No, I feel like we are jumping with both feet to conclusions rather than gathering data and then evaluating.

Yeah, it's a big distraction from other, non-balloon important world events that we should be focusing on, of which there are many. These balloons taking over the news cycle for days on end eats into peoples precious attention spans. Suddenly balloons are the hottest thing to focus on right now though.

I feel like we have a couple of weird but completely plausible events involving balloons. And now everyone is thinking about it, so people start noticing it more.

Isn’t this a well-studied behaviour? X happens and suddenly lots of people are calling in about X.

I don’t understand what’s so interesting about a spy balloon anyway. Doesn’t China already have satellites in orbit able to take high resolution pictures anywhere in the country anyway?

What evidence do we have that these balloons are of terrestrial origin, other than Occam’s razor? It could be Venusians, who have experience building lighter than aircraft for their floating cities. Other than how wildly improbable it is, the alien theory still makes more sense than the CCP thinking balloon espionage is a pretty neat idea.