The claim of a viral cause came from Team Fauci in the 90s, who we now know are all pathological liars who happily conspire with each other for their own ends. We can read the Slack logs where they arrange their conspiracies, even. Back then there were renegade virologists and journalists who claimed there was a coverup by virologists in progress, and the inventor of the PCR test agreed with them, but they were ignored because people thought scientists were ideal people who would never do things like that. That was wrong, so the prior for there being a COVID style problem back then too should be strong.
It's reasonable to disagree with that perspective, of course. You can point to pieces of evidence, other people can debate them. It's not reasonable to be like JumpCrisscross and simply roll your eyes at claims of medical malfeasance anymore - that's a severe case of non-memo-getting at this point. A rational person should default to assuming anything involving Fauci and virologists is unreliable. When Nobel-prize winning scientists and journalists speak up and provide a great deal of detail on an alleged conspiracy, priors should then get stronger (and they did). When Pharma companies do tests that implicitly claim to cure AIDS but don't actually test that claim, they should get stronger still.
Or you can be like JumpCrisscross and continue eye-rolling at anyone who has lost trust in the institutions. Don't be like that!
