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Huh. Maybe Chinese labs were studying SARS-CoV-like viruses because the risk of zoonotic reemergence was so damn obvious. See my comment in another thread.[0]
by mirimir 7y ago
Huh. Maybe Chinese labs were studying SARS-CoV-like viruses because the risk of zoonotic reemergence was so damn obvious. See my comment in another thread.[0]
But in any case, doesn't ignoring that risk count as "inadvertence"?
0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912763
- chrisco255 7y agoYeah, but by going out into the wild and collecting bat coronavirus samples to bring back to the lab, they certainly opened Pandora's box. Catch-22? Are we put at greater risk by studying and experimenting with viruses like this?
- mirimir 7y agoI don't think that we know where the pandemic started, whether it was bats for sale in the market, or escape from the lab. Maybe it was both. But I do think that sampling and lab work are important. You just need to be careful. Very, very careful.
- intuitionist 7y agoIANA virologist but my understanding is that a spillover event that infects a large number of people (as would have happened at the seafood market) is considered unlikely, although this depends on your opinion of how sanitary the market was—reports vary. Of course this doesn’t mean that the virus escaped from the lab, it could well be that a pangolin vendor got the coronavirus and spread it at the Huanan market.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Gibbon1 7y agoCould have be someone coming back infected from Southern China shopping at the market. That guy could have suffered mild disease and as a result we will never find him.