Personally, I use it as another reason to never trust the prevailing narrative on social media just because it’s popular. I also don’t take moderators or moderation seriously because of how many of them use it as a tool to promote their own agendas.
Science should always be open to criticism. As soon as we start pushing the idea that science and scientists cannot and should not be questioned, it becomes exactly like religion.
Science is fallible. It always has been and always will be. Look at history and you will find no shortage of prevailing scientific narratives being proven wrong after time passes and people have more information. Also look at history and you never see the people pushing or believing false information apologize or take any accountability.
I’m ashamed to have fallen for the manipulative tactics from both mainstream media organizations and the useful idiots on social media. It really has opened my eyes to how inept and incompetent the average individual is, and it makes no sense to go along with the group simply because what they’re doing is popular.
It’s also disgusting how such a catastrophic event is now completely gone from the news cycle after information comes out that we were lied to. Before, the media couldn’t resist on reporting any sliver of COVID misinformation and lies. Now that we have the truth, it’s exceedingly difficult to find any outlets that discuss it.
“It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’d been fooled.” - Mark Twain
You tout science, but you’ve cited an NPR interview where the conclusion you call “most likely” is described by issuing agencies as “low confidence.” That doesn’t make it seem “most likely” at all. What is most likely is that we don’t have enough information to draw a definitive conclusion, so being judgemental about it might be hasty and hypocritical. The NPR interview also states that we don’t know where the intelligence is coming from, so criticizing China for not being transparent but ignoring the secrecy of the intelligence agencies is a double standard.
The other source is a video from Ken LaCorte, who is a former Fox News executive who killed a legitimate Trump and Stormy Daniels story that turned out to be true, so his credibility is questionable on top of the fact he ran competing US political partisan websites and hired Macedonian teenagers to write the content to stir up contention.
You claim to never trust the media, but you’re trusting a known manipulative media executive.
A better question is why the origin story matters so much to you. Does it change the need for masking or quarantines or vaccines in your opinion? If China came out and said it was a lab leak, how would it affect your life in a fundamental way?
People get banned on social media for legitimate and illegitimate reasons every day. This is a weird hill to die on.