4 ms·
Could a humanized mouse contaminate its environment with sufficient viral load? (The burden of proof is on the hypothesis.) Edit: I'm rather critical of gain-o
by masswerk 5y ago
Could a humanized mouse contaminate its environment with sufficient viral load? (The burden of proof is on the hypothesis.)
Edit: I'm rather critical of gain-of-function experiments myself, but such concerns shouldn't provide any reason for any further assumptions. The discussion of a particular, empirical case is entirely different from any concerns based in principles.
- amluto 5y agoThat’s quite the burden of proof. Is someone supposed to collect a bunch (how big a bunch, exactly) of infected humanized mice in a room and introduce COVID-naive volunteers with various mask types or no masks into the room for varying times to see who gets sick? It seems to me that a better approach would be for the lab to sequence all the virus samples they surely kept and see how similar they are to SARS-nCoV-2.
- masswerk 5y agoOr just do some good old inferring: if there was a lab accident with 3 workers showing symptoms of a common cold seeking medical assistance (and them spreading infections along the metro line of their commute to the hospital), this must have been the superspreader event of the century. How comes, the general rate of cold symptoms within lab workers conforms to what is statistically expected? Why is there no spreading in their social vicinity? How and why were they apparently infectious only on their individual rides to the hospital? You really have to come up with a theory that may explain this very selective and peculiar pattern of spreading. Otherwise you may turn your interest towards an entirely different theory of origin.