The Case Against the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

So that is the basis for what? Is that a fact that changed your mind about the origins of covid?

We know that lab leaks happen. Scary stuff. Even how many lab leaks there are here in the U.S. The paper you link to describes several lab leaks during a period of time while SARS was being widely studied.

Its quite a leap from knowing there are lab leaks to implying that covid, or any other virus, leaked from a lab. There's relevant genetic evidence indicating that the earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]. Also it is estimated, based on antibody testing, that there are millions of people every year who get infected with various bat coronaviruses [1].

More/better evidence is needed to prove a lab leak, given that nature does things like this all the time.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...

No. By addressing conspiracy theories in an Authoritarian system you give them credence through something more or less like the Streisand effect. If you have information control mechanism like the Great Firewall of China and you do not have a free press, then you can more effectively control your domestic population through information suppression. You don't have to explain anything if nobody talks about it in the first place.

You're applying the logic of a democracy with a free press, which assumes people will talk about it. You also probably think that China worries about what you think and that they would care to address your concerns, when the 1.4 Billion Chinese citizens is of much greater concerns to them.

This is the same delusion that Western intelligence agencies like the CIA had with Saddam Hussein. Everyone expected that his putting up a fight against the weapons inspectors was a very clear sign that he had something to hide. If he had nothing to hide why not let them in. After the fact we found out he didn't actually have a functioning weapons program. His failure to be open to the weapons inspectors seems deeply weird and irrational from the perspective of a Western Democracy. But he was running a strong-arm totalitarian state. He needed to stand up to the US and the rest of the world for domestic political points.

China doesn't care what you think or what the US thinks. China cares what 1.4 billion Chinese think. China can better control what they think by flat-out suppression of information, because they've built those systems of control.

Can you cite an example of an article which literally says "we need to shut up about this to calm China down?"

Yeah I meant RNA but it was early in the morning and my fingers autocorrected to mRNA.

And many samples ARE degraded and only partial reads can be recovered.

> “These samples are not like huge vials of blood,” Rasmussen said. “It’s not like a big Erlenmeyer flask of green liquid.” Researchers would have to grow the virus in cells in order to stand a real chance of infecting people, she added, and it’s difficult to grow viruses from these swabbed samples even if you try to. There’s not much virus in them, and what you get tends to be contaminated with virus-killing detritus. “Technically it’s very challenging to directly isolate virus from field samples from wild animals. So that makes it unlikely that just handling those samples would result in some kind of infection.” Finally, Rasmussen added, the chemical solution that’s used to stabilize the viral RNA for sequencing is a very potent disinfectant its own right.

(from the title article)

PCR amplification means that you can find the needle in the haystack and find enough RNA to construct aa genome out of it. A lot of the time you only get partial reads or don't get the whole genome. There isn't enough viable virus there in order to infect anyone.

"WIV officials told the investigators that serum samples for all staff and students in the bat coronavirus group subsequently tested negative for Covid antibodies. We have only their word to go on because the lab hasn’t been independently audited, but if that’s true,..."

My goodness, that statement from the essay is missing critical context. The lab hasn't been independently audited because the CCP refused permission for any independent inspections.

And yes, you are allowed to take into account their refusal to allow inspections when making a judgement on whether the CCP is covering up a lab-leak.