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Comment by mcswell | Hacker News Reader

This is wrong, even deceitful, for a couple reasons: 1) No country (officially, or afaik in reality) has a bio weapons lab, and certainly not "all over the world". Nobody (well, nobody official) ever said the Wuhan virus lab was a bioweapon lab; it's a virology lab.

2) The Wuhan virus lab has been experimenting with corona viruses for a long time, including gain of function, and it had a history of problems.

3) There's no indication--as in zero--that any other country had covid-19 cases before China. And in this case, lack of evidence IS evidence for lack, because case records are open (except in China, it seems).

Now if you want to debate this point further, I suggest that you establish with us that you are not a CCP hack. So repeat after me: Premier Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.

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Europa had cases in september of 2019. We didn't know at the time, but checking samples from back then revealed the virus was already internationally active

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03008916209747...

Also, if you look closely, notice that the reason we have no earlier samples then september is, because we have no earlier samples. Can't test one from august, if you don't have one from august.

Sorry to ruin your narrative, but SARS-CoV-2 was circulating well before it showed up in Wuhan. https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

Perhaps people noticed it when it hit Wuhan and freaked out because of the Research Institute thinking “oh shit, is this what they’re playing with?”

Which gives us interesting angle as to why it was first recorded so close to virus research lab in Wuhan. Could be a huge coincidence, or maybe... some impressive operation to blame those filthy commies. Maybe a fit far fetched, maybe not

The antibody tests do have a degree of cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses, but if this is reliable it's a fascinating finding.

Fort Detrick was a bio weapons lab that has since closed but US has plenty more around the world, and likely, many that are undisclosed.

It didn't close so much as rebrand as the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

I don't think the US has labs abroad but other countries such as the UK and Russia have mucked around with bioweapons research in the past. Probably China too as it has a general policy to keep up with the opposition.

Fort Detrick and all other US bio weapons ceased research in offensive bioweapons in 1969. One reason is that bioweapons can't be controlled, as evidenced by the failure thus far to control this virus. So no, it's not likely that there are undisclosed US bio weapons research sites; that's just propaganda.

While I don't trust the CCP a bit, I also doubt that China is pursuing bioweapons research, for the same reason: a bioweapon is too likely to backfire. If the covid-2 virus came from a lab in Wuhan, it's not because they were pursuing it as a potential bioweapon, it's because they--and others--wanted to understand how to protect against it.

Fort Detrick was closed 2019:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick#2019_closure_and_...

The link you posted states that bioweapons research stopped in 1969 (including at Ft. Detrick) as the grandparent stated.

It stopped being the 'central' bio research lab in US but still continued such research thereafter.

The only bio research done after 1969 anyhwere in the US was to find cures, treatments, and the like which is in the link you provided.

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