zlacker

>>nnx+(OP)
It's interesting to see that with Donald Trump out of office, the "lab escape" hypothesis is not roundly dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory anymore.

>>incrud+I2
Nobody ever dismissed it. It has been a viable theory since the beginning. What was dangerous was pointing the finger at China and saying “this is all their fault!” without any evidence. There STILL is not evidence, but that doesn’t mean it should not be investigated as a source.

Dismissing the theory outright has never and will never be an option. I don’t like that this is what the team decided to do, and I suspect there is a lot of tension in this investigation.

>>beowul+N6
> Nobody ever dismissed it

There was at least one paper calling it "natural selection", and some folks who read it agreed that it ruled out laboratory accidents:

"The high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

https://twitter.com/ehundman/status/1246597925288816640

https://www.newsweek.com/claim-that-coronavirus-came-lab-chi...

>>datafl+r8
That is not addressing the same claim though. That was refuting the theory that people were spreading about it being genetically engineered to be infectious towards humans.

>>beowul+N8
> ...it being genetically engineered to be infectious towards humans

That's literally what a gain-of-function experiment is. These are done to study how viruses interact with humans so that we can deal with them better. There's nothing sinister about it, such experiments are happening all over the world and they did happen in Wuhan.

>>incrud+v9
Maybe it's time for us to realize that some "gain of function" research can be weaponized and made sinister.