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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Re. Lab leak: I accept you can believe in a rational and consistent way; but it still seems odd how hard people have committed to the hypothesis purely on the absence of evidence. We know COV loves to recombinate and be a little bitch, we know that the tell-tale spike protein developed once in nature and was present but for one amino acid in the local population, we know that cov-19 can change significantly and remain infectious because it has three times in the wild.

All the data we have points to zoonotic origin, given that the last seven times this happened it came from an animal and that the first cases were traced back to a fucking wet market; I'm gonna need more than vibes before I change my position.

Re. the research: Again, it's risk assessment o'clock. I'd need to know how much benefit we get out of gain of function research (which is a bit beyond my capacity unfortunately) to say whether the risks are worth it; given that minor accidents seem to happen about once a year when you look at historical lab leaks. There have been no major leaks (unless cov-19 is our huckleberry); but if we don't get anything out of it we probably shouldn't wait for one.

but it still seems odd how hard people have committed to the hypothesis purely on the absence of evidence

I wouldn't call the leaks related to EcoHealth "absence of evidence".

I saw those; they have shifted my view not at all beyond just knowing that GOF research was conducted in wuhan, which is already enough to move lab leak hypotheses from lizard person to rational but unlikely.

How about the part where the people involved in the research go around twisting the arms of other researchers into publicly proclaiming the lab leak theory is a lizard person level conspiracy?

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