Perhaps I am one of a small group but it still irritates me how politicized the origins of COVID were. It should never have been that way and it should never happen again. Lab leak, deliberate act, accident, or a mutation in the wild, the origins should have been rigorously challenged and pursued no matter the consequence.
This entire topic has gotten harebrained, so I’ll add to the fire: the part of our population that had a problem getting vaccinated would have responded much better to a perceived threat from a tangible adversary.
Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
41–50 of 253 posts
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have not kept up with this topic. What does the evidence point to? Has any new evidence surfaced in the past year?
There has been little or no new physical evidence. We have seen new evidence of coverup, though, where scientists privately said there was high likelihood of lab leak in slack messages before publicly signing publications claiming there was no likelihood of lab leak. The leaked slack messages are damning.
The conversation DID ask if it was a leak. Then they studied the evidence and only after studying the evidence did they publicly sign that it was probably of natural origin.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#43It's a bummer to be a scientist whose work is stymied by these concerns. Nevertheless, pumping the brakes here is sensible. I get the sense that researchers feel a certain injustice that geopolitics is affecting scientific decisions by their funding bodies. Funding should be decided on the scientific merit of their proposals. In a vacuum, that makes sense. Seen more widely, though, the decisions of the NIH and simila…
Instead these labs are all near major population centers, with researchers freely mixing with the general population.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#44Perhaps I am one of a small group but it still irritates me how politicized the origins of COVID were. It should never have been that way and it should never happen again. Lab leak, deliberate act, accident, or a mutation in the wild, the origins should have been rigorously challenged and pursued no matter the consequence.
If the lab leak turns out to be true I could see people demanding that the gallows be dusted off.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#45Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#46Rather than modifying viruses and seeing what happens in the hope that that will inform us for the next pandemic, it seems smarter to start making more vaccines with different techniques where mistakes are lower-stakes and the benefit is more clear.
What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#47Perhaps I am one of a small group but it still irritates me how politicized the origins of COVID were. It should never have been that way and it should never happen again. Lab leak, deliberate act, accident, or a mutation in the wild, the origins should have been rigorously challenged and pursued no matter the consequence.
This entire topic has gotten harebrained, so I’ll add to the fire: the part of our population that had a problem getting vaccinated would have responded much better to a perceived threat from a tangible adversary.
It was clear very early on that for the vast majority of the population (over 99%) there was no tangible threat from Covid. And yet the theater of Covid was carried on. I still remember the footage out of Wuhan in early 2020 that scared the bejeezus out of me, of people just falling over in the middle of the streets and people with hazmat suits showing up and carting people off. Only in retrospect can we see that was all a production. People don't literally fall over in the middle of the street from Covid infection, fine one minute and near dead the next.
So from that background, why would you trust anything the government tells you, when the government showed no good faith effort to seek truth or be reasonable? Many who pitched the lab leak theory were dismissed, shut down, censored, and ridiculed. From the same conformists that sought to manipulate healthy young people into taking an unnecessary vaccine and to give up a portion of their youth to terror and tyranny.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This entire topic has gotten harebrained, so I’ll add to the fire: the part of our population that had a problem getting vaccinated would have responded much better to a perceived threat from a tangible adversary.
Are you under the impression that a large number of people who refused the COVID shots didn't also already believe that the virus came from a lab?
At its core, no. But there were a lot of people caught in the crossfire of information who simply got scared. For many of them, seeing SARS-CoV-2 as man-made could have counteracted that anxiety.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#49Any benefit from research of gain of function research is clearly outweighed by risk of lab leak. I.e if the estimated incremental realized benefit of better planning, better mitigation from a single gain of function research equaled X; the cost of a lab leak seems to be 100X~10,000X.
Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
This entire topic has gotten harebrained, so I’ll add to the fire: the part of our population that had a problem getting vaccinated would have responded much better to a perceived threat from a tangible adversary.
The purpose of a vaccine is to inoculate against a disease. The vaccine failed miserably at that. If the disease were actually deadly enough, more people would have chanced an experimental mRNA injection into their bloodstream vs taking the disease on via natural immunity. You didn't have to propagandize and gaslight people to take the smallpox vaccine: it was self evident how deadly the disease was. And yet, the wor…
Inoculation means to prevent disease. The mRNA vaccines were extraordinary at preventing Covid, the disease. Sterilisation is a nice to have, but far from mandatory--modern polio vaccines aren't sterilising.
> didn't have to propagandize and gaslight people to take the smallpox vaccine: it was self evident how deadly the disease was
A meaningful fraction of Americans, Brits and Canadians are generally against inoculation [1].