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I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I find the confidence that is used in the defense of this origin just as Shakey as the lab leak theory.
The lab location and research done means there is a lot of potential incentive for the Chinese government, the lab and even researchers in the field to not have it be a lab leak... As this would potentially cause an entire (important) field of study and their methods be regulated into oblivion by poorly written knee jerk laws.
I'm fine with this as the accepted consensus on the subject, but I'll keep my reservations for whatever good those do me.
So how's the abolishing of wet markets going? And the reduction of antibiotics use in industrial scale farming?
We'll never hear the true story thanks to geopolitics.
Frankly, the lab leak theory IMO is the most plausible. There are wet markets all over China and have been for....ever? I get that nobody can really predict a zoonotic crossover event, but they were literally experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses in Wuhan at the time of the initial outbreak.
People have been saying for decades before covid that the wet markets were a ticking time bomb. There has probably been viral outbreaks in the past, but the local population could have died off before it spread.
I think a lab leak of a natural virus is plausible, but irrelevant.
I think lax saftey when experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses is very relevant.
Either improve the protocols or don't experiment.
There's a difference between lax safety and conspiracy to engineer a bioweapon. The main motivator of people pushing the Lab Leak conspiracy is that they want some villain to blame all this on.
Not bioweapons. Covid isn't dangerous enough.
The prime conspiracy theory target is Anthony Fauci because some EcoHealth Alliance / NIH coronaviruses bat funding went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But you don't need to subscribe to the Fauci Supervillan theory to suspect an accidental lab leak. China has already had 3 (2004, 2016, 2020) in this list. Pointing this out is not sino bashing (look at the number of US incidents). Accidental lab leaks happen all too regularly.
Back to an earlier point you made, how is it relevant that it was an accidental lab leak anymore? It's China, they've either made better safe guards against possible break outs or made superficial changes for appearances. The international community can't punish them for an accident that also hurt themselves. Hell, we can't seem to keep their coast guard from ramming other ships.
Accidental lab leaks unfortunately happen. What is still relevant are the implications. The existence of the virus itself and it's cover up are the problem.
The cover up
Mainstream media labeled anyone who mentioned the lab as a racist conspiracy theorists. Commenting on social media resulted in censorship.
WHO "invesigation" and Peter Daszak investigating himself.
Deletion of data from the WIV website.
Chinese closed policy and destruction of evidence.
No questioning science
Nature published a peer review saying that a lab origin was impossible.
Scientists hypothesising about lab origins were ostracised.
Source of the virus
In the wild, the nearest documented virus is 96% similar. Where have the 4% changes in the leaked version come from?
Have these 4% changes come from purposeful gain of function research?
Gain of function research in the US was banned in 2014. Did research stop or did funding just move countries?
Where else is secret GoF research being conducted? Is there sufficient saftey and oversight?
Bioweapon is also a strawman in this case, he did not say that.
In gain of function research more virulent strains are made to study and find cures against. So we have a better understanding of how these viruses mutate, what makes them tick and how we can disrupt that.
Noone would intentionally set something like that loose.
There are definitely people saying that covid was an engineered bioweapon and the people saying that have a huge overlap with the people saying that it was a lab leak. Conspiracy theorists need a villain with a plan to make sense of the work and that's why the lab leak theory keeps coming up.
I'd more think accidentally if anything. And more obvious is just medical research.
Avian and swine industries have been around for... ever?
And causing human zoonosis for that whole time
Sure, and they all result in zoonotic illness.
They also have incentive for the origin not to be a live animal market that they very publicly had claimed to have already shut down.
It’s equally embarrassing either way, so the embarrassment proves nothing.
Equally embarrassing? Doubtful. One is a market which can be blamed on illegal activity even after being shut down and 'little' people arrested. One represents Chinas first foray into LVL 4 containment bio research and cost billions to build and government officials would have to be held accountable and foreign science assistance to that research program likely cuts off... I'm not pleading the case of a conspiracy theory here, but the lab's proximity to the outbreak is incredibly suspect.
Why does it have to be equally embarrassing? It just has to be embarrassing enough that they’d take steps to conceal it. Which they did. It doesn’t have to be the most embarrassing situation, just one of the ones that would spur them to act.
But they did shut it down and they did arrest people and they even seized and incinerated every animal at the market without taking samples or even identifying and logging the species.
On the other hand they didn’t shut down WIV, or really do anything to it at all.
It’s 8km away, across a river.
My point is they had a vested interest in the scapegoat excuse. The market is a mild embarassment compared to a possible containment breach. Not taking samples of the meat and cataloging everything actually compounds the scenario. Also if for example a CDC or USAMRIID site was 'only' 8 km away from an outbreak of a disease they were studying, it would trigger a full on investigation and full genetic comparison. Also they would be looking at any scientist as a vector. People live near where they work. Someone accidentally exposed could easily carry out daily activity in the vicinity while contagious.
Ok, and I asked you why that matters. And you haven’t said.
Well, but no, it doesn’t. For instance the CDC’s Enteric Diseases lab is in Atlanta, Georgia; it hosts the largest tissue collection of foodborne disease isolates in the world. If you were ever hospitalized for listeriosis in the United States, a sample of your disease isolate is probably located in a freezer there.
And also people periodically get food poisoning from Atlanta restaurants. About 12 a year, let’s say.
So every one of those food poisoning cases happens within 8 km of the largest food poisoning lab in the United States. Do you know how often they investigate whether the isolate leaked from the CDC lab?
Literally never. Not ever. Because there’s no reason to, because people getting a disease near where the disease is studied is not statistically significant in any way.
The lab that made COVID wasn't in China. It was in Kansas City.
You’re thinking of the “Spanish” flu.
I still believe it isn't that far fetched that they disposed some kind of experiment/test from the labs on the market...