This is a consequence of the death of nuance. It was either a deliberate lab leak or a wet market jump -- pick your side. Masks either prevent COVID or are worthless -- pick your side. Either it's "just the flu" or 100% deadly -- pick your side. The vaccine will save you or it will make your heart give out -- pick a side.
I don't recall any big media stories pushing deliberate release.
Now that I think of it, I DO recall many bullshit spouters, commenters, fringe blogs, "independent journalists," who pushed deliberate release on their little corners of the internet, but who pays them any attention?
There was, bluntly, a mountain of bullshit from many angles. When trying to keep tabs on stuff for my sanity, I determined there’s multiple variants of the lab leak theory:
First, there’s the question of if it was an accident or a deliberate release
Second, (and on top of the first) that it was a lab-engineered strain or research on a naturally occurring strain.
The fringe sites seemed to overwhelmingly adopt the “deliberate release + lab engineered” theory.
There was a reasonable level of reporting stating that the wet market theory was one of a few possibilities, and that a leak was possible but couldn’t be conclusively determined.
My takeaway and bias is that we’ll never conclusively know the root cause. It became a blame game. The effort would be much better spent preparing for the next pandemic.
