3 ms·

> bioweapon That part? Really? If you're downvoting, provide a citation...

• __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Zoonotic diseases fill a ecosystem niche: they're an immune response against habitat loss. That makes them more or less weapons. The questionable part is whether humans are attempting to use them as weapons, or if they're solely wielded by nature.
  • operatingthetan 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you're adding here because the context of what they said was "bioweapon lab." So the question is, was it a lab for weapons or not?
    • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      I don't know those labs get up to, but given that institutes of virology aren't exactly thick on the ground, I think it's pretty plausible that it was a lab leak. And if it was a lab leak, then what was being researched? If it was benign, there would be published explanations. And if you wanted a bioweapon that you could use with genome targeting, you'd want something exactly like COVID (re: how is mostly benign among bats). You'd want it to sleep until it found its target. It's a pretty fantastical conclusion to reach, but it's about as hard to believe as the alternatives, at least until there's evidence backing them. I'm not ruling it out until they figure out which ecosystem change lead to the transmission event (e.g. perhaps a hawk that keeps horseshoe bat populations in check went extinct and the virology lab thing is truly a coincidence). So my point was that it's a good choice for that kind of research. It's already weaponized, one needs only figure out how to target it.