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How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com

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Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#11

Post by civilized »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

The link you posted still says we need to find out root causes. It just says some extra stuff about how to provide psychological safety so that people are more forthcoming and we are better able to get to the root causes.

You will not find a sane engineer on the planet who says "we don't need to find the root cause, we just need to move ON and move FORWARD". Such nonsense is the domain of politicians.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#12

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

Well I mean never letting Covid out (if that is the source) would have prevented 7-13 million extra deaths this year so it is worth thinking about how we don’t let another one out if it is possible.

I disagree that it is less actionable. I am a former scientist. Proper handling of lab waste etc. is infinitely easier than having the whole world lock down, wear masks, and rapidly develop mRNA vaccines to try and put the genie back in the bottle.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#13

Post by ahupp »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

In software you would never do a postmortem without understanding the root cause of the incident. If this was caused by a lab leak, or even gain-of-function research, that seems like a pretty important detail.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#14

Post by mc32 »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

Unless the release was due to gross negligence --like an outage is due to really bad decisions by someone. In those cases blamelessness is not productive and conducive to more mishaps,

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#16

Post by 1998v2 »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

Playing the opposite game with all recommendations from China and the WHO would have been a good start. I think responsibility and fear of discovery are at the core of how crucial information was suppressed and distorted leading to nonsensical actions like the SF rally for Chinatown in late February 2020.

Part of this has resolved itself since every piece of information is no longer being evaluated on whether it helps or hurts Trump.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#17

Post by Godel_unicode »

ahupp wrote: post #13
p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

In software you would never do a postmortem without understanding the root cause of the incident. If this was caused by a lab leak, or even gain-of-function research, that seems like a pretty important detail.

But that's not what you would start with. If you have an incident and discover that your response plan was hilariously inadequate, you would prioritize making more robust response plans because even if you can prevent that exact incident from happening again, there will be other disasters.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#18

Post by drewcoo »

p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

> Working out the initial cause of the Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable . . .

I think the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#19

Post by salawat »

tawa10093 wrote: post #8

“Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.” This is actually true and not uncommon.

Note section 9.5 of Project Evidence

9.5 Arrest of Lab Animal Seller From the same ECNS article in the previous section:

We are looking for contributors who can read Mandarin to help us find and translate the original article from The Paper that details the arrest of the ’top academician’.

Medical staff and experts have long been asking for better regulation and supervision of biological research institutes in China, but with mixed results.

A top academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering earned 10.17 million yuan ($1.46 million) by illegally selling off lab animals and experimental milk, according to a report in the Shanghai-based The Paper.

Li Ning, a leading expert at transgenic technologies at China Agricultural University, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on January 2 for grafting 37.56 million yuan.

Author’s Note: "Li Ning" and the "top academician" appear to be two different people. Li Ning was sentenced to prison for allegedly embezzling research grant funds.

The academician’s arrest shows that the regulations concerning lab safety were either too lacking or not properly enforced and enable a bad actor to put many others in danger for their own profit. The new biosafety rules were likely put in place to rectify these deficiencies.

If a "top academician" was selling lab animals at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, could a worker at the WIV or WHCDC have been doing the same thing? Why not?

Could one of these lab animals have been sold to the Huanan Seafood Market?

@https://project-evidence.github.io/

The "it's common" may be overstated, but it is not unprecedented.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#20

Post by Godel_unicode »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12
p1necone wrote: post #5

Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

Well I mean never letting Covid out (if that is the source) would have prevented 7-13 million extra deaths this year so it is worth thinking about how we don’t let another one out if it is possible. I disagree that it is less actionable. I am a former scientist. Proper handling of lab waste etc. is infinitely easier than having the whole world lock down, wear masks, and rapidly develop mRNA vaccines to try and put th…

That's a false equivalency though; whether or not this was a lab accident, there will be future pandemics which aren't (like every single previous one in history).
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