That’s just wild. The one silver lining to T2 is that I’m not shocked by anything anymore. It’s still outrageous, but the surprise is gone.

  • Realitätsverlust@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced

    Ah yes, we’ve already discovered everything. Science is over, everyone, let’s go home.

      • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        We already have plenty of evidence to conclude zoonotic origin. Bat RNA. Positive cultures in the wet market. Covid genome.

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        The longer it takes to find the lab origin link the higher the probability of zoonotic origin. /s

        The problem with conspiracy theories is they’re non-falsifiable. That something is possible is not evidence that it is probable, that something is probable is not evidence that it happened.

        Maybe a lab had something go wrong. Maybe that was because they were careless. Maybe that’s because Trump withdrew funding and oversight from the programs that helped labs like this. That should all be investigated. There’s a difference between asking for a due diligence after action report and assigning blame because “it had to be someone’s fault.”

        • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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          51 minutes ago

          Conspiracy theories are falsifiable! It just means a theory that somebody kept or tried to keep something a secret. I wish the phrase “conspiracy theory” wasn’t universally conflated with “crackpot conspiracy theory” like flat earthers or q-anon. Covid lab leak is not a crackpot theory. People just think it is because we call it a conspiracy theory.

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          The problem with conspiracy theories is they’re non-falsifiable.

          Disagree. Some conspiracies can be proven with evidence. E.g. Watergate.

          The virus had to come from somewhere. Finding a zoonotic trail of evidence (or at least a partial one) adds weight to a natural origin. There is lots of opportunity for new evidence to naturally come to light.

          On the lab leak side evidence has already been destroyed by the Chinese government. New evidence is unlikely to surface naturally.

          So lack of evidence on the zoonotic side gradually moves the balance of probability towards a lab leak.

          The general public is unlikely reach certainty about either scenario. I bet the Chinese government has a certain answer.