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> To be frank, the fanciful ideas put forward by self-described free thinkers are more in keeping with popular movies than the realities of working with pathoge

> To be frank, the fanciful ideas put forward by self-described free thinkers are more in keeping with popular movies than the realities of working with pathogens This seems like kind of a weirdly dismissive take. Is the idea that a lab in China lacked proper implantation of safety protocols really that "fanciful"?

kelseyfrog 2y ago
It truly is.
acdha 2y ago
Most people pushing alternative explanations claimed that COVID was genetically engineered or made much more powerful by gain-of-function research. The idea of it being a natural sample leaked in a lab accident has always been recognized as possible, but most of the self-styled freethinkers never really picked it up because it didn’t shift the blame for a poor response away from the President they backed, and the lack of supporting evidence means most of the people for whom it isn’t a political issue are no longer talking about it because there isn’t much to talk about unless new evidence emerges.
bdw5204 2y ago
I think its beyond obvious that covid was created in the lab in Wuhan from experiments with bat viruses and leaked into the wet market via an incompetent employee. In other words, both the lab leak and the wet market are true. That's the Occam's Razor hypothesis but it can't be confirmed because the totalitarian dictatorship that runs China has likely erased the evidence. After leaking from the lab, it was extremely deadly at first and this was made worse by the overuse of ventilators. It gradually mutated into basically another virus that causes the common cold over the course of 2 years. It will likely remain an extremely controversial topic and I doubt there will be an objective history of the pandemic period within our lifetimes. It became a culture war issue and each side dug in on their respective positions, facts be damned.
- yawpitch 2y ago
  That isn’t how Occam’s Razor works. Also SARS-CoV-2 lineages are still much more deadly and cause many more hospitalizations than the common cold. They haven’t magically mutated to be less significant, those who survived have more and wider spread partial immunity and we have, over time, developed better treatment protocols. In a hundred years or more SARS-CoV-2 won’t be killing a significant number of the elderly and the immune-compromised every year, but right now it’s still a leading reaper.
dekhn 2y ago
the article uses several techniques of rhetoric in an attempt to make readers believe it.

kelseyfrog 2y ago

It truly is.

acdha 2y ago

Most people pushing alternative explanations claimed that COVID was genetically engineered or made much more powerful by gain-of-function research. The idea of it being a natural sample leaked in a lab accident has always been recognized as possible, but most of the self-styled freethinkers never really picked it up because it didn’t shift the blame for a poor response away from the President they backed, and the lack of supporting evidence means most of the people for whom it isn’t a political issue are no longer talking about it because there isn’t much to talk about unless new evidence emerges.

bdw5204 2y ago

I think its beyond obvious that covid was created in the lab in Wuhan from experiments with bat viruses and leaked into the wet market via an incompetent employee. In other words, both the lab leak and the wet market are true. That's the Occam's Razor hypothesis but it can't be confirmed because the totalitarian dictatorship that runs China has likely erased the evidence. After leaking from the lab, it was extremely deadly at first and this was made worse by the overuse of ventilators. It gradually mutated into basically another virus that causes the common cold over the course of 2 years. It will likely remain an extremely controversial topic and I doubt there will be an objective history of the pandemic period within our lifetimes. It became a culture war issue and each side dug in on their respective positions, facts be damned.

yawpitch 2y ago
That isn’t how Occam’s Razor works. Also SARS-CoV-2 lineages are still much more deadly and cause many more hospitalizations than the common cold. They haven’t magically mutated to be less significant, those who survived have more and wider spread partial immunity and we have, over time, developed better treatment protocols. In a hundred years or more SARS-CoV-2 won’t be killing a significant number of the elderly and the immune-compromised every year, but right now it’s still a leading reaper.

dekhn 2y ago

the article uses several techniques of rhetoric in an attempt to make readers believe it.