I find the Covid origin stuff weird because it seems so obvious that a lab leak was a possibility. Politicising the lab leak hypothesis did a lot of damage to institutional trust.

Covid origins, vaccine harms and global warming are just the most obvious examples of politicised science causing problems. It’s basically irreversible once sides have chosen their respective beliefs to include in their dogma. Take this thread as an example: I comment on accuracy of climate models and someone compares me to Trump.