From ‘Conspiracy’ to ‘Racism’: Sifting Through Disinformation and Labelling in Virus Origin Discussions

The P4 laboratory (L) on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 27, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

News Analysis

Until very recently, any suggestion of the possibility that a lab leak led to the COVID-19 pandemic would be struck down by many media outlets as a “conspiracy theory.”