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Absolutely. Lots of issues that are just way too high-emotion right now for rational and objective discussion.

One other reason it's way too hot to discuss right now: it would suggest that scientists were at least partly to blame for the pandemic. Even if you're not Chinese, you might not want to be discussing that idea if you were a scientist yourself.

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Because people are having emotional discussion doesn’t mean we should stop trying to have rational ones.

In fact it’s the opposite we need to have the hard conversations as early as possible.

Not if it causes people to (emotionally) dig themselves into positions which they later are unwilling to relent on because people hate admitting they're wrong, and hate it more the more adamantly they had stated their position before. We're in a very polarized environment, with very little trust between groups, and having an early emotional hard conversation could actually be another obstacle in the way of having a productive one later.

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