zlacker

>>ruarai+(OP)
My understanding of the author's central thesis is this: the US, despite its world-class virology and disease study labs, regularly has lapses in procedure that regularly lead to situations in which the public might be exposed. Given that this is happening in our own backyard, we might reasonably expect countries of similar status (like China) to experience similar lapses.

That reads as reasonable to me, but raises a subsequent question: if these lapses are so common and so many countries possess the capacity for serious mistakes, why don't we see more regular outbreaks (if not full-blown pandemics) caused by labs? In other words, what makes COVID special? I didn't find a satisfactory answer to the latter question in the article.

It's my (uninformed, uneducated) opinion that the severity of the author's claims don't correspond to the reality of the last few national and international disease crises (AIDS, Ebola, Zika, COVID). Which isn't to say that we should absolutely dismiss the possibility that COVID originated in a lab, only that claims that it did amount to currently unsubstantiated claims about COVID's special status among other recent pandemics.

>>woodru+bz1
If this Wuhan lab theory is correct, I think the wet markets play a huge role in the outbreak. They place a huge number of diverse, weakened, living animal in a relatively confined area. This seems to give an ideal breeding ground for a leaked virus - which perhaps can be incubated in a host species found at the wet market. Either the animals are in too poor of condition to notice the infection or they're a natural reservoir - eliciting no symptoms.

My understanding is most other countries don't have wet markets like China does. Even if a virus escapes, it may not have access to the hosts it needs truly become problematic.