In my opinion, the immediate flagging is a symptom of the hostility of even discussing the origins, lab leak or not.
I wanted to see how the post evolved as I read the article and looked into each linked source's motivations, so I made a note of the points (14 after 10 minutes) specifically because I felt there would be a lot of biased discussion.
The instant popularity of the post could have three factors: multiple votes from one source, individuals already well-versed in disease propagation and clandestine government action who support more visibility in the post, and people who believe the post could have merit without actually putting a great deal of their own research into the sources.
I'm in the fourth camp: agnostics. That's why I haven't contributed to the popularity of the post. However, two years of hearing about this disease does a lot to build resent for armchair epidemiologists.
In this case I took my time fully reading it before posting it, but not being a biotech person I posted this here also because I was interested in criticism of flaws I would have no chance of not overlooking. But just flagging it isn't that. It doesn't tell me this article is bad, it tells me too many people aren't acting in good faith, so that raises the question why that is.
Trying to turn it around on others by speculating on what they might have done (i.e. why they upvoted it, if they read it), doesn't change what was definitely done (i.e. flagging it without any substantial criticism).
(For the record, I still do believe the various lab-leak theories have legs, and should be discussed and investigated, even if this particular article ends up being unconvincing.)
And I wasn't surprised.
That's a wild state of affairs.
.. And it looks like I wasn't the only one.
