Everyone is citing the evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 leak as reason to believe that viruses escape labs.
But you know what's interesting about that?
We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./
They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety community (the people with degrees in these things) helped china become more standard and respectable and safe.
And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're accusing them of covering up the same thing.
Scientists are not their government, and China's government is not a huge fan of it's scientists. Just look at the great leap forward. And how they're treating Shi Zhengli now that she is arguing the virus came from a zoonotic event in the provinces. China's party line no longer agrees, and she's been silenced.
Why would she lie for her government when they don't even agree?
>We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./
Sometimes humans tell the truth, sometimes humans don't.
Pointing to one group of people who told the truth, and asserting that means another group must be telling the truth is just silly.
Especially considering the former example was in regards to a small accident relative to potentially the greatest accident in human history.
I know I would be strongly inclined to lie if I was responsible for the accidental death of millions of people.
If a human being was not inclined to lie about their responsibility for greatest accident in human history, why would humans ever lie about any mistake?
But at the time when it was important, in both of these leak events, only extremely few people had died. Not millions.
It was far from the worst accident in human history at that point, it looked like nothing and in America lots of people thought it would never affect us at all.
That's when it came up and when Zhengli had her lab searched and checked their freezers etc.
It's also important to think about the other BSL4 labs around the world they sent tons of samples to. If they were hiding SARS-CoV-2, why wouldn't it have slipped into any of these many thousands of inter-lab samples?
Releases aren't all that common but cross-contamination within and between secure sites actually is.
Why has no one found SARS-2 in any of the samples sent out of Wuhan to Australia, Singapore, Canada, or the US?
This is the most naive take of the real world. Yes. The Chinese government can easily make Chinese scientists lie when needed.
"with zero evidence"? The Chinese government told their labs destroy lab samples at the beginning of the pandemic. The Chinese government refuse to give raw data of early patients to the WHO investigation team. Not matter what the origin of the virus is, the "covering up" is strongly supported by evidence.
> The Chinese government told their labs destroy lab samples at the beginning of the pandemic.
I know the news reports you're referring to, but they're a good example of sensationalist reporting on China.
Very early on, when several patients in Wuhan had pneumonia of unknown cause, doctors sent samples from the patients across the country for testing. When it turned out that they had a novel coronavirus, that triggered rules about dealing with dangerous pathogens. You can't just have something like SARS-CoV-2 sitting around in any diagnostic lab. Labs with lower standards of biosecurity were required to either transfer their samples to labs with better biosecurity or to destroy them.
These sorts of rules are not unique to China. The US has very similar rules. However, in the hands of the news media, this story has been misrepresented.
> The Chinese government refuse to give raw data of early patients to the WHO investigation team.
Good luck getting any government to allow you to take 75000 de-anonymized patient records out of the country.
I'm not "attacking" them for wanting to have access to large amounts of raw patient records (which is, in fact, what the dispute was about). It's just not surprising that a sovereign country would refuse to allow foreigners to have that data.
What you wrote here is not wrong, but point number 3 stated:
> 3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people realize[1]
As I see it, there are two variables involved:
- how frequently lab leaks happen (total number of historic leaks - known + unknown)
- people's realization / awareness of how often they happen
> And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're accusing them of covering up the same thing.
Regardless of whether there is evidence or not (have they been perfectly transparent and enthusiastically encouraging of inspections?), a leak did happen, or it did not happen...and then on top of it, there is the problem of whether we have knowledge of it or not.
> Why would she lie for her government when they don't even agree?
I am definitely not a fan of the Chinese government. But the scientists I've met at conferences and the papers I've reviewed from their labs have been of a very high quality.
Not saying such people could not commit atrocities or coverups like this. But I do find it personally less likely.
That isn't the evidence I rely on most in my personal assessment, though. The epidemiology and molecular clock data points to a zoonotic origin outside of Wuhan. Check out here to see what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcfs2
Which makes the lab leak a whole lot less interesting of an idea since its' circumstantial evidence isn't actually the circumstance anymore.
I'd think you would also appreciate the idea that leaked from a lab does NOT strictly indicate manipulation -- only that manipulation COULD happen.
None of the bats they claim it came from were sold at the market. Meanwhile, they're tracking down every bat strain they can find and collecting them at the Wuhan lab.
Carelessness in handling would be the root cause whether the virus was manipulated or not. You provide zero evidence on the most important point.
Now, to the more conspiratorial point. UFO pyramid-shaped small drones hounded a US destroyer group for many hours. Any drone flyer would tell you that drones that shape are heavy and even stripped down ones don't fly for dozens of hours.
By the numbers, that requires a huge leap in material science and energy storage. This was not too far from a base that does classified research, so I doubt the cause was more than human.
The military really does keep a generation or two of technology to itself in every area it can. If they did make a breakthrough in quickly modifying viruses, would they publish it in a paper? No more so than the NSA would immediately publish their discovery of differential cryptanalysis. It became public in the late 80s. IBM kept it secret since the early 70s and the NSA knew about it long before that. That’s probably because the NSA employs the lion’s share of mathematicians in those areas (which also makes recruiting more top scientists easier).
Other countries do the same. If Chinese scientists discovered a faster and more natural looking method of manipulation, what incentive would they have to publish a paper? Their only incentive would be to hide it as much as possible and use it as a material advantage in the upcoming and growing conflict with the US.
I believe it was probably naturally discovered and leaked through carelessness, but assuming they couldn’t possibly have had a breakthrough when other countries obviously have in many other areas seems overly confident.
Agreed, I've read other plausible claims of ~evidence suggesting the Wuhan origin theory is incorrect.
Generally speaking, I think the whole world would be better off if we aligned our perceptions of our knowledge more closely with its likely true quality: very often, we think we know things, but we are actually just estimating if not outright guessing, and then declaring it to be true. Unfortunately, very few people seem to be comfortable with this idea regardless of their political orientation or education level. But as I see it, it is simply applying the discipline and methodology of science to the real world, so it's kind of weird how unpopular it is with educated people who are otherwise enthusiastic promoters of Scientific Thinking.
But you know what's interesting about that?
We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./
They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety community (the people with degrees in these things) helped china become more standard and respectable and safe.
And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're accusing them of covering up the same thing.
Scientists are not their government, and China's government is not a huge fan of it's scientists. Just look at the great leap forward. And how they're treating Shi Zhengli now that she is arguing the virus came from a zoonotic event in the provinces. China's party line no longer agrees, and she's been silenced.
Why would she lie for her government when they don't even agree?