User talk:70.191.102.240

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This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor. — Newslinger talk 05:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in COVID-19, broadly construed. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

—PaleoNeonate – 20:07, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

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Happy editing! — Newslinger talk 05:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Consensus

Hopefully this can help about this question. Like all other epidemics and pandemics of the past, the understanding is that the default hypothesis remains that this too, simply originates from nature, and that as always, it evolves as it strives. Other scenarios are thus considered extraordinary unless supported by incredible evidence. This doesn't mean that tracing the exact details of the origin is easy and this is expected to take years or to never occur.

That this is challenging doesn't automatically validate other hypotheses unless they themselves can be verified. Of course, it would not be impossible for a newly acquired sample to eventually leak from a lab. Laboratory procedures like records and tracing still make it unlikely that a leak event would result in an important epidemic or a pandemic (and in this case, the samples that we have already come from humans, suggesting previous less lethal variants were already in populations).

For Wikipedia, in the event of a confirmed leak incident, we could expect a very different article like "<year> <place> <pathogen> leak incident" that would focus on the known details, rather than a very speculative generic "leak theory" article about stories that initially originate from conspiracy theorists and political disinformation... Finally, since Wikipedia must represent what reliable sources say, a number that are considered very reliable, including some that meet WP:MEDRS, do remind us of the scientific consensus, that the most likely origin is zoonotic. The template is meant to be a summary of the conclusions of those sources. —PaleoNeonate – 02:32, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

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