OP's link is fascinating. It is interesting to see that there is strong evidence for a lab leak leading to a pandemic at least once in the past. I think it is striking how clear cut the evidence for this is: a strain absent for 30 years suddenly reappears. Lab leak isn't the only possibility, but at least it makes the most sense here. I don't think we have the same evidence for COVID.
It's true it's pretty clear the 1977 virus had human involvement though I'd lean towards the vaccine trial explanation. Yeah the origins of covid seem up in the air at the moment.
Disagree that it's misplaced. If it was caused by a lab leak it's easier to address before it happens next time via a simple change in protocols for this type of research e.g. all GoF work is done in an isolated environment not in the middle of major population hub.
The means by which a virus appears is much less relevant than the response to the virus. We need a robust plan on dealing with viruses regardless of their origin. All this talk on trying to find the origin is missing the forest for the trees.
This depends on the priors you assume for future events,
e.g. if one ignores the GoF research and it therefore increases the likelihood of continued research, does that also increase risk of periodic outbreaks akin to this pandemic and a higher frequency than natural outbreaks from animal>human?
Because if we had a competent strategy for dealing with the virus, you wouldn't have been locked in your house for months. This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People searchi…
> "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People are going to die in traffic accidents whether i drive home drunk tonight or not, so it probably doesn't matter what I do, right? Understanding why something happened is also a pretty important step in trying to prevent it fro…
I understand the need to understand why but if we can't mount a response to any virus, it again, ultimately doesn't matter.
We've instituted safeguards against car accidents (seatbelts, speed limits, harsh penalties for driving drunk, etc). What have we done for wide-spread, novel disease response?
How on earth is wanting to know why I was locked in my house for months with men with guns patrolling the streets.... "misplaced"? This is what 50 years of postmodernism and cultural relativism broughts us. "Why" doesn't matter, don't search beyond what the consensus is telling you.
Because if we had a competent strategy for dealing with the virus, you wouldn't have been locked in your house for months. This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People searchi…
A competent strategy for an aerosol virus that also remains hosted in domestic pets requires many years of preplanning and N95 stockpiling.
OP's link is fascinating. It is interesting to see that there is strong evidence for a lab leak leading to a pandemic at least once in the past. I think it is striking how clear cut the evidence for this is: a strain absent for 30 years suddenly reappears. Lab leak isn't the only possibility, but at least it makes the most sense here. I don't think we have the same evidence for COVID.
Imagine we did have evidence one way or the other, half of people would believe it and the other half wouldn’t due to the stonewalling by various relevant institutions.
Just because this one was a lab leak doesn't mean the next one has to be. I think origin would be worth knowing just for the historical record, but ultimately it doesn't matter in the slightest.
It matters. Zoonotic viruses that jump to humans naturally tend to be less well adapted to human biology, and thus less contagious. That potentially gives us more time to respond before they evolve really dangerous human adapted variants. Whereas GoF research using human tissue or transgenic animals can produce viruses that are perfectly adapted to humans right out of the gate.
That’s true. I don’t remember any other viruses being this contagious for a long time. Avian flu, swine flu, not nearly as contagious as Delta and spreading asymptomatically.
Ebola - not as contagious. Perhaps AIDS was the closest.
America has a history of responding poorly to pandemics. They let HIV rip through their population before getting serious about it. Regan famously denied it was even happening. It is interesting to contrast this with Australia's quick public health response that saved a lot of lives. It is easy to see similarities with COVID responses, but two timepoints and n=2 do not make for quality statistics. Hopefully the USA d…
The nature of the USA is not to have a federal response. A fairer way to review this is at the state level. That being said, Fauci lead the charge on the AIDS pandemic and this one ...
That's a good point. Australia has a similar federalist structure as the USA, although we have less than 10 states/territories of any consequence. The COVID response has a been fix of both state and commonwealth (federal). The commonwealth closed the borders, but because health is delegated to states/territories it was up to each state to manage the testing, contact tracing, and lockdown rules. The main issue in Australian politics right now is border closures which have been used by every state to greater or lesser degrees. The commonwealth hates the border closures, but the states, pandering to their state based support, mostly love it (except NSW).
I would like to point out that the same Winnipeg lab discussed above, seems to have been infiltrated by the Chinese military [0]. If this doesn't concern you, I'd like to bring to mind that our current pandemic is suspected to have been leaked from a lab in China. That's without discussing any of the bioweapon fears or fear of war between the West and China... [0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chin…
“I would like to point out that most of the research, at the same Winnipeg lab discussed above, seems to have been shared with/taken by the Chinese military“ The linked article does not support your assertion that “most” research was shared/taken.
You're right. It only provides evidence that a top member of the Chinese military was working with the lab (specifically with Ebola variants), that this was only discovered after he had access to the lab and that the RCMP are not releasing details on their investigation on the extent that "intellectual property" has been passed on. So, you're right, maybe I should have left it at "infiltrated by the Chinese military".
The article notes that a lab leak or gain of function research or both are suspected because research with cultivated influenza strains was common at that time. In contrast, attempts by researchers at Wuhan to consistently cultivate coronavirus were unsuccessful. That is why they decided to work with chimeras instead of pursuing gain of function research. All of this focus on the point of origin is misplaced. We know…
>What is ultimately being argued here is that instead of being prepared and responding reasonably all we have to do is control research and nothing like this will happen.
I don't think that is being argued at all. The article ends "it remains likely that to this date, there has been no real-world example of a laboratory accident that has led to a global epidemic" which suggests the opposite.
Disagree that it's misplaced. If it was caused by a lab leak it's easier to address before it happens next time via a simple change in protocols for this type of research e.g. all GoF work is done in an isolated environment not in the middle of major population hub.
The means by which a virus appears is much less relevant than the response to the virus. We need a robust plan on dealing with viruses regardless of their origin. All this talk on trying to find the origin is missing the forest for the trees.
We need both.
We need to have a better plan for dealing with future viruses but we should also look to make what changes we can to reduce the number of new viruses that jump to humans in the first place.