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
> 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.

I think that it is at least somewhat likely that it was the result of the lab's activities, but your assertion here has a huge dose of selection bias.

If the virology labs studying coronaviruses were placed randomly around the world, you'd be correct - but they're not. They're placed near locations where novel coronaviruses have crossed the species barrier in the past, and where they are likely to do so in the future.

It would be equivalent to say that lighthouses cause ships to run aground, because many teams when ships run aground it's near a lighthouse.

>>Ancapi+231
Another selection bias is that we can't say if the virus originated there, but only that it was first detected there. Even if it originated in the countryside hundreds of miles away it makes sense it was detected only after it spread to a city with the labs to discover the virus.

>>angio+lE1
The virus was first sequenced by a lab in Shanghai. The WIV wasn't involved in the discovery of the virus.

>>ginko+MJ1
What I mean is that a small countryside hospital won't be able to notice there is a new type of pneumonia, while bigger cities have teams to detect that. It's the same reason why we probably had the virus circulating in europe in january but we only noticed after we started looking for it.