News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by dismalaf on Thursday December 18, 2025 @01:22PM (#46316479)
The lab leak theory was always credible. Here in Canada there was a big scandal with Chinese scientists who worked for one of our labs who secretly transferred specimens from Winnipeg to Wuhan in 2019 and the subsequent police investigation went public in 2020.

Here's a good article that's basically a summary of events (as well as teaser for a book): https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/from-our-lab-to-theirs-...

Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by biophysboy on Thursday December 18, 2025 @02:52PM (#46317713)
(Apologies to the thread..)

Its not credible: two viral lineages emerged from the market ~1 week apart before the world knew what covid was; they differ by 2 nucleotides; mutation rates are 1e-6 per base per passage; doubling time is about half a week. A group of sick animals better explains the phylogenetics w/ these constraints. Everything points against lab leak: location, timing, and genetics.

Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by dismalaf on Thursday December 18, 2025 @04:08PM (#46318761)
You should google the definition of credible since it seems you don't know it... (Hint, it doesn't mean 100% true)

It really boils down to: do you trust a brutal communist dictatorship that has been attacking the West asymmetrically and wants to invade its neighbours to be honest?

Multiple Western governments believe it was a lab leak and coincidentally I'm sure, relations with China have been quite bad since.

Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by biophysboy on Thursday December 18, 2025 @04:32PM (#46319078)
My evidence is genetic material; your evidence is state intelligence
Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by dismalaf on Thursday December 18, 2025 @04:37PM (#46319135)
Your evidence is a Chinese claim of genetic material. They've certainly never covered anything up before...
Re:Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 p... by biophysboy on Friday December 19, 2025 @09:10AM (#46326024)
Any conclusion about a pathogen origin requires phylogenetic evidence. Everything else is secondary. You could write a trillion intelligence memos in the absence of genetic evidence and get no closer to the answer.

If you want to deny sequence data that predate worldwide recognition and controversy related to COVID-19, OK. But the origin question can never be answered with this denial.