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It's the gift that keeps on giving. No, neither phonographs nor guilt nor syphilis. It's the COVID-19 zoonosis/lab-leak debate. When last we left it*, the rationalists and the establishment had concluded to their own satisfaction that the origin was zoonotic, happening at the Wuhan Seafood Market. The dissidents looked at their evidence and arguments and were convinced... that the other side was trying to pull a fast one. And there it stood, with both sides convinced of their own hypothesis but no smoking gun present.
Today... none of that changes. A paper published in 2022 argued that two successful introductions to humans was more likely than one, and this was evidence for the zoonosis hypothesis. Dissident Michael Weissman has now published a paper showing the earlier paper has a fundamental error, and in fact one successful introduction is more likely. Weissman had earlier responded to Scott Alexander's arguments with the same math error, before official publication.
*Citation not provided.
One of my basic heuristics is that progressives are liars. I'm also pretty sure that China has a decent amount of ability to influence the Left in the West.
That being said, I agree with the other poster who pointed out that for purposes of policymaking, it should be assumed that this was a lab leak. Or to put it another way, the fact that a lab leak cannot be ruled out is sufficient basis for making significant changes to the rules and practices for this kind of research.
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