The protests were linked to concerns over personal freedoms and government overreach. Mainly related to COVID-19 mandates and stay at home recommendations.

Supporters saw the movement as a grassroots stand for liberty against government overreach.

*edit the freedom convoy organised 3 years ago in 2022 as pointed out by commenter’s.

  • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
    4·
    8 hours ago

    If it helps, the (main) lab leak theory was conclusively disproven back in 2020 when waste water samples from Italy in September 2019 to December 2019 showed the presence of natural precursors to Covid-19, with signatures indistinguishable from “the” Covid. Lots of people were reporting a strong ‘flu-like’ bout of illness at Christmas 2019. The idea that it leaked from a lab in Wuham in December 2019 makes no sense. Neither does wet markets and bat soup by the way - that was just good old racism.

    A troublesome but mundane coronavirus of the sort that millions every year dismissed as a cold had a slight mutation and turned deadly and prolific. I think the knowledge that this can happen at any time scares people far more than the lovely little idea of it coming out of a test tube so we can blame a person or a race or a government for it, direct anger at a tangible foe rather than the fragility of biological life.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Neither does wet markets and bat soup by the way - that was just good old racism.

      No, the wet markets are definitely an issue. There’s a lot of objectively unsanitary issues with these things.

      Also, “lab leak” is intentionally vague. At the very least, there’s no signs in the genome that it was engineered. It’s statistically unlikely for a natural virus to have been discover, isolated in a lab, only for it to be leaked, but it’s possible, but unless the Chinese government comes forward, any claims that it escaped from a lab should be met with skepticism.