We all know it was Randy and Mickey Mouse having a wild night out.
I’d say 99.9% animal to human
0.099% lab accident studying viruses
0.001% man made.
And thats being generous.
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To be clear for anybody skimming, the links Wookie and I posted are for SARS 1.0, back in 2002/3. Not what’s going on now.
wait, how would we be able to tell?
I understand we can look at genetics and make inferences about whether the virus has evolved naturally or has been engineered in some way, but that’s not the same as whether or not it came from a lab.
If it were a “wild” virus that was brought into the lab, then escaped while they were studying it, would outside investigators be able to tell?
With contact tracing and serological studies, possibly.
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The best evidence that it didn’t come from a lab is that China legitimately seemed to have no clue what the fuck it was or where it came from for months.
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That’s the beauty of it.
No, we should be doing that kind of research. But yeah, get better PPE.
Would be shocked if this was a ‘better PPE’ thing and not a ‘comply with basic safety protocols’ thing.
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Valid.
Why?
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1375801320851058688
oh yeah those MONEY GRABBING SCIENTISTS
gmafb
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good point, securing grant money is really a tiny, inconsequential part of a research scientist’s job.
You sound like someone arguing against global warming because climate scientists use the existence of global warming for grant money.
It’s science denying bullshit.
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Alina Chan is an extremely well credentialed scientist.
Yet she’s saying something fucking stupid, and so are you.
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I’ve always thought there was a better than 50/50 chance the virus escaped from the lab in Wuhan.
But the problem is Americans are too stupid to grasp the difference between “escaped from a lab” and “created in a lab”. So I don’t see any good coming of announcing that it escaped from a lab.
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She’s saying that if covid came from a high risk lab going around getting exotic wild viruses, curtailing those high risk labs would be a reasonable response. And that the people the media are asking if that’s a reasonable possibility are the people running those labs and funding those labs, who have an obvious conflict. It’s a reasonable point.
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How about changing the behavior of the labs so it doesn’t happen again? You want to go through this again in five years?
No it’s not.
I lived in Wuhan for 2 years and have actually been to the market where covid-19 was originally discovered (albeit 7 years before the pandemic) and it is that disgusting.
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