-away/

Nine COVID-19 Myths That Just Won’t Go Away

From a human-made virus to vaccine conspiracy theories, we rounded up the most persistent false claims about the pandemic

By Tanya Lewis on August 18, 2020

Myth 1: The novel coronavirus was engineered in a lab in China. Because the pathogen first emerged and began infecting people in Wuhan, China, President Donald Trump has claimed—without evidence—that it started in a laboratory there. Some conspiracy theorists have even speculated it was engineered as a bioweapon, although U.S. intelligence agencies have categorically denied this possibility, stating that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” No credible evidence has emerged to support an accidental lab release either. As Scientific American reported earlier this year, Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli—who studies bat coronaviruses and whose laboratory Trump and others had suggested was COVID-19’s source—compared the pathogen’s sequence against that of other coronaviruses her team had sampled from bat caves and found that it did not match any of them. Zhengli also explained in detail why her lab could not have been the source of the virus in a lengthy response in Science. In reaction to calls for an independent, international investigation into how the virus originated, China has invited researchers from the World Health Organization to discuss the scope of such a mission. But the evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was not created in a lab.

https://archive.ph/T7VYD https:// apnews. com/article/debunked-coronavirus-myths-survive-212dfb8acbf8c759e869f8b391724873

Debunked COVID-19 myths survive online, despite facts

By AMANDA SEITZ and BEATRICE DUPUY December 17, 2020

MYTH: THE VIRUS WAS MAN-MADE

It was not.

Social media users and fringe websites weaved together a conspiracy theory that the virus was leaked — either accidentally or intentionally — from a lab in Wuhan, China, before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March. The falsehood was espoused by elected officials, including Trump.

The origins of the virus are far less scandalous: It likely originated in nature. Bats are thought to be the original or intermediary hosts for several viruses that have triggered recent epidemics, including COVID-19. U.S. intelligence agencies also concluded the virus is not man-made.

Yet the conspiracy theory continues to travel online, and made a resurgence in September when a Chinese virologist repeated the claim on Fox News.

https://archive.ph/jRYIw https:// www. denverpost. com/2020/12/18/covid-19-myths-debunked/

Here are 5 debunked COVID-19 myths that just won’t die

Misinformation about the coronavirus continues to proliferate online

By AMANDA SEITZ and BEATRICE DUPUY | The Associated Press

PUBLISHED: December 18, 2020 at 3:29 p.m. | UPDATED: December 18, 2020 at 3:39 p.m.

https://archive.ph/tD365 https:// www. bbc. com/news/blogs-trending-51271037

China coronavirus: Misinformation spreads online about origin and scale

By BBC Monitoring And UGC Newsgathering

30 January 2020

'Bioweapon' conspiracies

Another baseless claim that has gone viral online suggests the virus was part of China's "covert biological weapons programme" and may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Many accounts pushing the theory cite two widely-shared Washington Times articles both of which quote a former Israeli military intelligence officer for the claim.

However, no evidence is provided for the claim in the two articles, and the Israeli source is quoted as saying that "so far there isn't evidence or indication" to suggest there was a leak.

https://archive.ph/Wc9mL https:// www. bbc. com/news/world-asia-china-55996728

9 Feb 2021 22:53:01 UTC

Covid: WHO says 'extremely unlikely' virus leaked from lab in China

3 hours ago

International experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 have all but dismissed a theory that the virus came from a laboratory in China.

Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) mission, said it was "extremely unlikely" that the virus leaked from a lab in the city of Wuhan.

He said more work was needed to identify the source of the virus.

https://archive.ph/sVGcQ https:// www. bbc. com/news/world-52224331

Coronavirus: US and China trade conspiracy theories

By Shayan Sardarizadeh and Olga Robinson BBC Monitoring

26 April 2020

  But a number of US politicians and commentators have also made unfounded claims about the origin of the virus.

Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson cited a study raising the possibility that the coronavirus "accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan".

And Republican senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz have both raised the same prospect.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the US government's response to the Ebola outbreak, tweeted in response to reports about an accidental lab leak: "The science doesn't preclude a lab origin but does indicate it's quite unlikely."

https://archive.ph/4Ti5Y https:// www. npr. org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/841729646/virus-researchers-cast-doubt-on-theory-of-coronavirus-lab-accident

Virus Researchers Cast Doubt On Theory Of Coronavirus Lab Accident

April 23, 2020·7:08 AM ET GEOFF BRUMFIEL, EMILY KWONG

"I will tell you, more and more, we're hearing the story," Trump said on April 15 of the theory that the virus came from labs in Wuhan.

But after corresponding with 10 leading scientists who collect samples of viruses from animals in the wild, study virus genomes and understand how lab accidents can happen, NPR found that an accidental release would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well-established experimental protocols.

"All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident," says Jonna Mazet, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis and director of a global project to watch for emerging viruses called PREDICT.