4 ms·

We should really be considering this if we want to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately this theory coming out during the Trump er

We should really be considering this if we want to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately this theory coming out during the Trump era made people knee-jerk shoot it down for political reasons, and you can also say the CCP is very invested in making sure they don't have pie on their face if this ends up being what truly happened.

PicassoCTs 6y ago
Also the CCPs investments into "political" careers in the WHO helped them alot there.
matthewdgreen 6y ago
What is the actionable "fix", though? I mean: there are very real questions to be asked about gain-of-function research. There are other questions to be asked about standards for lab safety. But we should be asking these questions anyway, especially now that we've seen how devastating a real pandemic can be. Whatever happened in Wuhan it seems like the primary evidence is gone now. Trading in unverifiable theories about a lab leak is only useful insofar is that it kicks the ball forward on these issues. However the risk here is that these debates will make the issues controversial and politicized in ways that actually make safety improvements more difficult and not less.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  One actionable fix is not putting virus labs in big cities (just like Nuclear and industrial plants), the other is stronger regulation of animal markets. Both make sense independent of where the virus originated from.
metalliqaz 6y ago
The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona viruses). Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where pangolins are caught, sold, and eaten by people.
- tacitusarc 6y ago
  It originated in a city with a research lab that was criticized for bad safety practices. That lab performed gain of function research on coronaviruses, and the strangest element of covid-19 is the spike protein furin site, which enables the infectivity in humans, and is not present in other coronaviruses. Or we can take the Bayesian approach, and look at the base rate of novel pathogens coming out of China over the past 70 years and determine how many were lab leaks versus not, and realize the majority were lab leaks. This doesn't mean it for sure was a lab leak, but it does mean it should be investigated, which is all any one reasonable has been saying for the past year anyway.
- EMM_386 6y ago
  > The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? I'd wager our intelligence services have it. That's why many who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory. Forget the politics for a minute with regards to people like Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... they have seen information we don't have access to. How can we say they're wrong on this without seeing the same classified information?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > That's why everyone who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory. That’s false. > Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... forget the politics, but they have seen information we don't have access to. Yes, one would need to forget the politics in order to overlook how selective a misrepresentation this is of “everyone who has seen classified information”, so its clear why you ask us to do that.
    - EMM_386 6y ago
      I changed "every" to "many", I wasn't intending to paint that with a broad brush. But they are making public statements with access to information that we don't have. So who's to say they are wrong? Personally I am no fan of Trump but on this particular subject I can't say he's right or wrong, and he has more information than I do on it.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

Also the CCPs investments into "political" careers in the WHO helped them alot there.

matthewdgreen 6y ago

What is the actionable "fix", though? I mean: there are very real questions to be asked about gain-of-function research. There are other questions to be asked about standards for lab safety. But we should be asking these questions anyway, especially now that we've seen how devastating a real pandemic can be. Whatever happened in Wuhan it seems like the primary evidence is gone now. Trading in unverifiable theories about a lab leak is only useful insofar is that it kicks the ball forward on these issues. However the risk here is that these debates will make the issues controversial and politicized in ways that actually make safety improvements more difficult and not less.

xiphias2 6y ago
One actionable fix is not putting virus labs in big cities (just like Nuclear and industrial plants), the other is stronger regulation of animal markets. Both make sense independent of where the virus originated from.

metalliqaz 6y ago

The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona viruses). Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where pangolins are caught, sold, and eaten by people.

tacitusarc 6y ago
It originated in a city with a research lab that was criticized for bad safety practices. That lab performed gain of function research on coronaviruses, and the strangest element of covid-19 is the spike protein furin site, which enables the infectivity in humans, and is not present in other coronaviruses. Or we can take the Bayesian approach, and look at the base rate of novel pathogens coming out of China over the past 70 years and determine how many were lab leaks versus not, and realize the majority were lab leaks. This doesn't mean it for sure was a lab leak, but it does mean it should be investigated, which is all any one reasonable has been saying for the past year anyway.
EMM_386 6y ago
> The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? I'd wager our intelligence services have it. That's why many who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory. Forget the politics for a minute with regards to people like Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... they have seen information we don't have access to. How can we say they're wrong on this without seeing the same classified information?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > That's why everyone who has seen classified information is sticking with the lab theory. That’s false. > Trump, Pompeo, Redfield (CDC) ... forget the politics, but they have seen information we don't have access to. Yes, one would need to forget the politics in order to overlook how selective a misrepresentation this is of “everyone who has seen classified information”, so its clear why you ask us to do that.
  - EMM_386 6y ago
    I changed "every" to "many", I wasn't intending to paint that with a broad brush. But they are making public statements with access to information that we don't have. So who's to say they are wrong? Personally I am no fan of Trump but on this particular subject I can't say he's right or wrong, and he has more information than I do on it.