>Your hypothesis seems to be that it spread from lab distantly because of incubation time, then stopped spreading distantly once it reached the market? That does not make sense.
It's not my hypothesis, I'm just pointing out the evidence is circumstantial and the language used by virologists is precisely engineered to lump together strong evidence that proves one thing (that the virus was zoonotic in origin) with weak evidence they want to claim proves another thing (that it couldn't have been a lab leak). It's dishonest language and it drives me nuts, because people aren't sheep or idiots, can find the inconsistencies, and will further have their trust in institutions eroded.
This whole debacle reeks even more when you look at the timeline. These claims were coming out before even that circumstantial evidence was available, when this really truly was just a best guess because it's how we think the last SARS operated.
My personal opinion is that:
1) We'll never have any better evidence than what we have now (so we'll never have any good evidence, short of the Chinese govt being hacked)
2) It doesn't really matter because both are plausible and so our safety models should include both
3) The thing of real importance here isn't what is being debated, but rather how the debate itself was performed, and what it says about authority, institutions, honesty, and elitism in the scientific community.
> 3) The thing of real importance here isn't what is being debated, but rather how the debate itself was performed, and what it says about authority, institutions, honesty, and elitism in the scientific community.
This! This is the point of Silver's piece. Whether or not the virus escaped a Wuhan lab, the summary dismissal of the hypothesis as an conspiracy of cranks, without engaging on the facts, _reinforces the legitimacy of crank-fueled conspiracies_.
>Your hypothesis seems to be that it spread from lab distantly because of incubation time, then stopped spreading distantly once it reached the market? That does not make sense.
It's not my hypothesis, I'm just pointing out the evidence is circumstantial and the language used by virologists is precisely engineered to lump together strong evidence that proves one thing (that the virus was zoonotic in origin) with weak evidence they want to claim proves another thing (that it couldn't have been a lab leak). It's dishonest language and it drives me nuts, because people aren't sheep or idiots, can find the inconsistencies, and will further have their trust in institutions eroded.
This whole debacle reeks even more when you look at the timeline. These claims were coming out before even that circumstantial evidence was available, when this really truly was just a best guess because it's how we think the last SARS operated.
My personal opinion is that:
1) We'll never have any better evidence than what we have now (so we'll never have any good evidence, short of the Chinese govt being hacked)
2) It doesn't really matter because both are plausible and so our safety models should include both
3) The thing of real importance here isn't what is being debated, but rather how the debate itself was performed, and what it says about authority, institutions, honesty, and elitism in the scientific community.