this post was submitted on 28 May 2021
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Noone's talking about lab creation, but rather the fact the research institution in question specializes in virology. So they would go into the field(/bat caves in this case) to collect virus samples to bring back to the lab in Wuhan to study (as that's literally their job).
Mistakes happen, and a researcher could have simply been infected by one of these collected samples before going onto infect other people.
In that case, I don't see how that's the striking condemnation of China that Western media makes the lab theory out to be. The virus is still of entirely natural origin, and it was spread inadvertently. Maybe in that case you could make the argument that the lab and/or the workers responsible should bear responsibility and that it was negligence as opposed to a freak accident, but usually when Westerners talk about the lab theory they think "China was researching COVID specifically to destroy the world REEEEE"
The condemnation comes from what people assume the researchers did with the virus after it arrived in the lab. Somehow it had to make the jump to humans and human to human transmission, which is far from trivial.
Based on what western labs commonly did in the past (see where this goes?), they might have intentionally done some virus breeding to see what it would take for it to make this jump. From a research perspective this somewhat makes sense, but given the risk of a lab leak this is relatively unethical IMHO (and at least officially western labs stopped doing that).
But personally I find this entire discussion completely useless. Even if it turns out to be a lab leak, so what? Does that change anything about the current situation and further outlook?
I agree with that logically it's not beneficial but the USA is openly practicing jingoism against the Chinese to the point that Asian Americans are being randomly attacked. There's a theory this leads to a demand for reparations which leads to an excuse for WW3, which some american war hawks are looking for.