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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   1945 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 13, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I don't think this is a universal idea. It might be true, mostly, in the US, although I would doubt even that. But in places like China, no, not really. You do whatever it takes to prevent further accidents within the lab, and you do whatever it takes to control public opinion, but these are completely separate concerns.

Furthermore, if the research is dangerous but the government thinks it has to be done, I totally see the government deciding to do it anyway, in secrecy if necessary. Especially in China, but really in a lot of other places as well. Including the US.

No disagreements on China, but I don't think that's the measuring stick western politicians ought to be judged by.

It might come down to the definition of "natural origin" then. Does releasing a virus onto a population of (very much not natural) humanized mice and allowing it to naturally evolve in that population count as a natural origin to you? Especially if accidental.

Accidental or not, that's pretty clearly on the non-natural side for me, especially since it involves humanized mice. Genuinely lab-leak + natural + accidental for me would be collected in the wild where humans don't go normally, taken to the lab, and then a human gets infected directly from this sample while testing it and then spreads the disease unknowingly. Beyond that, it's mostly different degrees of non-natural. Maybe if you're just holding lots of bats for a long while and it develops unknowingly, but in a way that is plausible in the wild I'd also rule it natural.

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