Thread

1. robmusial · 1791169542 · focus · HN ↗

   I literally just finished Annie Jacobsen's book 'Biological War: A Scenario' last week where the central plot point is an accidental release of modified form of pneumonic plague from a lab in Siberia. Very coincidental timing, especially since it made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.

   1. petcat · 1791170758 · focus · HN ↗

      > made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.

      Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.

      1. TacticalCoder · 1791177423 · focus · HN ↗

         > Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.

         Official report mandated by US Congress (under Biden btw): says it's likely it's a lab leak of a modified virus. CIA also changed its official stance and consider it's likely a lab leak.

         The international expert who everybody based its idea that "it cannot possibly be a lab leak" has been debarred and cannot ever get funding from the US for research on modified viruses.

         To me there's "something" off and it is a lab leak. And I always felt like this.

         1. kennywinker · 1791177880 · focus · HN ↗

            > And I always felt like this.

            Hence you looked for evidence that matched and dismissed evidence that doesn't match.

            Unless you can tell me that the majority of virologists agree it was a lab leak, I'm going to go with their majority opinion - which last I checked was that it couldn't possibly be a lab leak for specific genetic reasons.

            1. skew-aberration · 1791188275 · focus · HN ↗

               Just read the wiki: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory

               The summary does not mention lab leak of a natural virus at all but the body of the article says it&#x27;s perfectly consistent with the best independent evidence &#x2F; investigation:

               &gt; The leader of the WHO investigatory team, Peter Ben Embarek, said &quot;An employee of the lab gets infected while working in a bat cave collecting samples. Such a scenario, while being a lab leak, would also fit our first hypothesis of direct transmission of the virus from bat to human.&quot;[114]

               Seems a little dishonest, no? Pretending that lab leak == bioweapon conspiracy is just deliberate distraction.

               There&#x27;s simply no hard evidence one way or the other - it&#x27;s a natural bat coronavirus, but we don&#x27;t know how it got to Wuhan (a city with a world class coronavirus laboratory which just so happens to be the only institute on the planet which worked on isolating, sequencing, and culturing novel SARS-like bat coronaviruses from field samples - literally the only one.).

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