So thinking that it’s like sixty or seventy percent it came from the lab is massively overstating it? What is a reasonable estimate of that probability?
Much lower than that. I can’t speak directly to details, but people who work with RNA/DNA seem pretty damn confident that artificial changes to a viral genome would leave traces they could see.
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To me, it means that somebody working on viruses in a lab became infected with one of those viruses and then exposed other people outside the lab.
Among the reasons that this idea is popular is that there is a virology lab/institute in Wuhan that was working on bat viruses and had previously been criticized for lax safety protocols.
Early on, I was definitely in the “wow that’s a pretty big coincidence, sure seems like that could have happened” camp. But that was a long time ago and I know a lot of compelling information has been posted that made it seem a lot less likely.
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Lab leak doesn’t imply artificial, purposeful changes. Evolution happens in the lab too.
No, it doesn’t have to involve creation. It’s no worse than the second most plausible explanation for the origin of the virus that researchers or auxiliary staff at a facility that studies animal respiratory viruses got infected with a naturally occurring coronavirus from their work and then spread it to other people.
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Oh gotcha. That would be far more plausible.
Jurrasic Park.
I think there were cases ( above average deaths from pneumonia) in WA during Dec 2019. Lab there too. No doubt the US will be waving in the next WHO investigation as to origins (China is the only country to permit such an investigation to date)
There just isn’t any real difference between naturally occurring virus makes jump to humans in lab vs market vs the forest. If we found out conclusively it made the jump at a lab we can say do better at PPE.
But what are they hiding?
We could say, hey, maybe we shouldn’t fuckin do that sort of research any more. They went out to bat caves and tried to find novel coronaviruses to bring back to the lab and study. Someone said it was like looking for a gas leak with a lit match.
From this article, I think. Good article, long, but interesting.
I mean, there’s a good chance what you’ve heard more is people spreading cockamamie theories about engineered or at least manipulated viruses that infected workers and then escaped the lab, specifically because people want to put extra blame on China. And you know that from a DNA sequence perspective, the changes relative to known coronaviruses are pretty modest and well within the realm of natural evolution such that parsimony would suggest that mechanism over human manipulation (deliberate or accidental). But the dearth of actual information on patient zero other than “a bunch of people seem to have caught it at the market” leaves a lot of room for a marketgoer spreading it after having unwittingly caught a naturally occurring virus at work.
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Most of the pushback to the lab leak hypothesis seems intended to counter a bigoted, blame China attitude, but honestly the notion that the virus jumped to humans a thousand miles away from where it was endemic to bats because of crazy exotic animal wet markets seems far more insulting.
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I mean we could, but we won’t. Not in China and not in the USA. Like we literally do surveillances of zoonotic viruses to track ones that could potentially be dangerous. We aren’t stopping that work because covid happened. If anything that kind of work will intensify. Hopefully people will do better at PPE.
Lab theory: There was an accident
Market theory: Those barbarians will eat anything!
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Feels like an anti-nuclear power take.
You say ‘oh it’s not artificially created I’m talking about’ then IMMEDIATELY link something that talks about artificially created viruses.
CUMONG MAN
The pushback to the lab leak hypothesis is that we get spillover events all the damn time due to agricultural/livestock practices. It’s rather goofy to think we need to invoke some exotic biolab accident when we’ve got a smoking gun sitting right there.
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- No one is defending Chinese lab safety practices last time I checked
- Wet markets aren’t that dangerous because of the animals they eat, it’s the lack of sanitation.
You know, if nuclear power killed 2.5 million people in a year we’d probably have a lot of people saying hey let’s have a total and complete shutdown of nuclear power until we figure out what the hell is going on. You definitely wouldn’t ask nuclear engineers if they think there’s a problem with nuclear power.