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This was likely just communicated poorly.

Publishing houses have editorial standards about what kind of evidence is sufficient to make a claim. This often includes reproducibility of the reporter's work, which is labor intensive. Editors are busy and important, so they delegate it to a dedicated role. Hence "fact checkers." They're research assistants, errand runners, not arbiters of truth.

Facebook has been pressured to own up to its role as a news source and implement the customary editorial standards. Under those standards, audacious claims require airtight sourcing. Speculation is not in the same universe as good enough to attribute responsibility for a worldwide disaster to a specific group of people. And so "the only thing behind this is speculation" rolls up to "false." The intensity of BSL4 containment protocols is just icing.




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