1. Lab leak theory getting a new hearing is salutary (since the origins of covid are unsolved and it's a reasonable, although not likely, hypothesis). What's not salutary is how some contrarians are using the current moment to whitewash promoters of bioweapons theory.
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3. Prominent Trumpist both outside the government (Bannon) and inside it (Navarro) used the legitimate lab leak theory as a stalking horse for the much more radical (and unsupported) bioweapon theories. That was the source of fact-checking reaction of 2020.
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4. In a long post,
@mattyglesias claims that in early 2020 Tom Cotton was simply advancing lab leak theory (with some hawkish rhetoric) and got unfairly tarnished as bioweapons conspiracist.pic.twitter.com/2kVuZSdDLA
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5. But if you look at what Cotton was actually saying in that period, very clear he was saying there were a number of theories possible including the shocking possibility Chinese gov't deliberately released weapons on own people.pic.twitter.com/nCCDeTiMut
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6. People who remember the Iraq war might recall the consequences of USA gov't officials making false claims about another country having WMDs. The contrarians are playing a dangerous game. More here:https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/contra-the-covid-contrarians?r=bh54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter …
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End of conversation
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Though very clear which theory makes the better movie...
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It's also important to understand that the rival to the lab leak theory is 'governments let rich people traffic in dangerously infectious wild animals for the absolutely stupidest, worst consumption reasons for decades and only *one* of the outbreaks from this was COVID-19'
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Exactly. I've been saying that for weeks! Some studies show something like 50% of Trump supportes believe this--the intentional engineering and release. And more important, many, perhaps most, think the effort has connections to liberals in the US.
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Also, the accidental release is also <<< less likely than someone getting exposed naturally.
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A virus that is transmissible *between* humans is not a suitable bioweapon, for reasons that should now be obvious. It has to be something you can spray on your enemies that won't come back to infect you.
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