"Don't be snarky."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
They apply regardless of how wrong anyone else is or you feel they are.
Most importantly, "the WIV housed numerous laboratories that worked on coronaviruses. Only one of them has the highest biosafety protocol: BSL-4, in which researchers must wear full-body pressurized suits with independent oxygen. Others are designated BSL-3 and even BSL-2, roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office."
"Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research—some involving live SARS-like viruses—had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories."
There is apparently a history of SARS escaping from Chinese labs on multiple occasions, and the bat coronavirus from the mine that was human transmissible was the "only one whose genome closely resembled SARS". And according to the Wuhan lab itself, the coronavirus is "96.2%" similar to this sample, though they tried to hide this.
Experts do not believe that the many, many differences between those two virus look like anything a human would or could engineer. Again, not impossible, but seems unlikely. This research would also have to be done covertly in a lab that was not covert at all which routinely had foreign collaborators.
I also do not think “they” were trying to hide this. Remember that in the US the leadership was anti-WHO and anti-China and you can’t take on face value their value judgements of what the Chinese researchers were doing when they were asked what they were doing and had explanations.
I’m not saying that the WHO and China are unbiased either, they aren’t, but the initial actions of the US’ investigation were also heavily heavily biased and would hardly be described as impartial truth seeking efforts.
And also remember the people that leaked that 2-3 employees were hospitalized without any additional details or evidence also had an agenda.
(For emphasis, nothing above is meant to imply that SARS-CoV-2 was a bioweapon. An accident in reckless but not malicious basic research seems far more likely to me, and natural origin certainly hasn't been excluded either.)
I think it is great for people to research the origins and dig into all the details and try to find the truth. But if the virus were of natural origin, which to me is the most likely truth, then all of this talk and speculation are just maligning completely innocent people. And many of the comments here are maligning left and right.
For example, here's a message from an academic virologist quoted frequently in the mainstream media with a wide Twitter following, who calls Yuri Deigin's summary of the evidence for lab origin a "Turner Diary-esque manifesto". (The Turner Diaries is a novel about a race war, popular among violent white supremacists including Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.)
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13462322082063810...
That kind of rhetoric is nothing unusual from anonymous Internet trolls, or even from politicians. It was strange to see from scientists, though. I don't think the backlash is good, but it's not surprising.
Finally, if the CCP wanted to stop this speculation, then they could allow an open investigation, giving international scientists full access to the WIV's documents and samples. Perhaps the reason that the CCP hasn't is just an authoritarian state's reflexive secrecy, and there's nothing to actually cover up; but if that's the case, then they have only themselves to blame for the suspicion.
Can we get more details about how we know for sure that 2-3 researchers were actually hospitalized? Oh, it’s classified, eh? Well I can’t imagine the US ever falsifying intelligence.
I’m not suggesting that the US is lying and CCP isn’t. But I think if you rationally look at the data and the reports and listen to the people that did the investigation they do not believe in the conspiracy. And yes, they are biased, but at least they have arguments and actual data to defend their position.
https://twitter.com/Peterfoodsafety/status/13683225920635576...
They reviewed summaries of data provided by Chinese scientists. They generally did not review raw data themselves, let alone physical samples, and took no steps (analogous e.g. to a financial audit) designed to uncover deliberate attempts to mislead.
For a specific example, what is your opinion of the WIV's virus database? This is a database-backed website that went offline in September 2019. The WIV has cited "hacking attempts" as the reason for this. Do you believe their explanation? If so, why are they still refusing to provide it in a different format (e.g., a dump on a flash drive) that would obviously present no computer security risk?
Really? My starting point is that the Chinese government would likely cover up being blamed for a deadly pandemic that has killed millions.
They haven't even admitted their COVID death statistics since early on last year: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda759474...
They stopped counting COVID deaths after the first 100k or so... in February.
Is it that difficult when you manipulate the media and control the narrative? This is why the principles of free speech are as important as the law itself.
[1] - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025179
[2] - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/fda-authorizes-cell-test-game-...
Testing was done on those people and nothing was found.
This means we would be looking at a huge coverup, not false negative testing results.