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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

#21

Post by socceroos »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #17
ahupp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Conversely, if you discover that the cause of the issue was inadequate controls during virus research then you should absolutely start with fixing those.

Put it this way, if the cause of the worldwide pandemic was because it leaked from a lab then you should fix the lab.

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

#23

Post by geerlingguy »

drewcoo wrote: post #18
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.

In this case more like 50 tons of cure.

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

#24

Post by tootie »

This is a very lengthy and well-researched story that basically just says "we don't know but could be". Which I think is where we've been for the past few months. There was a lot of whiplash early on between conspiracy theorists trying to peg this as a biological weapon attack and scientists trying to stick to the evidence. McNeil does a really thorough job dissecting the mess of nonsense and looking at evidence. But the result is still that we don't know. And probably never will.

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

#25

Post by recursivedoubts »

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/

from a technical perspective, maybe (I don't agree with that, but I can see both side of the argument)

from a legal/international relations perspective, absolutely not

if this was a preventable bio-research accident rather than an act of God or Nature, there are huge ramifications for China's place in and relation to the world

at this point I wouldn't be shocked if it was an accidental leak or an intentional leak by the Chinese, an intentional leak by the US or even an intentional leak by another country to provoke US/China tensions

a forest of mirrors

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

#26

Post by monkeycantype »

The accidental lab leak theory proven would actually be great news, as the alternative is that civilization has reached the threshold where we have a hyper connected population in contact with so many natural disease reservoirs that pandemics are emerging spontaneously. If it’s a lab leak we change pathogen containment practices, otherwise we curtain our freedom of movement and association

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

#27

Post by creato »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #17
ahupp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're writing as if somehow general pandemic response has been deprioritized in favor investigating the lab leak theory, which is absurdly far from reality.

This incident has cost millions of lives and possibly undone decades of progress on reducing poverty worldwide. It is worth pursuing multiple angles in parallel.

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

#28

Post by cscurmudgeon »

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 what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading is far far far less important than figuring out how to stop another such virus from spreading.

Understanding the root cause is a logical way to do that.

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

#29

Post by dsyrk »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #20
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu

Except another very recent one was also a lab accident. So, no, not every single previous one was, and 2 of last 3 will have been from labs.

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