zlacker

>>ruarai+(OP)
This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1]

This article points out that a lab outbreak could have happened in the United States and many places in the world. We need to avoid demonizing China over this if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.resea...

>>gregwe+pV1
An eerily prescient quote from a paper[0] published in 2015, two of the authors of which are with Wuhan Institute of Virology:

> Understanding the bat origin of human coronaviruses is helpful for the prediction and prevention of another pandemic emergence in the future.

China has clearly contributed valuable research into bat coronaviruses. They had all the motivation to look into these after the first deadly SARS. I think it’s silly to presume CCP engineered a virus as part of some warfare strategy, or even to vilify/sanction them for a lab leak if it indeed was the cause (mistakes happen). However, CCP’s resistance to a proper thorough study of the origins of COVID is IMO not exactly appropriate.

Active research was taking place in the vicinity of suspected ground zero. Lab escapes happen—there are well-documented cases of the original SARS virus leaking from a lab in Beijing in 2004 (killing at least one person). Why was this time such a scenario discarded as so ridiculously impossible at first, and is still considered “extremely unlikely”? Is it politics?

[0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-...

>>strogo+R42
> However, CCP’s resistance to a proper thorough study of the origins of COVID is IMO not exactly appropriate.

It is, in fact, highly suspect. I’m not at all positive that it indeed leaked from a lab in Wuhan, but the fact they won’t let an independent investigation anywhere near it makes me lean more strongly towards that as a possibility.

The description of the last investigation into the origins of the virus felt more like a ‘guided tour’.

>>Aeolun+gk2
Or, you know, we may just be talking about a paranoid autocracy with an obsession for controlling information?

This is a government that bans talking about multiple periods of the country's history.

>>ethbr0+bx2
For that very reason, we cannot accept their narrative at face value. We certainly don't have enough information to confidently eliminate the lab escape theory. The media has largely suggested that the lab escape theory has been disproved.

>>bitrea+uD2
If you ask a liar a question, and they lie, then the strongest conclusion isn't that you asked the right question -- it's that they're a liar.

China stonewalls pretty much every attempt by the international community to interfere with their internal control.

So this is more "business as usual" than "Clouseau found the smoking gun."

>>ethbr0+9F2
The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged. One of those labs was right near the seafood market which had one of the first documented outbreaks.

It's all circumstantial evidence of course, but that's really all you're going to get with a country like China. We can be damn well sure that they would never admit to the virus originating from a lab leak. To me, this is the clearest and most likely source of the outbreak.

>>bitrea+6Y2
> The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged.

As far as I know, those labs always study coronaviruses in bats -- it's a large part of what they do. That makes it less of a suspicious coincidence than your way of putting it implies.

By which I don't mean it didn't happen. There's just not enough information one way or the other.

>>roelsc+0i3
If anything, it makes it inevitable. The probability of a coronavirus from a bat eventually escaping a lab that regularly studies coronaviruses in bats almost certainly approaches 100% over time.