zlacker

>>BellLa+(OP)
if you called someone crazy at some point for suggesting this as a possibility, it is time to pause and reflect

>>recurs+06
It is reasonable & responsible to downplay theories that get constructed in absence of sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence.

>>WarOnP+K8
Ok, but to play in this space for a second: toward the beginning of the pandemic when these theories were flying left and right, where exactly was the "sufficient and meaningfully qualified evidence" to assert that it had natural origins?

Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved? In the modern era we're in, I'm not convinced that is a sensible default.

The most sensible default is to say we don't know, and all reasonable possibilities are being explored. That is not the same as saying that its reasonable and responsible to downplay a completely reasonable theory; for all that's holy, the virus was first discovered in the same city as China's only L4 biohazard lab studying human pathogens, literally that evidence alone is enough to say the lab-leak theory is "reasonable". Not a smoking gun! But REASONABLE and not worthy of downplay.

>>015a+J71
> Is the default to simply assert that, because it is biological, it naturally evolved?

Unless you’re a creationist, then yes?