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Notes -
I don't personally consider the following to be a conspiracy theory, but quite a few people do:
I'm pretty sure that COVID-19 was created (modified) in the lab and (accidentally) leaked.
And the cover-up was done not only by the commies in typical style in China, but also by the professional community who don't want their gravy train to stop.
Edit: another: I suspect that the heavy focus in school on the "oppression of women" throughout history is there to establish a subtle but impactful sexism in favor of women ("the oppressed" who should be lifted up, despite current generations not being victims) and against men (collective punishment of young boys who did not take part in past crimes). There's also the issue of how one-sided the portrayal is. You don't get explanations of how a lack of modern technology made it sensible to divide labor along gender lines, or how misandry has probably also always existed.
There are a lot of things that make me believe the same. The first is that biolabs, and Chinese biolabs in particular, have a pretty bad track record when it comes to keeping the viruses inside the cordon. If it's happened before, why should be we be surprised that it happened again. I think the Bayesians here use the term "priors" on that topic.
The other thing that nags me about it was the general expert framing of the situation in general. It went something like this:
Person 1: I think this came from a lab.
Experts: a bioweapon? Why would you suggest that this was a bioweapon? There's no way the Chinese would have released a bioweapon on their own people. Only a madman would even consider creating a highly contagious bioweapon in the first place. Shame on you for suggesting it's a bioweapon, you foil-hatted lunatic.
And here I am wondering where the bioweapon topic even came up.
I'm old enough to recall the videos we got coming out of China back when Covid was just reving up. People spontaneously dropping in the streets, apartments being welded shut with tenants inside, the works.
My personal conspiracy theory is that Covid was bio-engineered in a lab, and when they realized it had gotten out, they didn't know which variant had escaped - and that there were much, much nastier variants than the one we got.
Hence China's initial reaction looking like something out of a zombie movie.
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