One odd thing you notice....each time some idiot comes up to say there were Chinese balloon episodes during the 2017 to 2021 period, they never cite the year, the month or the day.
Another odd thing, on an average....there are 84,000 pilots/co-pilots in the air. If any of them had noticed a balloon of this size....they would have talked about it via Twitter or reported it via FAA. That never happened.
BS? I'm more skeptical of the story now, than before.
