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Notes -
There are a lot of things that make me believe the same. The first is that biolabs, and Chinese biolabs in particular, have a pretty bad track record when it comes to keeping the viruses inside the cordon. If it's happened before, why should be we be surprised that it happened again. I think the Bayesians here use the term "priors" on that topic.
The other thing that nags me about it was the general expert framing of the situation in general. It went something like this:
Person 1: I think this came from a lab.
Experts: a bioweapon? Why would you suggest that this was a bioweapon? There's no way the Chinese would have released a bioweapon on their own people. Only a madman would even consider creating a highly contagious bioweapon in the first place. Shame on you for suggesting it's a bioweapon, you foil-hatted lunatic.
And here I am wondering where the bioweapon topic even came up.
I'm old enough to recall the videos we got coming out of China back when Covid was just reving up. People spontaneously dropping in the streets, apartments being welded shut with tenants inside, the works.
My personal conspiracy theory is that Covid was bio-engineered in a lab, and when they realized it had gotten out, they didn't know which variant had escaped - and that there were much, much nastier variants than the one we got.
Hence China's initial reaction looking like something out of a zombie movie.
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