It doesn't answer the question though. The question becomes “how did we as humans become so insensitive to rhetorically sound discourse that we allowed ourselves to devolve into such a rut of confusion and disarray?”

I don't think confusion of facts due to poor transmission of information is particularly new. The factors that cause it shift with time but I think the clean transmission of information is the exception rather than the rule.

Except that it wasn’t rhetorically sound. When it was initially argued that it was a lab produced virus, there zero evidence and was purely used for political posturing. As such, the argument was rejected by many.

I don’t run out and do significant new research every time somebody drags out something that I saw no reason to believe in the past - I would never get anything done if I did! “The boy who cried wolf” is a bit allegorical here.

The other part of this is that the lab leak hypothesis has been used as a gateway by people peddling anti-Asian rhetoric, including that this was a bioweapon or evil plot to cripple America. As such, I tend to tune out of such discussions pretty fast. It’s like if somebody mentions judaism and bankers in the same sentence - I can normally just assume whatever comes next will be nonsense. There’s so much bullshit on the internet that paying attention to all of it would be crippling, and unfortunately the lab leak idea managed to become associated with that sort of vitriol early on.

That said, even today I reject any definitive affirmative on the lab leak hypothesis. There’s nothing even vaguely approaching hard evidence, and the less dramatic explanation still seems to have very good scientific support. If/when somebody pulls out better evidence I’ll reconsider.

> When it was initially argued that it was a lab produced virus, there zero evidence and was purely used for political posturing. As such, the argument was rejected by many.

This isn't how it actually happened. I've linked a good analysis of what did happen elsewhere in this thread.

> the less dramatic explanation still seems to have very good scientific support

Which explanation is that? AFAIK, We don't currently have any clear explanation of how the pandemic started. If it was a zoonotic origin we are still missing the details of how that happened.

Zero evidence? The proximity of the Wuhan lab to the initial outbreak is certainly circumstantial evidence at a minimum. China’s delay in reporting the outbreak and the nature of the disease is also suspicious and supports the idea of a lab-leak coverup.

This evidence is far more convincing than a hypothetical idea that the disease spontaneously evolved from some animal some other place.

> China’s delay in reporting the outbreak and the nature of the disease is also suspicious and supports the idea of a lab-leak coverup.

China historically always cover up and delay any bad news. Even most of the random accidents are delayed for reporting, until the officials can come up with a complete and meaningful reports.