4 ms·

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side against China - if it came from a lab, or for China - if it was naturally developed. If it came from a Chinese lab as part of a conscious effort of weaponizing a virus, sure, that's important, but I don't think anyone is saying that. If it came from a lab accidental breach, it is important that the parties involved are aware of that, and steps are taken to improve security. However, this is an event that happens every century. It's not a one-time thing. We had been warned it was coming. So now it's here. If the source had been Belgium (just as an example), would the source be covered by the media at all? Does anybody else feel this way? Yes, the WHO etc needs to continue researching to understand the source. But I don't believe the amount of energy the average person is expending on their "thoughts" really amounts to much at all. It's just the story of the hour.

dundarious 5y ago
I think further public and political pressure is still needed to ensure a proper investigation occurs (I'm not confident one is ongoing). There is an inflection point at which more pressure becomes actively unhelpful of course. But I also think the current evidence for a lab leak is far weaker than proponents claim (2 somewhat contradictory unnamed US intel sources saying WIV staff were sick in Nov '19, haven't found the reservoir animal yet, closest match is far away, lab exists in part of Asia where such viruses are known to emerge and also where it would be a good place to put a lab...)
fsckboy 5y ago
no, the choice is not as you put it, "weaponization vs lab leak of virus that happens to be under study". The likely scenario that's being proposed for the lab-leak is a man-made virus that is quite routine to see in labs like this, in every advanced technology country in the world. The making of dangerous viruses for the purposes of research is quite common, and in order to take steps to improve security, we need openness and transparency about what is going on. China does, though, very much lack openness and transparency when it comes to owning up to mistakes.
kyrra 5y ago
It matters if it was caused due to gain of function research. These virologists purposely try to make viruses stronger so that they can research how to counteract or fight one if a stronger similar version of them appears from the wild. If this came from making a SARS virus more potent, we should ask the question if the gain of function research that these people do is actually worth the potential costs of that potent variant leaking out. As well, that kind of research can be repaired with weaponization of viruses. So we need to ask if the research they were doing had a military angle to it at all. The hard part with authoritarian governments is that they will cover up things even if they are not in the wrong. They don't make mistakes. So they may cover up things that don't actually need to be covered up. It is very possible that this was just a person being infected with a sample they got from the field. But it seems the Chinese government Doesn't actually want to tell us the truth.
briefcomment 5y ago
I don't think it's the actual facts that are especially problematic, but the rabid antagonistic response to a theory.
- rgoulter 5y ago
  Right. As the article argues, it doesn't seem like it would make any difference where the virus came from, which makes the reaction seem strange. What surely deserves attention is how an idea like "could have come from a lab" is able to shift from 'mild' to 'fringe/controversial' to 'plausible/reasonable to discuss'.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The virus had global implications with a massive economic and global impact. If a single institution was responsible for this event then it would be clear that we need to improve regulations and safety standards around the entire field of gain of function research. If a lab leak is a possible explanation, the implication for future gain of function research and associated regulations are massive. It's not as simple as letting the lab in question make their process changes to avoid future global pandemics.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  If we can entertain the possibility that this disaster came from gain of function research then surely that field should be reconsidered regardless of what actually happened in this particular case.
- slig 5y ago
  > The virus had global implications with a massive economic and global impact. Interestingly, a very positive economic impact and a rounding-error number of fatalities for a specific country.
arthur-st 5y ago
To answer your question before my unprompted musing, I agree. I think the majority of people won't get anything out of understanding the nitty-gritty detail of this discourse, and will spend a lot of energy fending off bipartisan "WE TOLD U SO" bickering along the way. However, appropriate authorities should keep working on the problem, even if just to determine that there's no data to get to the bottom of this at all. > but I don't think anyone is saying that. Part of the timeline that seems to miss from some discussions, including the article brought by the OP, is that Donald Trump did in fact make that sort of statements, on several occasions[1], even though you unlikely mean that the same way. While e.g. Cotton's words have not been treated with due rigour by some journalistic media outlets, the social media platform crackdown on the associated terms, in my memory, did happen after Trump's statements had a measurable hate crime effect. [1] The earliest example - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-china-idUSKBN22C3TB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-... > “But we’re going to find out. You’ll be learning in the not-too-distant future. But it’s a terrible thing that happened - whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one. Or did somebody do something on purpose?” he said. In my subjective opinion, the conversation in general both was and still is overall chaotic, often conflating at least some of the following: 1. Natural virus transmitted from source animal. Sensible zoonosis scenario. 2. Natural virus transmitted from "incubating" animal. Sensible zoonosis, again. 3. Natural virus leaving lab due to a storage safety failure. Sensible lab accident scenario. 4. Natural virus leaving lab due to an operations safety failure. Sensible lab accident scenario. 5. Natural virus modified successfully by the lab, doing 3-4. Often deemed less likely, but nonetheless a fundamentally sensible scenario. 6. Natural virus modified successfully by the lab, intentionally released from the lab by the Chinese government. Sometimes this flavour also implies that the virus was modified not with gain-of-function research goal, but with biological warfare goals straight up. Feels the same thing on paper, but in terms of language used the latter is substantially more visceral, evoking defensive reaction. Either way, this does not make any much sense, given economic stakes. CCP may have a heavy-handed enforcement of their interests, but they count their own money better than anyone else. 7. Artificially created virus, doing a 3 or 4. Sometimes with intentionality implication. There doesn't seem to be any significant research supporting this as a plausible scenario. 8. Intentionally (to harm the proverbial West) designed artificial virus, doing a 6. Straight up Tom Clancy's book material. I've seen "lab leak" applied by some journalists to anything from 3 to 8 including. The problem here is that 6-8 predominantly are political rallying calls for a base eager for a confrontation with China, potentially to detract from anticipated fallout from the domestic containment effort. Much easier to say "woe betide us, this sophisticated oriental bioweapon", than to say "well we have this entire government agency designed to handle this, but everything we've done has fallen flat". The end result of this final bunch of theories was a spike of anti-Asian hate crimes, e.g., someone in my town got imprisoned for anti-Chinese hatred incitement. The last case like that in my memory was in the noughts.
thaumaturgy 5y ago
You're not the only one. A possible lab leak has seemed reasonable, given the circumstances, since early on. If it weren't for all the politics around it, I think it should have gotten a more careful treatment. Unfortunately, it also became a political football. US-China trade wars were still in full swing at the time and both countries were jockeying for advantages in negotiations. There were lots of political people here that saw "blame China" as a way to force trade concessions, and others who muddied the waters further by going beyond an accident and wondering out loud if it was an engineered weapon. On The Media recently had a little bit of coverage of this [1] and the guest, Alina Chan, had the completely reasonable conclusion that a science-based approach to investigating a lab leak is merited, that lab accidents do happen, and that if it was discovered to have been a lab leak, then the reaction ought to be to move labs like this one away from dense population centers and enact some quarantining protocols for researchers working with infectious diseases. But this is still a subject that's going to be difficult to have a grounded discussion about because now it's being used as a political football against perceived media biases and censorship and the failings of liberalism and yadda yadda yadda. [1]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-how-it-started-how-its-going https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-med...
- iammisc 5y ago
  Us china trade wars are still in full swing. Biden has largely kept trump policy toward china.
DebtDeflation 5y ago
>However, this is an event that happens every century. Not the first time this century, and not even the first time it happened with a coronavirus, this century, in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Laboratory_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
dqpb 5y ago
Ah yes, the good old narcissists prayer: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it
tim333 5y ago
>If the source had been Belgium (just as an example), would the source be covered by the media at all? Blimey - it would have been headlines in every paper on the planet for weeks if it was shown to be a Belgium lab cock up.

dundarious 5y ago

I think further public and political pressure is still needed to ensure a proper investigation occurs (I'm not confident one is ongoing). There is an inflection point at which more pressure becomes actively unhelpful of course. But I also think the current evidence for a lab leak is far weaker than proponents claim (2 somewhat contradictory unnamed US intel sources saying WIV staff were sick in Nov '19, haven't found the reservoir animal yet, closest match is far away, lab exists in part of Asia where such viruses are known to emerge and also where it would be a good place to put a lab...)

fsckboy 5y ago

no, the choice is not as you put it, "weaponization vs lab leak of virus that happens to be under study". The likely scenario that's being proposed for the lab-leak is a man-made virus that is quite routine to see in labs like this, in every advanced technology country in the world. The making of dangerous viruses for the purposes of research is quite common, and in order to take steps to improve security, we need openness and transparency about what is going on. China does, though, very much lack openness and transparency when it comes to owning up to mistakes.

kyrra 5y ago

It matters if it was caused due to gain of function research. These virologists purposely try to make viruses stronger so that they can research how to counteract or fight one if a stronger similar version of them appears from the wild. If this came from making a SARS virus more potent, we should ask the question if the gain of function research that these people do is actually worth the potential costs of that potent variant leaking out. As well, that kind of research can be repaired with weaponization of viruses. So we need to ask if the research they were doing had a military angle to it at all. The hard part with authoritarian governments is that they will cover up things even if they are not in the wrong. They don't make mistakes. So they may cover up things that don't actually need to be covered up. It is very possible that this was just a person being infected with a sample they got from the field. But it seems the Chinese government Doesn't actually want to tell us the truth.

briefcomment 5y ago

I don't think it's the actual facts that are especially problematic, but the rabid antagonistic response to a theory.

rgoulter 5y ago
Right. As the article argues, it doesn't seem like it would make any difference where the virus came from, which makes the reaction seem strange. What surely deserves attention is how an idea like "could have come from a lab" is able to shift from 'mild' to 'fringe/controversial' to 'plausible/reasonable to discuss'.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The virus had global implications with a massive economic and global impact. If a single institution was responsible for this event then it would be clear that we need to improve regulations and safety standards around the entire field of gain of function research. If a lab leak is a possible explanation, the implication for future gain of function research and associated regulations are massive. It's not as simple as letting the lab in question make their process changes to avoid future global pandemics.

zarzavat 5y ago
If we can entertain the possibility that this disaster came from gain of function research then surely that field should be reconsidered regardless of what actually happened in this particular case.
slig 5y ago
> The virus had global implications with a massive economic and global impact. Interestingly, a very positive economic impact and a rounding-error number of fatalities for a specific country.

arthur-st 5y ago

To answer your question before my unprompted musing, I agree. I think the majority of people won't get anything out of understanding the nitty-gritty detail of this discourse, and will spend a lot of energy fending off bipartisan "WE TOLD U SO" bickering along the way. However, appropriate authorities should keep working on the problem, even if just to determine that there's no data to get to the bottom of this at all. > but I don't think anyone is saying that. Part of the timeline that seems to miss from some discussions, including the article brought by the OP, is that Donald Trump did in fact make that sort of statements, on several occasions[1], even though you unlikely mean that the same way. While e.g. Cotton's words have not been treated with due rigour by some journalistic media outlets, the social media platform crackdown on the associated terms, in my memory, did happen after Trump's statements had a measurable hate crime effect. [1] The earliest example - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-china-idUSKBN22C3TB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-... > “But we’re going to find out. You’ll be learning in the not-too-distant future. But it’s a terrible thing that happened - whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one. Or did somebody do something on purpose?” he said. In my subjective opinion, the conversation in general both was and still is overall chaotic, often conflating at least some of the following: 1. Natural virus transmitted from source animal. Sensible zoonosis scenario. 2. Natural virus transmitted from "incubating" animal. Sensible zoonosis, again. 3. Natural virus leaving lab due to a storage safety failure. Sensible lab accident scenario. 4. Natural virus leaving lab due to an operations safety failure. Sensible lab accident scenario. 5. Natural virus modified successfully by the lab, doing 3-4. Often deemed less likely, but nonetheless a fundamentally sensible scenario. 6. Natural virus modified successfully by the lab, intentionally released from the lab by the Chinese government. Sometimes this flavour also implies that the virus was modified not with gain-of-function research goal, but with biological warfare goals straight up. Feels the same thing on paper, but in terms of language used the latter is substantially more visceral, evoking defensive reaction. Either way, this does not make any much sense, given economic stakes. CCP may have a heavy-handed enforcement of their interests, but they count their own money better than anyone else. 7. Artificially created virus, doing a 3 or 4. Sometimes with intentionality implication. There doesn't seem to be any significant research supporting this as a plausible scenario. 8. Intentionally (to harm the proverbial West) designed artificial virus, doing a 6. Straight up Tom Clancy's book material. I've seen "lab leak" applied by some journalists to anything from 3 to 8 including. The problem here is that 6-8 predominantly are political rallying calls for a base eager for a confrontation with China, potentially to detract from anticipated fallout from the domestic containment effort. Much easier to say "woe betide us, this sophisticated oriental bioweapon", than to say "well we have this entire government agency designed to handle this, but everything we've done has fallen flat". The end result of this final bunch of theories was a spike of anti-Asian hate crimes, e.g., someone in my town got imprisoned for anti-Chinese hatred incitement. The last case like that in my memory was in the noughts.

thaumaturgy 5y ago

You're not the only one. A possible lab leak has seemed reasonable, given the circumstances, since early on. If it weren't for all the politics around it, I think it should have gotten a more careful treatment. Unfortunately, it also became a political football. US-China trade wars were still in full swing at the time and both countries were jockeying for advantages in negotiations. There were lots of political people here that saw "blame China" as a way to force trade concessions, and others who muddied the waters further by going beyond an accident and wondering out loud if it was an engineered weapon. On The Media recently had a little bit of coverage of this [1] and the guest, Alina Chan, had the completely reasonable conclusion that a science-based approach to investigating a lab leak is merited, that lab accidents do happen, and that if it was discovered to have been a lab leak, then the reaction ought to be to move labs like this one away from dense population centers and enact some quarantining protocols for researchers working with infectious diseases. But this is still a subject that's going to be difficult to have a grounded discussion about because now it's being used as a political football against perceived media biases and censorship and the failings of liberalism and yadda yadda yadda. [1]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-how-it-started-how-its-going https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-med...

iammisc 5y ago
Us china trade wars are still in full swing. Biden has largely kept trump policy toward china.

DebtDeflation 5y ago

>However, this is an event that happens every century. Not the first time this century, and not even the first time it happened with a coronavirus, this century, in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Laboratory_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

dqpb 5y ago

Ah yes, the good old narcissists prayer: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it

tim333 5y ago

>If the source had been Belgium (just as an example), would the source be covered by the media at all? Blimey - it would have been headlines in every paper on the planet for weeks if it was shown to be a Belgium lab cock up.