461–470 of 664 posts
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> This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This seems like a supremely bad idea.
Not if your point is to understand what can go wrong when viruses mutate.
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The specific thing that they said they were trying to do was predict emerging pathogens and develop treatments and potentially vaccines for them in advance of them actually making a zoonotic jump. They were creating chimeric Coronaviruses to simulate natural recombination events, then infecting humanized mice with them to assess their potential for human emergence.
Right, playing with fire, by creating an environment that would hyper-evolve virus better than random natural species interactions.
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> If they had just responded to the outbreak instead of trying to cover it up initially and been a little more open with the international community they would have been lauded for their handling of the situation Are we talking about China or the Trump administration?
I'm no fan of the Trump administration or their handling of COVID, but they didn't throw doctors in jail or censor their research. Entirely different level of screwup.
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Personally, I kind of like the idea that we could know in advance if a tiny mutation could turn a known disease into something that wipes us all out. Only inside level four labs, of course. But early warning (and this work on mitigation) seems important.
Maybe in BSL-5 labs? Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city. The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence. Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area. Armed guards patrol the fence. (EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…
There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the…
It is unenforceable from the start. All the major world powers would continue their research (perhaps slightly less openly) simply from a MAD angle (it is irresponsible to ignore the value of a pathogen that no one else has seen and you have the antibiotics for).
We are living in dark times in terms of our technological capability and the aggressiveness of state actors.
I would argue that the only chance we have is to reign in the behaviours of our states. Crazy and seemingly impossible, but stopping science/tech is far beyond reach.
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Maybe in BSL-5 labs? Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city. The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence. Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area. Armed guards patrol the fence. (EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)
You’re not going to get any good researchers to live in a quarantine bubble for their whole lives.
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…
Is it just me or is there a deep irony here? I find it interesting that one of the oft maligned attributes of religious communities, especially those in authority in said communities, is this same behavior. Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand. As a naive westerner I've hear/learned/assumed that Chinese communism/society was areligious. When described as you (OP) put it, it seems that abst…
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It disingenuous and lazy to make broad statements of equivalence like this. There are very obvious differences in how the world’s governments operate.
> It disingenuous and lazy to make broad statements of equivalence like this. It's also disingenuous and lazy to ignore a century or more of empirical evidence. > There are very obvious differences in how the world’s governments operate. Are there? https://www.amazon.com/All-Governments-Lie-Times-Journalist/...
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There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the…
It could be. But that I find extremely unlikely A failed experiment? Maybe a bit more likely, but still I don't think so Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on" Hence why only the recent mutations made its transmission more efficient. Now, if it escaped unbeknownst from a research lab, that I would put on the plausible category. Would be more possible if it w…