One last thought before I go: I can't tell you how the pandemic started. No one can. There is no dispositive evidence, and there is unlikely to be any for many years, if ever, given how long it has taken to track down previous new zoonotic diseases. 1/
2/ As Professor Tufekci put it, perhaps sharply, in an earlier reply tweet to me, it's a mistake to have too much certainty about probabilities. But it's important to be clear on what that necessary intellectual modesty actually requires...
3/ It means that we all need to do a lot of work. There are a series of specific steps required for a lab-escape scenario to actually occur. @beyerstein does a great job of detailing them here: newrepublic.com/article/162689….
4/ You need to do the same for the probabilities associated with zoonosis. There's an advantage on this side, as there's now a fair amount of experience w. forensic epidemiology, & a growing body of circumstantial evidence to support–but not confirm–a zoonotic history for COVID.
5/ Again, there's no smoking gun, to use a fraught phrase, and I, a journalist who is mostly a popular historian of science (working now on a bit of the history of infectious disease) cannot give you anything like an expert reading of the balance of probabilities...
6/ I can, as I just did, point out that a simple chain of plausible scenarios, which is where the lab-escape claim now rests, is not the same as a rigorous account of the balance of probability between a zoonotic vs. human (failure) as the source of all our woe...
7/ That said, if I were a betting man, I think you can guess where I would put my money. That and a Charlie Card gets you on the T.
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