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

wsj.com

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

#81

Post by j_crick »

fidgewidge wrote: post #71
ttul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem to have contribut…

> their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development.

On the contrary, look at covid aftermath — it quite did! /s

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

#83

Post by ttul »

tjpnz wrote: post #58
ttul wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some accounts I've read suggest the Wuhan lab was operated under conditions more akin to BSL1. Think your High School biology lab or your dentist.

My source of information is the hundreds of hours of This Week in Virology episodes I have listened to since March 2020, so with that in mind as my bias: Reputable western scientists who have worked with Wuhan virologists professionally have a lot of respect for the Chinese scientists and the Wuhan lab generally.

But the fact that many virologists have professional friends at the Wuhan lab does not rule out that the lab was being poorly managed or that an error might have been swept under the rug by the CCP.

My personal opinion synthesizing all that I have read and heard on this topic for three years is that the lab leak is plausible because China is an autocracy and does not have the rule of law. It’s in the CCP’s interests and within their capabilities to hide a lab leak quite successfully.

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

#84

Post by hammock »

ttul wrote: post #80
someuser54541 wrote: post #51

I'm fairly confident posts like these are artificially weighted to fall off the front page..that seems to happen when a COVID related post gets popular on HN. This post has more points and comments than the majority of stuff on the front page but it's currently on page 3. I've casually noticed something similar over the past ~18 months with posts related to COVID.

I find it interesting that this story was picked up by the WSJ and has not yet hit the NYTimes. The WSJ editorial staff is well known to have a conservative bias, but their newsroom editors are considered to be quite centrist. That NYT doesn’t think this story is newsworthy is itself newsworthy.

It’s a WSJ exclusive, negotiated by the journal. You can read that fact in red above the headline. What it gave the deep state in return for the exclusive is unknown

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

#85

Post by giardini »

aquarium87 wrote: post #39
roarcher wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’ll definitely rank as the most costly and fatal mistake in the 21st Century Ah, but the century is still young.

Very astute! The First! Lab escape happened in 2021. CRISPr was invented in 2000-2005ish. CRISPr cas9 around 2014. BSL-4 labs have gone from 40 to 60ish in the last 25 years with another coming online almost every year. BSL-3 labs are virtually uncountable and are in the 13000ish range in the USA alone (sorry, can't Remeber source) Put it all together, and only an idiot STARTS with natural origin. Also, there will be…

So the only solution is to build my own BSL-4 lab and live inside it. We now have a "BSL-4 lab gap":

"We must not allow a mine-shaft gap!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y

[I miss Peter Sellers!]

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

#87

Post by frankharv »

credit_guy wrote: post #41
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…

The only reason to not say it was a lab leak is to avoid embarrassing those responsible, China first and America second. But little by little people will start accepting that. What should the consequences be? At the very least a tightening of the controls around labs doing bio research. Of course, this amounts to nothing if someone is allowed to outsource research to labs in countries that don't follow the stringent…

[flagged]

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

#88

Post by emj »

groot2581 wrote: post #67
emj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion during the pandemic only lead to the "human designed" blame game, so the similarities are striking. It is a view that everyone can share, regardless of political affiliations, a perfect way to get a mob going. It is interesting to discuss how the views on this has changed though.

The human designed blame game is different from the “bio weapons” blame game mentioned in the parent. I get people are discussing human designed but that’s different from bioweapon.

I am not very good at bio, so I equate the three to some part. The lab leak story is really bad in itself on a political level, I do not know how we can have a sane discussion about it.
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