zlacker

>>ruarai+(OP)
This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure out how to stop it from happening again. This has nothing to do with the PRC or anyone or anywhere else, it could have happened at any biological facility in the world and will eventually happen again somewhere unless scientific honesty and cooler heads prevail.

>>crx07+ML
I don't really have a stake in this, and no real idea how plausible the lab accident theory is. That said, don't you think that the location of a lab like that would be highly correlated with the location of dangerous natural viral reservoir? Or put another way, if you wanted to study zoonotic viruses, wouldn't you put your lab in a place like that?

>>ch4s3+0o1
Not really. The lab is in a major city, and imported samples from all over China (and the rest of the world).

The hypothesized bat in question, if it was really a wet-market outbreak, was imported from hundreds of miles away.

>>bpodgu+Fo1
It's also been reported that it wasn't the season for the bat species.

Those in favour of the lab leak hypothesis point out that the virus showed up on the scene with all the evolutionary capability to spread amongst humans i.e with batteries included.

With previous Sars viruses my understanding is that each zoonotic jump was traceable with examples of previous forms in prior animal hosts to corroborate the lineage.

What makes Covid-19 interesting is that these zoonotic jumps or the gain of functions can be accelerated in the lab with the purpose of preparing us ahead of time for a dangerous forms of Sars style viruses. It looks like covid-19 may be that type of strain, not man made, but given the lab conditions for it to gain the capability. It may have escaped.

It's worth exploring the lab leak hypothesis but I would say that it's not politically expedient for any of the scientists or parties involved. We will never really know the truth and that is something we need to grow comfortable with.

>>verges+Br1
You are mixing two theories here: A) A lab leak B) Gain of function research.

My understanding is that A) is very much possible because it has happened before (SARS), but we have no evidence yet (and might never acquire).

For B) however, from my limited understanding, there is no strong evidence. We only know about a fraction of existing coronaviruses out there and given we observe one, that has caused a pandemic, the (conditional!) probability that it is well adapted is extremely high (survivorship bias).

If you have a credible source that claims B) please share it.

>>Pyramu+cz1
Isn’t he referring to a lab leak of a virus which was engineered with ‘gains of function’. I’m particularly convinced of this theory because it explains the glaring weakness of the Covid-19 virus to UV radiation (ie sunlight). If Chinese researches were modifying viral samples to gain functions (evolutionary or otherwise), weakness against sunlight is a believable oversight, considering it wouldn’t have been subjected to it indoors.