zlacker

>>delbar+(OP)
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground).

My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.

It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates...

Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?

>>bearbi+d7
I'm also curious about that. HN has very strong opinions about China especially about the Xinjiang re-education camps and/or the organ harvesting in China YET for some reason can't believe that the same country would lab make a virus like this.

idk I'm just an outsider

>>haunte+y7
Bret Weinstein, who has a Ph.D in biology, claims it's highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was man-made, rather than naturally occurring. So it's definitely possible it was a test that went wrong (and let's be honest, the Chinese government has a less than stellar safety record).

>>Turkis+Hr
specifically he is a specialist in bat biology, but perhaps more relevantly he had a very interesting conversation with a russian virologist who also thinks this is the case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug

here is an essay written by his guest:

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...

>>nyolfe+fE
I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I read three or four people on a thread all agreeing with each other, I become suspicious. It doesn’t seem how normal conversations go.

It probably just is my quirk, does anyone else share this gut feeling?

>>dash2+E71
In this case no.

The reason is that if you have a less widely accepted opinion and someone states it and you can add additional info to it which makes it "stronger" you are likely to do so.

Which still doesn't mean I believe it. As far as I know the scientific majority believe is that the virus doesn't show any indication of potential human manipulation and is very unlikely to be human made assuming China isn't years ahead wrt. virus manipulation (which doesn't mean it doesn't escaped from a lab, btw.).

But as I'm not to much involved in this I would need hours to collect sources and trace them back to their original source to provide any useful links. So no credibility to this post.