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It seems far more likely that it's a "boy who cried wolf" situation. The people strongly pushing the lab leak possibility at the beginning were not doing it for
by delecti 5y ago
It seems far more likely that it's a "boy who cried wolf" situation. The people strongly pushing the lab leak possibility at the beginning were not doing it for honorable reasons, or they would have released any evidence they had for it. Given that, it was reasonable for media outlets to characterize those claims as disingenuous. It's not impossible that they could end up being right, but I'd bet that it won't be because they knew they were right at the time.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoBut the flip side is true, too. The people dismissing the possibility at the begging were also not doing so for honorable reasons, or even because they knew they were right at the time.
- delecti 5y agoNaturally evolved strains have happened before, many times (within a rounding error of 100% of pandemics), so that's the default reasonable assumption. It wasn't dishonorable for the villagers to say "there's that boy, crying wolf again, he's probably lying this time too", it was pragmatic.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoBut that's not why they rejected it, or at least not why they rejected it so hard. They rejected it as hard as they did because doing so let them paint Trump as an idiot.