There's pretty suspicious circumstantial evidence that SARS-COV-2 came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy
EAs are really concerned about engineered viruses leaking from labs.
Why isn't the lab leak hypothesis discussed on the EA Forum?
I follow updates and arguments about the lab leak as a consequence of my EA-driven interest in biorisk. I don’t think that EA has a comparative advantage in shedding light on this hypothesis relative to those more directly involved in the investigation. I also think that it wouldn’t be that surprising from the perspective of common sense EA wisdom if the pandemic had zoonotic or lab leak origins. So not a ton of updating to do either way. This is why I don’t look to EA for information and analysis on this subject. Can’t speak for others.
Because it probably wasn't a lab leak. See:
https://twitter.com/JohnsHopkinsSPH/status/1558113603080830981
I think there are a lot of good reasons:
(thoughts my own)
People discuss this in private a bunch, doesn't seem valuable to discuss it in public unless someone has additional important-but-nonsensitive information.
Also in general there's various reasons (some very good, some meh) that biorisk people mostly eschew the EA Forum for serious object-level discussions, and prefer private online and offline spaces.
I think this is problematic, because it makes it very hard for new people to engage and learn
Absolutely, especially for Europeans in general, not just new people. But there's tradeoffs, the risks involve some topics that definitely shouldn't be discussed openly, and lots of Very Serious People seem to have decided that lab leak discussion should be mostly in-person.
I recommend cold calling. I PM'd ChristianKI on Lesswrong a few months ago and got some good info on this topic.