3 ms·

I'll obviously disagree my statements come from ignorance! I think our views are nearly perfectly aligned, in fact. We're talking about a rhetorical difference

I'll obviously disagree my statements come from ignorance! I think our views are nearly perfectly aligned, in fact. We're talking about a rhetorical difference with me saying "disprove" versus what you called "plausible proximity." But I don't think we disagree about anything.

Enginerrrd 3y ago
Perhaps it is indeed a semantic argument then, it's just there's a big difference between assigning truth probabilities of 55% natural to 45% lab-leak vs. 98% natural to 2% lab. While in the latter case, it hasn't technically been "disproved", it pretty much has. And for many previous spillovers (NIPAH, HENDRA, ebola, various hauntavirus outbreaks, etc.) It's very definitive that it was indeed natural spillover. So basically I think it is indeed possible to disprove a lab-leak in many many cases. There remain several oddities about COVID that haven't led to that sort of truth probability. However, I still think it's possible we could shift those probabilities with COVID, particularly if the CCCP weren't being so shady about the whole thing above and beyond their usual lack of transparency. (Taking the genetic db offline, policy changes regarding lab safety etc.)