It's a shame covid's origins got so politicized by both sides. We should be able to deal with viruses in a scientific manner and consider the relevant hypotheses without being demonized.
When far right puts politics above true science it's not surprising. They always do that anyway.
But when left put politics above true science then science gets discredited for everybody. And thanks to FOIA everybody knows that this happened with COVID in 2020/21 and far right has this fact to support their "science bad" and various conspiracy talking points for many years.
No, as you can see by the beautiful and very appropriate visuals (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-...), he is coming out towards us, the viewers, with his back to the Lab Leak letters. He is poised, he's not looking back (suggesting that maybe the letters will explode?).
If we know anything about American fiction, it's that:
- The person walking with their back on the scene is the hero
- The hero is totally justified in whatever they are doing, no need to question their motives, morale or veracity
- An explosion or sunglasses (or both) is imminent
If this wasn't tragic, it'd be actually some (low) quality entertainment.
Not from US. I understand why democrats and centrists worried about COVID origin and lab leak theory and that it was suppressed. But the extreme right of all people, how do they explain it if their previous line was literally "COVID doesn't exist or is not worse than any flu"?
It's pretty simple actually: the lab leak theory is what allows Trump to maximally blame other people. The ability to always blame other people is the most important thing to Trump, even above his usual motivations of always being perceived as correct and never blaming himself. Blaming other people is priority number one.
> Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions. When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to “outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent.”
I remember when lab leak was officially considered a conspiracy theory, and everyone who mentioned or even referenced it should be canceled and shunned.
And since then, there is no more scientific evidence or verifiable sources. Hence the reason the CIA didn’t even believe it and gave it the lowest confidence rating it has. Used to be truth matters, now rumors and theories are more important.
For me Ralph Baric's 2024 test testimony moved the lab leak hypothesis to pretty likely. I think that's probably "since then" depending on when then is exactly.
Also the 2023 "so friggin likely" messages. There has been various stuff dragged out into public by the court actions, leaks and subpoenas that are the hallmark of open science.
And yet the CIA still maintains a low confidence, who would clearly have more information than either of us, despite being directed to back that ploy. Wonder why.
For a time mentioning covid lab leak (like literally quoting published research) on Instagram or FB looked definitely suppressed to me. As non American this is maybe the only thing that looks wrong about US gov COVID handling.
> Claims vetted by the CDC included whether "COVID-19 is man-made." The CDC told Facebook that it was "theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely."
> For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place.
Look, I am just an average user. I don't agree with US far right on much, I simply said it seemed like it was suppressed on FB/IG and turns out this was correct.
But if you want to argue FINE.
I don't think this is about shunning people like me because no one cares about people like me. It is about shunning scientists and famous people.
How about mainstream US media literally never touched for years the topic that a massive pandemic that caused billions in damage possibly came from an US funded lab in China? Either all scientists were dumb and thought it was impossible, or they all as one agreed to never talk about it, OR some scientists thought it's likely and wanted to talk about it but could not publicly. Almost as if people talking about unwelcome theory were idk how could we call it... shunned?
All US gov needed to say is yes this maybe happened but we are not sure. Instead they doubled down and even published known wrong papers. This discredited science for many years.
> Unredacted records obtained by The Nation and The Intercept offer detailed insights into those confidential deliberations. The documents show that in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and Collins took part in a series of e-mail exchanges and telephone calls in which several leading virologists expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered.” The participants also contemplated the possibility that laboratory activities had inadvertently led to the creation and release of the virus. The conversations convey a sense of anxious urgency and included speculation about the specific types of laboratory techniques that might have caused the virus’s emergence. After roughly a week of debate and data collection, one of the key figures involved in the deliberations characterized the focus of the group’s work as follows: “to disprove any type of lab theory.” Several of the scientists on the calls and e-mails then went on to write and publish “Proximal Origin.” It became one of the best-read papers in the history of science.
It seems like we’ve become a populous where we base our entire rhetorical confidence on logical fallacies(if “they” don’t want us to believe it, it must be true!”)
The dumbness level of the Trump administration reached new heights.
It's a shame covid's origins got so politicized by both sides. We should be able to deal with viruses in a scientific manner and consider the relevant hypotheses without being demonized.
When far right puts politics above true science it's not surprising. They always do that anyway.
But when left put politics above true science then science gets discredited for everybody. And thanks to FOIA everybody knows that this happened with COVID in 2020/21 and far right has this fact to support their "science bad" and various conspiracy talking points for many years.
If half of the claims are accurate... Should Trump not be blaming himself, here?
No, as you can see by the beautiful and very appropriate visuals (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-...), he is coming out towards us, the viewers, with his back to the Lab Leak letters. He is poised, he's not looking back (suggesting that maybe the letters will explode?).
If we know anything about American fiction, it's that:
- The person walking with their back on the scene is the hero
- The hero is totally justified in whatever they are doing, no need to question their motives, morale or veracity
- An explosion or sunglasses (or both) is imminent
If this wasn't tragic, it'd be actually some (low) quality entertainment.
This doesn't look like a press release from a government, but more like an ad site for questionable supplements.
I understand how politicized the pandemic became, but I'm still baffled that this is making its way to the white house website now.
Not from US. I understand why democrats and centrists worried about COVID origin and lab leak theory and that it was suppressed. But the extreme right of all people, how do they explain it if their previous line was literally "COVID doesn't exist or is not worse than any flu"?
It's pretty simple actually: the lab leak theory is what allows Trump to maximally blame other people. The ability to always blame other people is the most important thing to Trump, even above his usual motivations of always being perceived as correct and never blaming himself. Blaming other people is priority number one.
I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position, and you could argue it's not as bad as some flus.
> don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position
Semantics... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/03/donald-trump...
> you could argue it's not as bad as some flus.
A flu kills at most 50 000 people per year in US. Remind me which flu killed 1+ million in 2 years and cost US 16 trillion bucks?
> Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions. When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to “outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent.”
I remember when lab leak was officially considered a conspiracy theory, and everyone who mentioned or even referenced it should be canceled and shunned.
And since then, there is no more scientific evidence or verifiable sources. Hence the reason the CIA didn’t even believe it and gave it the lowest confidence rating it has. Used to be truth matters, now rumors and theories are more important.
For me Ralph Baric's 2024 test testimony moved the lab leak hypothesis to pretty likely. I think that's probably "since then" depending on when then is exactly.
Also the 2023 "so friggin likely" messages. There has been various stuff dragged out into public by the court actions, leaks and subpoenas that are the hallmark of open science.
And yet the CIA still maintains a low confidence, who would clearly have more information than either of us, despite being directed to back that ploy. Wonder why.
But since the was no such a time (it was an official alternative), and only a few people got shunned, the theory became more prominent
For a time mentioning covid lab leak (like literally quoting published research) on Instagram or FB looked definitely suppressed to me. As non American this is maybe the only thing that looks wrong about US gov COVID handling.
None of this company was official USG
https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covi...
> Claims vetted by the CDC included whether "COVID-19 is man-made." The CDC told Facebook that it was "theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely."
> For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place.
your quote confirms the official policy was not "conspiracy theory, shun and ban them", and even the Facebook's policy changed to not ban.
Look, I am just an average user. I don't agree with US far right on much, I simply said it seemed like it was suppressed on FB/IG and turns out this was correct.
But if you want to argue FINE.
I don't think this is about shunning people like me because no one cares about people like me. It is about shunning scientists and famous people.
How about mainstream US media literally never touched for years the topic that a massive pandemic that caused billions in damage possibly came from an US funded lab in China? Either all scientists were dumb and thought it was impossible, or they all as one agreed to never talk about it, OR some scientists thought it's likely and wanted to talk about it but could not publicly. Almost as if people talking about unwelcome theory were idk how could we call it... shunned?
All US gov needed to say is yes this maybe happened but we are not sure. Instead they doubled down and even published known wrong papers. This discredited science for many years.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-...
> Unredacted records obtained by The Nation and The Intercept offer detailed insights into those confidential deliberations. The documents show that in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and Collins took part in a series of e-mail exchanges and telephone calls in which several leading virologists expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered.” The participants also contemplated the possibility that laboratory activities had inadvertently led to the creation and release of the virus. The conversations convey a sense of anxious urgency and included speculation about the specific types of laboratory techniques that might have caused the virus’s emergence. After roughly a week of debate and data collection, one of the key figures involved in the deliberations characterized the focus of the group’s work as follows: “to disprove any type of lab theory.” Several of the scientists on the calls and e-mails then went on to write and publish “Proximal Origin.” It became one of the best-read papers in the history of science.
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It seems like we’ve become a populous where we base our entire rhetorical confidence on logical fallacies(if “they” don’t want us to believe it, it must be true!”)