[TheCowboy]

Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing. Even if it wasn't leaked, China sure did a lot to mess up and exacerbate the early response to the pandemic for the world. Additionally, people have been critical of wet markets in China from early on, one suspected source of where it first spread to humans.

I have no problem with investigating if it was a lab leak or anything else, but enough with trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that people wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple'. Skepticism here isn't some neutral point of view.

[gfodor]

I will add, separately:

> Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing.

On the virus issue specifically, here are three mainstream narratives that have been largely up-ended, and if you were in tune with a variety of viewpoints you would have been exposed to for your own conclusions before they became mainstream:

- "Coronavirus" was an immense threat and it was wise to prepare for it arriving and turning into a pandemic. Government actions to cut it off eg by banning travel was warranted. (Promoted in Jan 2020 in certain circles, discounted by consensus)

- Being a likely airborne pathogen, wearing masks (particularly N95s) was wise. (Promoted from Jan, in March the surgeon general and others claimed there was no reason to wear masks.)

- Given the proximity to the lab the idea this came from the lab was a worthy explanation worth investigating. (Promoted from March by my recollection)

For me, I was wearing a medical-grade mask in stores and stocking up on supplies in January 2020 due to my exposure to this information with a relatively open mind. I don't discount the possibility that, given that I have advanced lung disease, this priming reduced my prior probabilities of catching and even dying from this pandemic. I was mentally a few weeks ahead of the narratives I read in the media throughout this pandemic and made a variety of decisions around risk management that were in conflict with what felt like the average consensus. This doesn't mean I was confident in these theories per se, but when you're forced into making risk adjusted decisions having a diversity of ideas swirling in your head opens the possibility of having a better risk calculus, esp if the goal is to be conservative.

[gfodor]

> trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that you wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple'

This thing you did here is mind-reading - nothing you wrote here is present in my original comment. You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.

[TheCowboy]

I changed "you" to "people" since I meant it in the general sense of how self-proclaimed skeptics treat this topic and say condescending things like this:

> You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.

[gfodor]

Understood - I rescind my comment since the way it was written I interpreted it to mean you were accusing me personally of doing this.

I am not sure why, if your original comment was properly interpreted the way I did, it would be unfair to posit the idea of you living in limited filter bubbles. It's nothing to be ashamed of since we are all continually being victimized by social media algorithms into being exposed to information they feel will drive changes in our behavior. Everyone lives in filter bubbles. I don't know how to properly engage someone with the idea they ought to consider they're in a particularly narrow set without them feeling attacked. The best I've seen in some areas of inquiry is a tool you can use to analyze your twitter account to understand the scope of news sources you interact with, but that's limited obviously given the domain constraint. Even then it's hard to convince a person they are living on a overly-constrained information diet.