Facebook lifts ban on posts claiming COVID-19 is human-made
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/in-reversal-facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-is-human-made/
Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that COVID-19 is human-made or manufactured “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts.”
There is rising pressure worldwide to investigate the origins of the pandemic, including the possibility that it came from a lab. Since the pandemic began, Facebook has been changing what it allows on the topic and what it bans. In February, it announced a host of new claims it would be prohibiting — including that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese lab. Other claims it added at the time included the false notion that vaccines are not effective or that they are toxic.
Lisa Fazio, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, said the reversal shows the difficulty of fact-checking in general, particularly with something unprecedented like the coronavirus, when experts can disagree and change their minds with new evidence.
Related:
“Some things may be true, even if Donald Trump said them.”
Reporters who dismissed Trump’s lab leak theory have ‘egg on their face’
May 30, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNZ83-jIwKA
Sky News Australia
ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl says reporters who dismissed the theory coronavirus originated from a Chinese lab - because Donald Trump said it - have “egg on their face”.
“Yes I think a lot of people have egg on their face,” he said.
“This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo – secretary of state, Donald Trump.
“Some things may be true, even if Donald Trump said them.”
Many mainstream outlets dismissed reporting the theory coronavirus originated from a Chinese lab because it was deemed “racist” or a “conspiracy” theory.
The theory has now been given new attention after David Asher – a former lead investigator - told Sky News host Sharri Markson three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised in November 2019 with symptoms similar with coronavirus.
