On: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists ...

[zoklet-enjoyer]

Wow. The past 3 years I thought they had a lot more PPE than that. Not sure why anyone would be surprised about a leak when that's all they wore.

[anon291 → zoklet-enjoyer]

Realistically, many people's bayesian priors are severely skewed against the lab leak hypothesis because it is associated with Donald Trump, and even intelligent people find it difficult to separate the message from the messenger.

[ZeroGravitas → anon291]

The fact that one of the authors of this is Shellenberger makes me assume the opposite is true. He's clearly a grifter.

Can grifters sometimes be correct? Yes. On a topic that happens to be culture war catnip? The odds reduce greatly.

[zoklet-enjoyer → ZeroGravitas]

I never heard of him. If the facts are:

1. The lab was doing gain of function experiments on coronaviruses

2. They wore limited PPE while working with these viruses

3. The first reported cases were near the lab

then I think there's a high likelihood the virus came from the lab. I don't know why this would be controversial.