If you wanted to make a bioweapon with modern technology and modern understanding of genetics you'd make something super deadly with somewhat limited contagion or even better keyed to biomarkers that are uncommon in your own population. China could do this effectively since it's ethnically more homogeneous than many other countries. COVID is none of these things.
To add to this, most countries have turned away from infectious biological weapons because they are near impossible to control. The the release of them might harm your enemies, but at a serious cost to yourself. It is like trying to cut off your enemy's leg by cutting off your own arm. It ends up kinda being like MAD except you're also the aggressor. The threat of a infectious weapon is not from other nations, but from a terrorist organization (which of course dramatically reduces risk). Not to say that this can't happen, but it is well known enough that were a contagious disease to get out, it would be more likely accidental. It would also be odd to release the disease into your own community first. I'm not saying it was or wasn't a lab leak or bioweapon, but if we're discussing weapon vs accident, there's good reason to believe a weapon is unlikely. Gain of research has significant value outside weapons and this also shows you why the weapon arguments against GoF aren't of high concern to those that are close to the work. Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances).
It is quite clear that they did amplification research as they’ve planned. And had inserted the furin site into the coronavirus . And they’ve mismanaged the research and they’ve let the virus to spread. This had caused a lot of damage, in particular the deaths, economical damage, long-covid damages, mental illnesses and diminished IQ (covid brain fog). There’ve been some positive sides: diminished air travel, diminished carbon emissions, transition to work from home, more pedestrian zones in the cities, mRNA vaccine technology. But the negative side from the pandemic is still overwhelming.
Arguably this lab should be sued out of existence for damages.
A claim was made about that, but it’s far from settled. One could argue it has been debunked. See “SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered”: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119
> And they’ve mismanaged the research and they’ve let the virus to spread.
That’s speculation. Irresponsible speculation, in fact, which has been pushed by people who should have known better. But they pushed it for jingoistic reasons.
> Arguably this lab should be sued out of existence for damages.
That’s an emotional reaction which you’re not examining rationally. If you remove the confirmation bias you’re applying to the evidence, there’s simply no substantial basis for the conclusions you’re reaching.
There is evidence that the Chinese authorities were suppressing information about the leak (information about that virus had leaked accidentally, by an ophthalmologist that saw cases spreading in his hospital).
Yes, it is not clear exactly, how the furin site got there. Was it a long series of mutations and a recombination with another virus in a lab animal? Was it spliced? We’ll never know, unless the scientists responsible would decide to tell how it had happened.
But I’m not particularly emotional about that virus. If you read the above, you’ll see that I see positive and negative after effects. Viruses and mistakes happen.
But it’d be a good idea to make a point and get rid of that lab. Failures like that should not be rewarded with continual existence.
It's in China, not America. Come on now.
The CCP might remove the lab from existence, but they're not gonna do it with a lawsuit.
"The drone's female voice also tells listeners, "Control your soul's thirst for freedom. Do not open your windows and sing.""
Most countries ( small to mid-tier ) lack the expertise, will or reason for it. But most major countries are working on biological weapons. If you think the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best or too naive at worst. Or maybe I'm just being too cynical.
> The the release of them might harm your enemies, but at a serious cost to yourself.
Never prevented intentional disease warfare throughout history. What makes you think leaders aren't willing to hurt their own countries to hurt their enemies? More importantly, what makes you think these countries will develope bio-weapons, but not vaccines for them?
> The threat of a infectious weapon is not from other nations, but from a terrorist organization (which of course dramatically reduces risk).
Every major terrorist organization is or was created, funded and controlled by major nations.
> Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances).
And yet, all weapons labs in history were created by big/rich countries. You so desperately want a world without bio-weapons that you are blinded to the contradictions in your argument.
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch... covers this in some detail (it's geared towards chemical weapons, but biological weapons are the same boat). In short, chemical and biological weapons just aren't useful. For any platform you put it on, conventional explosives will do more damage. For major militaries, there's no point in using them, which is why the "big" military powers have all signed up to the anti-chemical weapons and anti-biological weapons treaties, but not the anti-nuclear or anti-cluster munitions or anti-landmines, etc.
If chemical and biological weapons aren't useful, why does one need a treaty to ban them? Makes one wonder? Is there are treaty to ban feathers as weapons? The fact that there is an anti-biological weapons treaty is proof enough that countries are working on biological weapons, just like the anti-nuclear weapons treaty is proof that countries are working on nukes.
The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs. Take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs and watch too many silly youtube videos.
Also, pretty much every treaty ( international and intranational ) has been broken. Some even say treaties are meant or created to be broken.
Yes, countries can break treaties. But there is a real cost to doing so. The point of treaties (especially the anti-war treaties) is essentially to break a prisoner's dilemma: all parties can agree to do something that is mutually beneficial for everybody, but only when no one defects. The first arms control treaty was the Washington Naval Treaty, which was signed when most countries were literally unable to find the resources to keep up with the naval arms race and proposed by the one country that could.
If you read the post I linked (I suspect you did not, as you are only reacting to my comments and not other material within the post), you'll see that there are many other lines of evidence we can use to ascertain the inutility of chemical weapons, not least of which is the lack of its use in conflicts after WWI, even in existential state conflicts like WWII or the Arab-Israel wars.
> If chemical and biological weapons aren't useful, why does one need a treaty to ban them?
The same reason why we have laws against murder. The existence of the treaty isn't to keep people from doing something useful (indeed, if you look at which treaties are acceded to, it's the treaties that keep people from doing something useful that don't get the signatories). Instead, it's to signal the unwillingness to use it and to pressure others not to consider its use. And if you know sufficiently few people are willing to use it, then you can avoid spending the money on countermeasures to chemical weapons.
It's not gotchas. It's just history and reasoning. Logic. It's persuasive to people who are willing to think. But no amount of reason will convince someone with an agenda.
> If the point of treaties is to be broken, why bother signing up to them in the first place?
As your buddy godelski pointed out, governments do things for optics, political grandstanding, etc. Why did germany and the soviet union sign the nonaggression treaty? Also to appease the naive masses who believe in fairy tales. So that naive people can say nobody is working on chemical or biological weapons since a treaty says so. See, this nonaggression treaty is proof germany and the soviet union will never attack each other. Genius logic.
> The first arms control treaty was the Washington Naval Treaty, which was signed when most countries were literally unable to find the resources to keep up with the naval arms race and proposed by the one country that could.
No. It was proposed by the one country that had isolationist political pressure against naval buildup due to our history and founding fathers warning against standing armies. It was proposed by the one country to kneecap british attempts to enforce navy limits. Also, the Washington Naval Treaty was a complete failure? It set the stage for japan to build more resentment which led to ww2.
> not least of which is the lack of its use in conflicts after WWI, even in existential state conflicts like WWII or the Arab-Israel wars.
Chemical weapons were used in iraq-iran war. In the syrian war just a few years ago.
> The same reason why we have laws against murder.
There are laws against murder because murder exists. People murder. So the treaty against chemical weapons must exist because chemical weapons exist?
It would be great if chemical, biological, etc weapons are never used. But you'd have to be absolutely naive to think that every major nation isn't working on chemical or biological weapons. It's like all the naive people who claimed that government agencies stopped collecting our data after getting caught in the 70s. Of course they didn't stop collecting data. They increased the gathering of data.
I live in a country where biological weapons wiped out a significant portion of the native population. Do you think such a country is working on biological weapons? If one major country is, then so is every major nation around the world.
The real world isn't an utopian fairy tale. No matter how much one wishes it were. But it's a free country. Believe whatever you want.
1. Attributing the whole of Japan's imperial ambition to the Washington Naval Treaty is farcical.
2. This chart of battleship displacement by date of construction plainly reveals that the Washington Navy Treaty was a massive success. Yes, treaty-breaking ships were constructed, but you cannot look at this graph and conclude that the treaty did not succeed in substantially disrupting the arms escalation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty#/media...
FWIW, I agree with you that the development and research into chemical and biological weapons never stopped. However it is likely that most countries no longer maintain up-to-date stockpiles of these weapons. Research continues for game theory reasons, but the treaties (and moreover the general public sentiment against such weapons, particularly the sentiment that use of those weapons would constitute the use of "WMDs" to which a nuclear response would be warranted) had the effect of greatly reducing the risk that such weapons would be used en masse. To this point; these sort of weapons have not yet been used in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, despite most late-cold war analysts believing that the Soviet Union would use chemical weapons during their anticipated war with NATO.
Serious question, are you surprised governments do things that aren't useful? That they'll focus more on signaling than utility? That's literally 80% of politics: show.
> The fact that there is an anti-biological weapons treaty is proof enough that countries are working on biological weapons, just like the anti-nuclear weapons treaty is proof that countries are working on nukes.
Now that we got the above out of the way, maybe notice that China, Russia, and the US have all signed the Biological Weapons Convention[0] (outlaw bio weapons). All signed during the cold war. Then maybe notice that China, Russia, and the US have NOT signed the ban on the use of nuclear weapons[1].
> The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs
I agree. I mean just the dichotomy of [0] and [1] really tells a lot. You make a good point that governments are difficult to discuss because you can't take anything they do at face value so you have to dig in and think about their actions and what signals they are making.
But most major countries are working on biological weapons.
No, they are. But that's a bit different. Though I understand the confusion. Gain of function research can be classified as weapons. You got to develop weapons to defend against them. And of course, momentum. Especially in politics, where once funding is given it is hard to take it away, though not hard to reduce. I'm more saying if they would seriously deploy such a weapon and how serious the research is.
> What makes you think leaders aren't willing to hurt their own countries to hurt their enemies?
Some yes, some no. I think most countries have learned that the Russian strategy doesn't lead to great outcomes. Then again, you think Russia would have learned it too. But most countries realize that you can't rule over the dead. But you're right, that I may be too trusting. As far as vaccines, it is hard to keep those secret. Especially if we're talking about a country like China with a billion people, where you have to distribute at least a few hundred million. You don't think a few are going to fall off the truck? There'd be a lot of money for such a situation. Or even just the recipe. I mean vaccines don't confer 100% immunity so it still comes with big costs to yourself. But you're right, Russia keeps doing the Russian strategy. Though this is more easily done in an authoritative country. This is a lot of what jcranmer is pointing to. One more thing to consider, it is hard to invade this region after. You might think the same thing about nuclear but there's a reason they've focused on increasing the explosion and decreasing the radiation. Same reasons.
> Every major terrorist organization is or was created, funded and controlled by major nations.
Not quite true, but if they were, then the above arguments would apply there so that no terrorist organization would get the bio weapons from the big countries. You might want to ask why there haven't been any dirty bombs, despite that this should be easier, especially after the collapse of the USSR where many nuclear materials went missing. They all went somewhere (smaller countries and probably bigger countries too, to keep away from smaller countries), but we'll probably never know the full extent.
> And yet, all weapons labs in history were created by big/rich countries.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. Not all weapons were created in big countries. But weapons like nuclear, bio, and others were from big countries because to have such a program is quite expensive. Currently bioweapons, of the kind we're discussing, are still fairly expensive. This may change as things become cheaper. But regardless, these types of weapons are more attractive to the crazy anarchist who wants to watch the world burn than the angry dictator. They just aren't practical in the modern globalized world.
But there's got to be a logical reason for well over a century of research in the area and not seeing it used in practice. If it were a good weapon, it would have been used.
Okay good, I'm glad we are agreed.
> Some yes, some no.
If some are, then "everyone" has to, especially major powers. Just think about it.
> This is a lot of what jcranmer is pointing to.
I debunked what he wrote.
> the Russian strategy
What's that?
> Though this is more easily done in an authoritative country.
No. It's done more easily in a democracy. An authoritative country never developed nuked and used it on innocent civilians. It was one of those wonderful democracies. Just like a wonderful democracy and our democratic friends overthrew the ukrainian democracy and now another wonderful democracy is invading ukraine. Most of the horror in this world has been done by democracies. Funny how all parties involved in ukraine are democracies...
> Not quite true
No. Absolutely true.
> I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.
You wrote "Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances)."
And I was pointing out that all "contagion weapons" were created by big/rich countries. I was simply debunking your claim.
> But there's got to be a logical reason for well over a century of research in the area and not seeing it used in practice.
Has it not been used "in practice". Biological weapons have been used since ancient times. Biological weapons have been used more often than nuclear weapons.
The blind and naive were adamant our agencies don't collect data and spy on us. And were absolutely shocked when it was revealed they do. Of course they do. As I said, people who are too naive or too trusting believe otherwise. I guess the third option are state actors or those who brainwashed by the media. Or maybe I'm just too cynical.
Very clearly false dilemma.
> I debunked what he wrote.
That's a strong word for what you wrote.
> What's that?
I'd link it to you, but you said you don't want to read "silly blogs". So I'm not sure how I can communicate anything to you. I don't feel like it'd help. I think we're done here.
No. It's game theory. It's geopolitics. It's why russia, britain, france and china developed nukes. It's why india and pakistan developed it.
> That's a strong word for what you wrote.
Not strong or weak. Just reality.
> I'd link it to you, but you said you don't want to read "silly blogs".
No. What I actually wrote: "The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs. Take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs and watch too many silly youtube videos."
What do you think "take it from someone who has read too many silly blogs" means? You aren't going to link to anything I don't already know.
As I said, wishing there was no biological weapons is a noble thought. But believing nobody is working on biological weapons is naive. No serious rational intelligent person could believe it. But like I said, maybe life has made me too cynical.
Hey chief, these white men aren't going to take any more of our land. Here's the treaty we signed with them proving that. Hey stalin, germany isn't going to attack us. Look at this non-aggression pact we sign with them.
>> no amount of reason will convince someone with an agenda.
You're exactly right. You already know.
So do you. But you've got an agenda and a worldview that prevents you from accepting it. Imagine being naive enough to believe that there isn't chemical nor biological weapons in this world. Believe what you want. This discussion is getting pointless and I'll end it here.
You mean contagious, not infectious. Biological weapons which are infectious but not particularly contagious, such as anthrax, are much easier to control and have been the focus of most biological weapons research. Biological weapons are banned and aren't, used not because they don't work, but because other things work better and with less political fallout.
And FWIW, very contagious pathogens could be used as weapons for strategic effect if you had reason to believe they would hurt your economy less than your enemy's. For instance, if you believe your authoritarian government will allow you to flatten the curve but liberal governments will have a disordered response that precludes this. I'm not saying they did it, but the possibility isn't patently absurd.
See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...
In my opinion, gain of function is too dangerous with current security measures, and we should consider a moratorium.
I don't agree about the point of virology being just about studying gain of function. There are tons of things you can study in virology without needing to create novel viruses.
https://www.criver.com/eureka/why-are-lentivirus-vector-safe...
The gain of function research of concern takes viruses already capable of sickening and killing humans (or their close relatives), and deliberately makes them deadlier and easier to spread among humans. This is a tiny fraction of virology, and has yet to deliver any practical benefit.
There's a legitimate concern that an overbroad ban on gain-of-function research could restrict safe and beneficial activities. The WIV's work was pretty far at the dangerous extreme, though--Ralph Baric's work was already controversial, and the WIV was working with a greater diversity of viruses, at lower BSL.
Either way my point was that we actively use a known highly transmissible virus, with some parts removed, under the general assumption that it's safe, and it's been demonstrated to not cause large issues (compared to other problems in gene therapy). I think people should be aware of that and in some sense I am surprised there isn't more attention placed on this practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s
I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black.
I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.
[edit] To be clear, I'm not saying this definitely did or did not happen, I don't know. I'm saying if it came out later that it did, I wouldn't be surprised.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
It really makes me wonder how many lab leaks may have happened during this time period when we started collecting and storing samples but we didn't yet have the ability to track diseases like we do today.
But it's intellectually dishonest of you to pretend that was in fact the purpose of the anecdote, and not to serve as evidence of a lab leak.
Please don't "actually" something with an uncited statement without backing it up with any sort of detail. A news article? Anything, honestly.
> that is what the Wuhan institute of coronaviruses was built to do right?
Really? It's "Wuhan institute of virology". Not "coronaviruses". Right?
I have no specific horse in this race but I feel like I'm losing my mind every time I read any discussion on this subject because there's always folks throwing around random statements as if they're established fact and I feel like at this point, on this specific subject, on this website, we should know better, geez.
> The institute has been an active premier research center for the study of coronaviruses.[6]
> In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line (HeLa). The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.[17][21]
The evidence is pretty damning, and points to way too much to be coincidental. It's not solid evidence, but that would be impossible to get since China blocked anyone from visiting or doing independent investigations.
My major and Msc are related to microbiology (which is highly related to virology), and I'd estimate it's a 95% chance of having originated from the lab.
I'd both put my estimate at much lower than 95%, and I'd be substantially less confident in it, since my expertise kicks in about two weeks after an initial spillover event occurs.
For covid to be natural it would have had to mutate in the same way as planned in the grant proposal within 2 years of the grant proposal, and then travel hundreds of miles not infecting anyone on the way until it got to the city where this research was planned to be done.
Think about it.
Did you consider that maybe the reason this proposal was written was because this mutation was the most likely way this kind of virus could mutate to infect humans? Think about it.
I don’t understand why people keep throwing around all kind of unsubstantiated facts like if they suddenly made things clearer. The situation is overall pretty clear. Could the pandemic be linked to an accidental leak from a gain-of-function study at the Wuhan lab? Most certainly. Do we have evidence that it did? No, we don’t. Could it come from somewhere else? Sure, it can. Was there a properly done inquiry with full collaboration from the lab and the host country? Absolutely not, China was extremely uncooperative and did all it could to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic.
Who in a right mind (just leaving for a moment how) would do that? As: create a separate strain of coronavirus just to introduce one specific mutation.
Incorrect. We need to determine what happened based on all the evidence. We can't just make stuff up to fill in the blanks.
i.e. If what we know doesn't contain facts essential to the determination, we can't just "think about it" harder.
That's the hard-hitting evidence that was missing.
And that's why this topic is so taboo and annoying. People turn coincidence into proof.
Clearly, you have an agenda that encourages people to stop looking at facts and instead to make things up they don't have answers for.
Think about it. (This means I'm right, right? This means if you don't agree with me, you aren't thinking, right?)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-05/covid-lik...
There was some indirect and even some more direct evidence of Iraq doing nuclear weapons research in some capacity at some point too, this is incredibly dangerous line to go own without being 250% sure. Indirect evidence simply doesn't cut it.
> No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon.
It may not be someone 'credible', but within the current context of the U.S. preparing for what increasingly looks like a direct confrontation with China, it sure suits a lot of neocons in Washington, who seem to always be failing upwards in the ranks despite having lost all credibility over a dozen times in the last decade alone.
It does actually. Because when a government can destroy and hide evidence, assuming the worst of them is one way to get them to comply and share evidence in future.
The point the parent comment is trying to make is all we have is speculation and you can speculate either way. Just make whatever you want up in your head that doesn't include malice.
What you described is still the lab leak theory.
Bats -> humans in the market.
Point remains the same. We're all speculating because I agree with the statement that trying to create foreign policy based on speculation creates so many problems - Iraq war for one (but, being fair, supposedly that was credible).
But, I'm sure china would admit to the world that their research lab was the fuck up that killed millions of people. It isn't like china would ever try to censor and control information that makes them look bad.
The point is - from where we stand, not where we want to be. We stand in pure speculation, and cannot create foreign policy based on "we're, like, pretty sure you did it... in our heads!"
If we did, this kind of system creates guantanamo bay and the iraq war. We hold people against their will swearing they have information. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. So we resort to torture and have murdered plenty in the name of it. What if they actually don't have the information? Then we're just torturing/murdering innocents.
Is it worth it? Personally I say no. But it won't stop us from parading around the success cases screaming "the ends justify the means".
Also because gain of function research is risky as hell with seemingly little benefit. The same lab had requested funds to do it on viruses that were much deadlier.
In fact COVID seems somewhat unique amongst modern maladies to not have a clear zoonotic origin.
But I'm sure nature evolving this exact mutation coincidentally in a relatively short period after scientist documented their plans to engineer it is an equally likely outcome.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
"Farzan was “bothered by the furin site and has a hard time explaining that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely).” On the question of whether the virus had a natural origin or came from some sort of accidental lab release, Farrar reported that Farzan was “70:30” or “60:40” in favor of an “accidental-release” explanation and that “Bob” — an apparent reference to Robert Garry — was also surprised by the presence of a furin cleavage site in this virus. Farrar quoted Bob saying: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. … it’s stunning.” - https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/
I'm not qualified to evaluate these arguments on their merit.
"Harrison and Sachs (1) allege that scientists at NIH and elsewhere, including myself and colleagues, conspired to suppress theories of a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. This is false. A possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 was discussed in our earlier publications"
But there absolutely was a conspiracy to suppress the lab leak theory. This conspiracy is why the infamous letter published in the lancet that admonished the lab leak theory as a 'conspiracy theory's was retracted by the lancet. Peter daszak was one of the signers of the letter, but it came out he attempted to avoid signing the letter even though he arranged the entire thing. The reason he didn't want to sign it? In his words:
“so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't work in a counterproductive way.” - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/wuhan-lab-collaborat...
Why might he feel that way? Well for one his name was on the DARPA grant proposal from 2018 to engineer a coronavirus with the same mutation covid has.
COVID-19 is not "some previously known coronavirus strain with furin cleavage site".
Trying to use difference in details in this case to sow doubt isn't reasonable in my opinion because it's details that are realistically impossible to nail down.
It seems like the standards applied in this discussion by some are essentially that nothing short of irrefutable proof even qualifies as evidence.
There were serious attempts to completely shut the conversation down and prevent investigations into there being a lab leak.
To quote Doyle - "never theorize before you have data [...] you end up twisting facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts".
The latter is what the article above is suggesting, that the Wuhan lab was working for the Chinese military to develop a virus for biological warfare research. For example, if you look at the ridiculous hero image of the article, you'll see someone who looks like they might be a Chinese military officer holding a clipboard and wearing a mask, while the Chinese flag's star is surrounded by what look like little stylised coronaviruses.
Half this very thread. "you couldn't mention the lab without being called a racist" and then they proceed to talk about china bioengineering weapons instead of an accidental lab leak.
The constant "the news suppresed this because of trump" is also a pretty loud dogwhistle.
The idea that a lab could have a leak was studied, there were multiple papers on it. The evidence did not add up to much, other than the circumstancial. The zootropic evidence had a bit more weight but still came up with "we might not have enough data to come up with a conclusive answer".
Because scientists said they leaned on that evidence the popular science outlets explained it as "origin is a bat not a lab leak" which should have had more nuance in the headlines but popular science outlets try to summarise hard science into easy to understand articles and they are fairly guilty of clickbait (how many times have we cured cancer, or some physics experiment done something close to a black hole). And between that and a number of bad actors starting conspiracy theories about the lab being a hidden bioweapon lab and China releasing it intentionally the discourse got all sorts of distorted.
The problem is Bioweapon dudes hid behind lab leak concerns and the lack of evidence from a scientific prespeective gave the wet market Patient 0 more visibility. To this day, half this thread is people with conspiracy theories hidding behind the lab leak. Makes a conversation about it almost entirely useless when you engage with someone and a few messages in they say the media is jewish and wanted to destroy the economy with lockdowns to make trump lose (this is a comment on this very thread further up, although i think they have been shadowbanned already)
I was being slightly hyperbolic. A good chhunk outright said it, another good group was using plausible deniability, which means if pressed they might say thats not what they meant. Makes separating them quite hard
> Are you unable to distinguish that assertion from the assertion that the engineered weapon was intentionally deployed?
I am not. The issue is not that either. The issue is "The origin of COVID-19".
When it came out two main theories appeared. Either the wet market where it was first noticed, or a lab leak in a lab over an hour away that was studying coronaviruses.
The two were studied by the scientific community, china put a lot of hurdles and the best availeble evidence pointed towards the wetmarket.
While this was happening, a number of conspiracies started, many of which pointed towards China as a bioweapons manufacturer (something that is very illegal). Those theories included that china was not studying viruses but manufacturing them (that is a very key distinction) and the theoreis then spawn over if China leaked it to test it, or infected its own population etc. Theories adjacent to this were heavily repeated by a number of news outlets, mayorly OAN a far right news station. The great smoke screen was that when pressed they could always fall back on "the lab leak theory" which is way more sensible.
Essentially the problem is the lab leak theory meant two very different things. It should have been called the accident leak and the bio weapon theory, but both were called lab leak and people who mean bioweapon hide behind the larger, more defensible lab leak umbrella.
The indirect evidence of a lab leak theory is overwhelming frankly. And it doesn't require any malice. No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon.
Gain of function research is real, scientists intentionally make viruses which could start a pandemic. They do this for the purposes of knowledge and preparedness for the inevitable natural spillover events that will happen. It isn't nefarious.
But it is risky, and there many people now and before who thought it was a practice that should be curtailed because of the risk.