Thread by @TheSeeker268

Excellent article and yes the possibility of a lab leak never got a fair look.
undark.org/2021/03/17/lab…

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, says a lab leak was never the subject of a “fair and dispassionate discussion of the facts as we know them.”

“We need a much better sense about where to place our resources and effort,” he adds. And if a lab release for SARS-CoV-2 looks plausible, Relman says, “then it absolutely deserves a whole lot more attention.”

"Relman says it’s also possible that scientists working with undisclosed and even more closely related coronaviruses — perhaps one with a FCS and another with the SARS-CoV-2 gene backbone — may have been tempted to create a recombinant virus so they could study its properties."

"Indeed, researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology initially failed to disclose that eight other SARS-like coronaviruses had been detected in samples collected from the same mine cave where RaTG13 was found."

"When asked why he thought Daszak and others pushed so strongly against the possibility of a lab leak, Relman says they may have wanted to deflect perceptions of their work as endangering humankind."

"Relman proposes that among those trying to suppress the lab-release hypothesis, there might have been “far too much protection of one’s self and one’s peers before allowing a really important question to receive a hearing.”"

“If we are at the point where all science is politicized and no one cares about truth and only being politically correct,” Petrovsky says, “we may as well give up and shut down and stop doing science.”