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Comment by onethought | Hacker News Reader

Arresting Drs talking about a possible repeat of SARS is something China clearly wouldn’t want out unless it absolutely had to. The effects on markets, general panic etc are not nothing issues.

Later discovering they really did have a problem and it was even worse than SARS going to a full lockdown at the main crossroads city right before Chinese New Year (the largest human migration event).

The motivation feels very normal/predicable for China. And also similar to their SARS response. So is SARS also an intentional self inflicted lab leak? And is MERS a secret belt and road initiative?

Seems weird there is a conspiracy about the third deadly coronavirus but not the first two... or the common cold for that matter? Where did that come from and was that a lab leak?

Whole thing smells of lazy arm chair enquiry with a touch of xenophobia

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I don’t know why any mention of a lab escape automatically triggers people to start shouting “xenophobe”.

There’s nothing particularly new about lab escapes, they happen quite frequently. And given the presence of a bio-lab studying coronaviruses just a short distance from the site of the first reported cases, why would any rational person not consider that as a possibility?

I don’t think you even have to go down the “bio weapon” route here. It could be as simple as a worker infecting themselves with a natural sample unwittingly. Following your logic then, I think China would be incredibly unlikely to admit a lab escape of a natural sample now given the devastation it has caused. It’d be a huge loss of face and draw questions towards China’s competence.

In the context of the rest of my comment SARS, MERS... so we know that deadly variants of coronavirus break into the human population. But THIS one is the lab leak...

If this did come from a lab, it was an accident. I think it’s unreasonable to consider the spread in China intentional, as there’s no reasonable motivation to do so.

The main difference from SARS is we know there is a virology lab in Wuhan researching coronaviruses right across from the wet market considered the epicenter.

I don’t know enough about the reaction to SARS to know how similar it was, but my understanding was they were similarly draconian internally, and were trying to keep it relatively quiet, but I am not aware of any arrests of doctors early on in SARS outbreaks.

The plausibility of Covid escaping from a lab does not make all viruses plausibly escaped from labs. The reason it’s more plausible for covid are the initial reactions and the proximity of the epicenter to a virology lab studying covid.

I fail to see how it’s xenophobic to consider the lab leak plausible. If anything a natural spread relies on the assumption that the wet market was engaged in unhygienic practices and that someone foreign may have eaten an infected bat.

Setting the actual tragic pandemic to one side.

It is not true that there are never going to be reasonable motivations to deploy a virus:-

It could be viewed as a tool to alter population demographics in an ageing society.

It might be deployed against an adversary.

It might be used to reduce the human population to avoid a predicted ecological disaster.

There are probably dozens of very reasonable motivations.

That’s a stronger claim than I was making; I don’t think it’s categorically unreasonable to assume there’s motivation to intentionally release a virus.

I think it’s unreasonable to think there was a motivation to intentionally release Covid.

I don’t think there’s reasonable motivation given when and where the outbreak started, how the virus works, China’s response, etc.

I think the particular scenarios you’re painting are also quite extreme/unlikely, so any claim that a virus was released intentionally would require extraordinary evidence in most cases/I’d rarely entertain that hypothesis. There are less drastic and risky ways with less blowback of dealing with all of those issues, even if you assume a very capable bad actor and ignore the normal and expected amount of incompetence and error.

Right, I agree with you completely on Covid.

> as there’s no reasonable motivation to do so. China is the only major economy to have done well during the pandemic. Not saying that it was intentional but it seems somewhat naive to say there is no reasonable motivation to do so.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume they knew that would be the outcome, or that they would release it intentionally on their own population to affect the rest of the world.

“Right across from”?

If you are familiar with Wuhan, you’d know you are talking crap. The virology lab is on the East side of the river in the University sector of the city.

The market is on the west side of the river and is in the cbd sector of the city.

We are talking 10km distance apart, with a huge river between. And there are many other wet markets between that would more likely service the community closer to the lab.

That particular wet market takes a lot of shipments straight off boats and from outside the city.

But sure. If by “right across” you meant “on the other side of the CBD, across the largest river in China, and on the opposite side of the largest University campus in China” then I agree.

Map for others to reference and judge whether “right across” is a reasonable description.

https://www.breakingasia.com/wp-content/uploads/Wuhan-Virolo...

A virology lab studying the human transmissibility of bat corona viruses ~10km away from the purported epicenter of the outbreak of a bat related coronavirus is notable.

Epicentre of the outbreak != the origin. But sure... let just pretend that Wuhan is a single lab, a single road going 10km and a wet market.

How come no one at the lab? Or the University got it? How come initially it was Hankou (west side) that was locked down and not Wuchang (east side)?

Surely the folks leaking (given the equivalent of the cdc is in the same location) it would have thought of that and locked it down first?

Sorry that facts keep spoiling the juicy narrative.

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