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Part of me thinks that we should almost not waste the time to find out. Spend the effort on preparing for the next one, by improving air filtration etc. Politics is too deeply entrenched, it will be an impossibility to uncover the truth.
What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.
(1) people like dramatic scandalous stories, in general. (2) knowing such might drive some prevention of whatever mistake lead to such from recurring.
Shekhar Gupta (One of India's foremost journalists and media people) did a great 30 minute analysis of this article covering who the cast members are and how this ties back into various stories from the last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlO8sKRynBY So far, the lab origin story sounds the most plausible and has the least holes in it. Now innocent until proven guilty is a thing, but is not like the PRC would e…
Since there isn’t any evidence for either scenario I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say one possible origin is “the most plausible”. A lack of evidence for one does not give credence to the other and vice versa.
https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/books/Syntaxis/Almagest/node4....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
So guilty unless proven innocent?
For ordinary citizens, of course not.
What's the point? After reading all the evidence, people such as myself firmly believe that it came from the Wuhan lab. Nothing the inquiry will come up with convince me otherwise. It's pretty obvious once you read all of the unbiased articles that show that months earlier, the same research facilities and scientists were touting their research in gain-of-function in bat coronaviruses. I mean come on! Bureacracies li…
Why do you care if you will NEVER EVER believe it didn't?
What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.
I think there's also something more insidious at play. In western countries lot of people have become rich by exporting manufacturing to China. If somehow it is found that COVID was a lab-leak, there'd be a huge amount of backlash against China. It will harm the business, who are doing their manufacturing in China. There's a lot of money involved if lab-leak hypothesis turned out true.
How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is going to be difficult.
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
The data have already been destroyed. The Wuhan lab where this research was taking place also had a leadership change, and is now run by someone in the military. That happened in March or April of 2020, IIRC.
Chinese researchers and journalists disappeared in that time frame (their work was deleted from online archives, their names removed from public employment listings... etc.).
I have family in China, and we watched all this happen. These are the things that happened in public. The Western press was too busy with "oh my gosh, we should probably stop flights now" to take serious notice. Then the whole thing became politicized (in the U.S., at least) and if you made statements like "this started in Wuhan, in the lab there, not in the animal market next to it," you were called racist, even though race had nothing to do with it.
We can ask until the cows come hom. The evidence is gone, disposed of by a series of decisions made more than a year ago.
What's the point? Regardless if it leaked from the lab or not we have to prepare for the future the same way.
The question is whether the type of research that might have lead to this result should be shut down to prevent similar accidents in the future. If COVID-19 was, in fact, a lab release then that's a strong argument for shutting the research down.
How is this even going to work? PRC will never allow access to the actual data if it was a lab escape/origin. The sort of propoganda happening on Twitter shows that even discussion is going to be difficult.
If experts can make a decent argument that the lab escape is the most likely scenario, then the PRC can choose to let us have access to the data, or look 100% guilty and be treated accordingly.
If Wuhan lab leak were 'truth' - without hard evidence and a bold international campaign to forcefully make people aware ... then China would be able to hide behind a cloud of whataboutery and changing the subject.
Unless there is some kind of genetic linkage etc..
I also feel that some US authorities wouldn't want the truth to be fully known lest there be unpredictable repercussions and 'worries about Anti Asian Hate Crime' and those kinds of things, preferring to handle it 'behind closed doors'.
It would be great if we could arrive at some kind of objective truth, not holding my breath.
As it takes longer and longer to find any evidence in nature a lab leaking is becoming the most likely source.
>"... no direct progenitor of SARS-CoV was found in bat populations despite 15 years of searching..."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/#!po=11...
Edit: Added source.