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Not sure that makes sense given your presumed knowledge of the Chinese government's reaction to SARS? Or are you in bad faith giving dubious priors? "This lac
by keebzed 5y ago
Not sure that makes sense given your presumed knowledge of the Chinese government's reaction to SARS?
Or are you in bad faith giving dubious priors?
"This lack of openness caused delays in efforts to control the epidemic, resulting in criticism of the People's Republic of China from the international community. China officially apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS epidemic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
- rflrob 5y agoI think we agree? The Chinese government wasn't open about SARS, and despite their apology in 2003 (by which point SARS was on the path to containment), I don't have reason to believe they've become more open about such things in the last couple decades. I am by no means a China expert, so you may disagree with my priors about their behavior. My experience in biology labs (though not virology labs) suggests that a leak of benign research is plausible, and that if it did happen odds are good that there wouldn't be a ton of documentation to suppress. Mistakes happen all the time, and if researchers filled out a report every time a tube was dropped or some PPE was ignored in a "pretty safe" scenario, there'd be almost no time for research. I still think the total number of human-animal contacts outside the lab are at least an order of magnitude greater than inside of it, so I would rank the probabilities as (natural > benign research leak >> gain of function leak).