No, they censored claims that it was a “man-made” virus.
Conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend like any “lab leak” talk was censored but the facts don’t support that.
The damage to the perception of objectivity and credibility among scientists and media with regards to ideological independence has already been done.
Apology accepted.
This analysis is not favorable to the Chinese since it shows that there were live wild animals, known to be carriers of SARS-coronaviruses, in the wet market when China previously stated that they outlawed it. In fact, it is less favorable than a lab accident.
So your theory is that the Chinese only provided samples from residents they knew lived hear the Huanan market and hid all the samples from the other side of the river near the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And they gave the teams tons of samples that allowed them to get 700 different sequences that yielded surprising results (that they somehow planned or something?) that there were two viral jumps to humans that occured in the wet market. AND that the lineage that more closely resembles bat lineages happened after the other lineage. That means that intermediate species had to be involved. How did they make that happen? So the Chinese provided the environmental samples where positives matched, almost to the T, the cages where SARS-coronavirus carriers species were held. In fact, they narrow it down to cages in the western part of the market where raccoon dogs were held. Not officially, because that was illegal. However, one of the authors visited the market several years ago and took a picture. This makes them look better?
The only plausible lab leak theory to Hunan market theory is that someone from across town managed to get a progenitor coronavirus to the animals in the markets so that they could mutate into two separate lineages found in the cages in the market. Those lineages then infected people living near the market. (In fact, those cases with no direct links to the market lived on average even closer, < 1 km, to the market than those with direct links to the market.)
This is not true.
The question is, what facts can we actually trust regarding the data that China has provided? What truly independent data has been released? What has been kept back or destroyed? What independent and open investigation has been done?
Without knowing that, all of what you have written is subject to a great deal of uncertainty.
But it answer to one of your questions, I think China would much rather have the world accept that it was a purely natural event (even if it was from an illegal animal trade) than have the finger pointed at the government-run virology labs.
It takes an astounding amount of doublethink to believe that covid is a deadly bioweapon that the dastardly Chinese loosed upon the world to wreak the destruction of the West and that it’s just a common cold that you shouldn’t worry about, take any measures to avoid, or get vaccinated for.
It is a matter of record that Facebook at least was imposing a form of censorship on claims that it came from a lab.
Again, as @steronz already stated, it censored (for only a few months, btw) posts saying it was man-made or a bioweapon.
Well, we’re in trouble if the Chinese government is so smart, they only released data to foreign scientists that would give that specific of a result.
Meanwhile, the US is trying so, so hard to find something to prove a lab leak theory which, btw, also relies on information out of China. Unlike the detailed science study (which one of the leaders signed a letter wanting the US to look harder into the lab leak theory until he analysed the data), we just have one agency saying “low confidence” and another agency saying “moderate confidence” while other agencies lean toward wet market. This is all based on complete unknowns.
And I don’t think they should have censored such posts.
We don’t know do we? That’s the real point here.
That’s a fine opinion, but let’s not go around repeating the (false) conservative narrative that any discussion of a “lab leak” theory was included in that censorship.
And how exactly am I doing that? I resent the implication.
Right here.
Do you deny that that is what they did?
Yes. As I’ve stated. They only censored posts implying that it was man-made. It’s an important distinction.
“man-made” covers a hell of a lot of ground, from “gain-of-function” (which we know the WIV was doing) right through to bio-weapon creation.
And it covers less ground than “it came from a lab.”
All of it? The stories I’ve seen describe considerable evidence from the wet market that wasn’t destroyed.
Here’s one:
It has; but it’s been done mostly by those denying the facts of what has actually been widely reported in the media.
Whether it was a lab leak or a market spillover, measures should be taken to reduce the chances of either; because both of them are things that could plausibly happen in the future, whichever of them happened with covid-19. If it did turn out to come from a lab, we couldn’t say ‘whew, we don’t have to worry about the markets’; and if the evidence is that it came from the market, that doesn’t mean ‘whew, we don’t have to worry about the labs’ (whether in China or elsewhere). I strongly suspect, however, that there were more preventative measures already in use in the lab than in the wet market, considering there’s convincing proof that there weren’t, in practice, any at all in the wet market.