zlacker

Scientists are human, and they will make mistakes, the benefit is that there are many of them with different incentives. The "Blocked Virology" twitter account references a lot of previous lab escapes to say that lab escapes are possible, this is good evidence against your point - how do you think we know about the previous escapes? It wasn't a random group of technically-minded individuals, it was experts that tracked it down.

The level of arrogance necessary to believe that any "technically minded" individual can find where the virus originated is mind blowing to me. Logic isn't the end-all-be-all, for many fields you must also have knowledge. We should not ignore the blindspots that deep knowledge can introduce but to just dismiss it is absurd.

>>eighty+(OP)
There has never been a lab leak leading to a global pandemic and mass deaths, I don’t think you can compare now to anything other then maybe the Spanish flu

>>katbyt+kU
The 1977 flu pandemic was very likely a lab escape. From the NEJM:

> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322

About 700k people died worldwide. That's more than a typical flu season but not grossly so, and it's impossible to say with certainty what kind of flu season would have occurred naturally without the escape.

https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2018/01/19/you-re-...

SARS-CoV-2 is certainly worse. The 1977 flu pandemic is still a lot of deaths, though, and surprisingly little-known.