| >> It is so unlikely such a novel, effective, and dangerous virus was created
through bats sharing the same cave that it's not even worth considering. I'm not old enough to remember first-hand but I have a friend (and mentor) who
does, and this is the kind of thing that people used to say about AIDS, that
it's not possible that such a horrible and lethal disease could arise
spontaneously in nature. So in the early days of the AIDS epidemic many people
invented all sorts of stories about how HIV was created by humans. It was a
bioweapon that escaped the lab, it was created specifically to target gays, it
was created to remind people that sex is only for reproduction... Back then also, the conspiracy theories circulated in the press because the media
figured they'd have a field day kicking up a shit storm and then sitting back
and pretending they're only doing their job objectively presenting both sides of
the "debate". Then, as now, people also denied the existence of HIV completely, or denied that
it was lethal, or denied that taking the few early treatments that could
prolongue life was beneficial, or thought that the treatments caused AIDS. It's
déja-vu all over again. So not only there is a very strong prior for zoonotic origin of lethal
pandemics, there is also a very strong prior for people coming up with all sorts
of fanciful stories to explain the appearance of new diseases. Anyone who
understands anything about how the human mind works and how it tends to tangle
up itself in its own unconscious biases should proceed very carefully, if what
one wants is to know the truth (rather than role-play an interesting fantasy of
human-caused pandemic). Btw, it's no joke: the norm throughout history was to ascribe disease to
conscious agency, for example, the spirits of the dead, or evil sorcerers. See
for example what people made of kuru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)#History |