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What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

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Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#171

Post by dekhn »

aksss wrote: post #157
dekhn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A loose conspiracy of a bunch of social media scientists/journalists? Wouldn't the overall size and diversity of the field mean that there would be at least a few dissenters presenting more factual alternatives? You should just read the book. It's not very convincing. The most likely explanation for the lack of interest in identifying the origins is primarly a lack of data. Speculating about conspiracies does not hel…

> at least a few dissenters presenting more factual alternatives? Are there not?

There are dissenters, but it's definitely unclear their claims are more factual.

My point is that it's really impossible to run a loosely organized large-scale conspiracy. There are too many ways for the conspiracy to fall apart.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#174

Post by [deleted] »

cbb330 wrote: post #118
andai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, Covid did leak from a Chinese lab, but it was in December 2021: >A lab worker was bitten and infected by a mouse infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant at a high-biosecurity facility in Taipei. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

Taipei, the capitol of Taiwan, is not a Chinese entity. This is a lab leak from a Taiwanese lab.

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#175

Post by jtbayly »

closeparen wrote: post #127
Trufa wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concerning number 1) that is doesn’t change the Consequence I agree, but the response I thoroughly disagree unless you means strictly short term. Came or not from a lab, SynBio and gain of functions experiments have the potential of re-doing this of way worse. So basically the only truly important response that is not damage containment is to prevent this from happening (or happen again). Honestly beside fringe group…

There are a variety of natural phenomena and human activities that are liable to create new dangerous viruses and/or bring humans into contact with them. Gain of function research presumably belongs in this category; so do certain food and livestock handling practices, development at the wildland-urban interface, climate change, and a host of other things. The question is how much incremental risk do these activities…

> The question is how much incremental risk do these activities expose us to, what is the cost/benefit of curtailing them, and what can we feasibly curtail. The risks are what they are, and while we might be misjudging them, knowing the origin of a single event is not especially helpful in recalibrating.

If only we had responded this way to the virus.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#176

Post by YeBanKo »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #10

If the lab leak hypothesis is proven beyond all doubt, then it embarrasses China. Embarrassing one of the world's superpowers is broadly seen as an undesirable thing to do. Ergo, scientists producing findings backing up the hypothesis will find plenty of opponents whose first and only job is to discredit them in any way possible, from denying their papers publication (looking at you, ResearchGate) to publicly attacki…

Lab leak theory is never going to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. For that to happen, Chinese government would need to cooperate. And it is almost an axiom that they won’t, if it has a slight chance of making them look bad.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#178

Post by corrral »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #153
shadowgovt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That could have saved millions of lives But that still doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic. That's coulda-woulda-shoulda reasoning.

Of course it does. It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research.

> It will impact other countries relationships with china. And it would impact the kind and level of scrutiny over this kind of research.

I think the point is that neither of those would have had an effect on the pandemic. By the time it was major news in the US, it was too late for any of that to matter in terms of what to do about this pandemic. Not the next one, or our future relations with China, but with this pandemic.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#179

Post by YeBanKo »

jahewson wrote: post #147
1024core wrote: post #97

9/11 cost us ~ 3000 lives? And we spent 20 years fighting wars, killing 100s of 1000s of people, bombing the shit out of entire countries, and trillions of dollars in trying to exact revenge. COVID kills 1,000,000 people (and counting...), which is 333X the death toll from 9/11; and we just shrug and do nothing? Just doesn't compute.

One is an intentional act by a group of people. The other is, at worst, an accident where the main actor is a molecule.

Where the main actor is a scientific institution funded by public and private money from multiple countries.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#180

Post by throwawaymaths »

etcet wrote: post #54
throwawaymaths wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find the primary source for the DARPA leak on hn; if you care to verify that the sequence comes from a patent yourself directly from primary sources, you can find instructions on how to do that on hn too. I've done the search myself, it's real. I can't provide direct sources for the fact that these predictions preceded the discoveries, but I can tell you they ran through my head, and others I talked to, and t…

If you've done it could you link to or provide instructions on how we may reproduce your findings rather than just saying "the truth is out there"?

Yeah, sorry, here it is:

https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/how-to-blast-your-way-to-the...

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