Remember how Facebook and Twitter banned people for repeating this wild conspiracy theory?
What a difference a year makes huh?
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-la...c4407f7bd.html
The COVID lab-leak theory goes mainstream
A group of high-profile scientists published a letter calling for renewed investigation into the origins of COVID-19 — including the theory that it spilled out of a virology lab.
Why it matters: The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Chinese lab and accidentally escaped — rather than emerging naturally from an animal — was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But the letter shows a potential lab leak is increasingly being taken seriously.
Driving the news: In the letter published Thursday in the journal Science, a group of prominent epidemiologists and biologists wrote "theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable."
Flashback: A World Health Organization-led investigation in China earlier this year concluded a zoonotic spillover from an animal was "likely to very likely," while a lab leak of a human-made virus was dismissed as "extremely unlikely."
- The letter in Science, though, notes "the two theories were not given balanced consideration," with only four out of the report's 313 pages addressing the possibility of a laboratory accident.
- Former New York Times science journalist Nicholas Wade raised more questions recently with a long article noting, among other things, the paucity of any clear evidence of a zoological spillover more than 16 months after the pandemic began.
