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I've seen several papers with the opposite conclusion. Why do we only see the lab leak hypothesis front paged on HN?
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I Honestly thought it was common belief that corona come from that lab in china. But now after reading this, I searched a bit and read up on it and I guess it is still a somewhat honest debate on the topic. Even if it was lab made, it would be sort of stupid to dig in to it, due to the political nature of the matter. What happened happened, most likely the release would have been accidental, so why play blame games.
If it was released from a lab, no matter whether or not it was accidental, Covid would be the mother of all torts. The entire planet can show harm and will be very interested in recovering their losses from the entity that mis-handled a lethal virus.
The lab leak hypothesis is the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” of our day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A drug addict with a $14T GDP. With ~7M deaths and a ~$1-10M value of human life [1], that's $7-70T in losses in lives alone, before lost productivity and economic value. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#:~:text=In%20Wes... .
Only if liability transfers to the state. Even if state-owned, plenty of state-owned enterprises have limited liability.
Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It makes the pandemic deterministic (bad lab security means an outbreak) instead of stochastic "Bad lab security means an outbreak" is also stochastic though?
Not in the same way - it is admittedly still stochastic, but the product of conscious though, decisions, etc. that have very obvious bad actors and process improvements. So semi-deterministic might be a fairer way to put it. But at the very least, "Stochastic with a much, much smaller threat surface".
Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…
My Occam's razor says that every other virus has a natural origin, why wouldnt this one too? Maybe your razor needs sharpening?
All three of these are possible. And all are compatible with your Occam's razor (and mine).
My bet is with option C.
Lab leak of a natural-origin, but tweaked, virus.
Yes, it can be both natural origin and tweaked. When you tweak something, you have to start with a something, and that something can have a natural origin.
The evidence against the lab leak appears cooked up based on data provided by interested authorities in China, and was assembled and presented by compromised people (people in the field with an active interest in protecting their own field) who actively promoted the false claim that they had no conflict of interest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Thirdly, this paper emphasizes the strong impact of the COVID pandemic and asserts that understanding the origins of the virus would necessarily aid in preventing future pandemics. This does not clearly follow. Especially if the virus had natural selection origins there is no clear and obvious way of systematically reducing risk. Simply living or traveling where host populations like bats live could be enough to gen…
> first purposeful extinction Smallpox? And extinction of Guinea worm is in process.
Genuinely surprises me that there are people out there who think or have been persuaded the virus is of natural origin. The lab right next to the market was literally studying and experimenting with the exact same type of virus. How can a someone think that that's just a coincidence? Add that to the fact that the funding for that research lab was approved by the same guy who become the de facto thought leader on the…
My Occam's razor says that every other virus has a natural origin, why wouldnt this one too? Maybe your razor needs sharpening?