Thread by @Ayjchan

@meghan_daum was super nice to invite @FilippaLentzos and I on her podcast this week. It's going to be released tomorrow night or you can join Patreon to listen now.

In the podcast, we get into why it's been so challenging to talk about Covid-19 possibly originating from a lab..

https://twitter.com/meghan_daum/status/1358084185861328897

I really loved the group podcast style because I learnt so much from @FilippaLentzos who is 100% eloquent in explaining what is happening in the big picture - geopolitically - and @meghan_daum who is extremely skillful at asking us the key questions the public wants answers to.

Being unable to talk about #laborigins without being attacked (even by your friends) has been a problem for both scientists and journalists since the start of this pandemic.

A lot of journalists say that scientists refused to go public with suspicions of Covid-19 lab leak...

... and a lot of scientists were and still are afraid to say that they think lab leak is plausible or as likely (or even more likely) than a natural origin of Covid-19.

As we speak, people are fighting about whether we can say lab leak hypothesis "has legs"...

Because somehow we can say sinophobic things like Chinese people treat animals horribly, traffic seriously endangered animals that carry diseases, but we can't talk about lab accidents, which happen around the world any time. This time it was Wuhan. Next time could be your city.

Somehow, for natural origins, the only evidence you need is "it happened before" - and then you can speculate about direct bat>human transmission and a variety of intermediate hosts, and a high speed train to Wuhan.

But for lab origins, you better have a thesis + defense ready.