Re:Early ‘lab-grown’ Covid virus found in sample lends weigh...
by ajross on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @07:02PM
(#30280630)
> It could have happened. [...] This isn't some fringe crackpot theory
Those contentions don't follow. Yes, if covid existed in Wuhan as a sample under study, it absolutely could have been leaked. The question is whether it was or not, and your "could have" doesn't speak to that.
The linked article does, a little. It's not great evidence but it's something, and the sequence seems to be an early/transitional variant that hasn't been heretofore attested. That's something.
But prior to this? There wasn't anything but some general circumstantial evidence that coronaviruses were under study and that maybe that involved gain of function research. So arguing for a lab origin yesterday was, if not "crackpot", at least premature.
Today? Maybe, I guess? I think if nothing else this opens up an avenue of investigation. There are probably a lot of samples in freezers around the world that passed through the handful of Chinese institutions in question in 2019. If more of those turn up, then I think the "fringe" folks may actually have something.
But you don't get to argue for something like that (literally accusing people of being responsible for the most damaging public health event of the last century) before you have the evidence.
Those contentions don't follow. Yes, if covid existed in Wuhan as a sample under study, it absolutely could have been leaked. The question is whether it was or not, and your "could have" doesn't speak to that.
The linked article does, a little. It's not great evidence but it's something, and the sequence seems to be an early/transitional variant that hasn't been heretofore attested. That's something.
But prior to this? There wasn't anything but some general circumstantial evidence that coronaviruses were under study and that maybe that involved gain of function research. So arguing for a lab origin yesterday was, if not "crackpot", at least premature.
Today? Maybe, I guess? I think if nothing else this opens up an avenue of investigation. There are probably a lot of samples in freezers around the world that passed through the handful of Chinese institutions in question in 2019. If more of those turn up, then I think the "fringe" folks may actually have something.
But you don't get to argue for something like that (literally accusing people of being responsible for the most damaging public health event of the last century) before you have the evidence.