Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#21

Post by ttul »

tiahura wrote: post #19
ttul wrote: post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

they produce good science from this work. Other than securing more funding for more research, and trivia for virologists, what good science has come from this lab?

I’d have to re-listen to numerous TWiV podcasts, but here is a WaPo article discussing the quality of research at WIV: https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonp...

The Wuhan institute was celebrated as an improvement over the facilities at which dangerous viruses had previously been studied in China. The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#22

Post by tkiolp4 »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #6

Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly a…

Let me play the game. If covid was caused by a lab leak, I think the right question to ask is: who benefits (did benefit) by the leak? And remember that number of dead people is something that governments don’t care about (i.e., governments easily go into war every now and then: it’s clear they couldn’t care less about civilians).

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#24

Post by denotational »

Without meaning to take a position either way, as a non-American, why does the Energy Department have a position on this?

I’m aware that the Energy Department has sone degree of responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal, but even taking that into account, it seems out of scope.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#25

Post by ithkuil »

crayboff wrote: post #15
joenot443 wrote: post #8

[flagged]

To be fair in this instance, this is a wild story that does have all the hallmarks of a wacky conspiracy theory straight out of a Bond film. Some secret Chinese laboratory is doing some secret stuff with some super spreading disease and then whoops it gets leaked and shuts the entire world down. Also keep in mind where the info was coming from in the US: it was being introduced by Trump. This is someone who regularly…

It's not some secret Chinese laboratory. It's a well known institute, a pretty famouse one in fact. It's the place that identified the source of the 2003 sars pandemic.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#26

Post by ttul »

rejectfinite wrote: post #14

Not unplausible at all. Has happened before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

And this is precisely why BSL4 labs exist. And accidents also happen at BSL4 labs. But in the west, at least we have reasonably transparent and trustworthy governments, with some notion of accountability for enforcing rules.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#27

Post by imnotreallynew »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #22
boeingUH60 wrote: post #6

Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly a…

Let me play the game. If covid was caused by a lab leak, I think the right question to ask is: who benefits (did benefit) by the leak? And remember that number of dead people is something that governments don’t care about (i.e., governments easily go into war every now and then: it’s clear they couldn’t care less about civilians).

> who benefits (did benefit) by the leak

The worlds billionaires, combined, made more money in 2020-2022 than the previous 20 years combined. When there’s that much money involved, one must be a little suspicious.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#28

Post by puffoflogic »

imnotreallynew wrote: post #23

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I always found it it little odd that the guy who became the de facto pandemic era “leader” in the U.S. was also the same guy that personally approved funding for the lab in Wuhan.

The state religion reveres experts, who are by definition the people with conflicts of interest. It's normal.
Post reply on HN