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These labs are in major cities. Epidemics are likely to be detected in Major cities. The chance of an outbreak being near a research lab aren't as long as you s

• kaesar14 5y ago
  As pointed out in the article, there were exactly 3 cities in the world working on gain-of-function research related to bat-originated coronaviruses. Galveston, Texas, Chapel Hill N.C, and Wuhan. It’s way more narrow than just being near a biological laboratory.
  • flukus 5y ago
    At that point you've subtly moved from lab leak theory to engineered virus theory which is much higher up the conspiracy theory chain.
    • kaesar14 5y ago
      Why? Im not passing judgement on whether it was engineered as a bioweapon. But there was a lab that was actively engaged in research of viruses that are exactly what COVID is. They were conducting research on making said viruses more infectious. I’m not sure why the more likely thing is that it was just a virus sitting in a lab that spilled out, as opposed to a virus that was actively being worked on using the techniques the lab was known to be studying.
      • flukus 5y ago
        > Why? You've artificially limited the number of possible labs to those doing bioweapon research. If this isn't your claim there is no reason to do so and if there are more labs studying coronavirus it's far less coincidental.
        • kaesar14 5y ago
          The lab wasn’t conducting bioweapon research. Gain of function research isn’t to create a bioweapon, nominally. It’s to examine the behavior of viruses under manipulation in order to better understand how we can respond to them given an outbreak. It’s not nefarious by nature, though it does seem like its usefulness hasn’t panned out as was thought. But again, you really should read the article to understand what gain of function research is instead of insinuating I said COVID was a bioweapon.
        • tripletao 5y ago
          There is zero evidence that anyone, anywhere in the world was working to develop SARS-like bioweapons. The gain-of-function research in question would have been basic research, intended to develop more dangerous variants of the viruses in order to predict future pandemic emergence, develop more universal vaccines, etc. I believe this research was reckless and should never have been funded (by the USA!) or permitted, even considering only what they knew at the time. It wasn't malicious, though. In any case, beyond gain-of-function, the WIV and Wuhan CDC also had the biggest program in the world to sample novel SARS-like coronaviruses from nature, from remote bat caves that no other humans had any reason to enter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronavirus-bats-china-wuhan/2021/06/02/772ef984-beb2-11eb-922a-c40c9774bc48_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronaviru... If SARS-CoV-2 is a naturally-evolved virus accidentally released by scientists, then Wuhan is the obvious place for it to emerge. That could have been directly from a lab, or a researcher could have become infected on a sampling trip, traveled home from the sampling sites (~900 miles away, to be clear; Wuhan was not an expected natural spillover region), and seeded the infection there. None of this is anywhere close to proven, but the previous dismissal of any unnatural origin as a "conspiracy theory" was an outrageous, unscientific smear.
          • 5y ago
    • tannhauser23 5y ago
      That's not what the person you are responding to said at all. Please stop dishonestly conflating the two theories. You can believe that a coronavirus accidentally leaked from a lab that was studying coronaviruses without believing that it was intentional, or that the disease was a bioweapon. Honestly, this is not a difficult distinction to understand. You have to wonder why people are so eager to conflate the two.
      • flukus 5y ago
        If it's nothing to do with an engineered virus conspiracy then there's no reason to constrain ourselves to the 1 or 2 labs doing that kind of research. If we don't have that constraint then appearing in Wuhan is much less coincidental.
        • kaesar14 5y ago
          Listen, if the virus originated in a city that simply had an infectious disease lab, that’s one thing. For a virus to originate in a city with one of three labs in the entire world conducting heavy-duty researching involving the exact kind of virus that unleashed this pandemic, with the stated intention of working with said viruses to make them more infectious (NOT for the purposes of making a bioweapon) that deserves special consideration. Especially with the fact that the animal the virus is thought to come from ranges 1500 miles south from said city, and started during a time that animal is typically hybernating.
          • dboreham 5y ago
            I think it may be possible to compute the probability that this is a coincidence. Someone should do that.
          • lmm 5y ago
            > with the stated intention of working with said viruses to make them more infectious (NOT for the purposes of making a bioweapon) Why is this relevant unless you're claiming that the virus that we've observed has been engineered in that way? Otherwise it seems like the chance of a coronavirus outbreak caused by poor handling in a lab is the same for any lab that's studying them for any purpose.
• deleted 5y ago
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