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Comment by tkiolp4 | Hacker News Reader

Let me play the game. If covid was caused by a lab leak, I think the right question to ask is: who benefits (did benefit) by the leak? And remember that number of dead people is something that governments don’t care about (i.e., governments easily go into war every now and then: it’s clear they couldn’t care less about civilians).

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It's simpler. Tools x labs x pathogens and funding x risk of escape = risk.

ALL categories are going up. Ergo, risk is going up exponentially.

No need for conspiracies. Just a proper parsing of the words "lab leak"

How do you embrace "lab leak" without also embracing a conspiracy to conceal the virus's origins after it escaped into the wild?

Or has the term "conspiracy" just been fully redefined to mean "a thing that can't happen" at this point?

Even if we accepted the idea that "governments don't care", it's still made up of people that act out of self interest. How would they protect themselves and their loved ones from the same fate that they so callously cast upon the rest of us? I think Hanlon's Razor applies: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect"

> How would they protect themselves and their loved ones from the same fate that they so callously cast upon the rest of us?

A good question, but worth noting that they do seem to have in fact done so. I struggle to think of a single-higher up of any significance who was felled by SARS-CoV-2, despite the fact so many of them are octogenarians. Colin Powell maybe, but his blood cancer was clearly the more proximate cause of his death. A few in Iran, but, well.

Both the FBI and Energy Dept are saying it was an unintended leak.

> who benefits (did benefit) by the leak

The worlds billionaires, combined, made more money in 2020-2022 than the previous 20 years combined. When there’s that much money involved, one must be a little suspicious.

Another question you should ask: Who insisted it almost certainly wasn’t a lab leak, and who possibly had motives to deny it?

I dunno actually, who has actually been arguing that it couldn’t be a lab leak? I’ve generally seen people arguing the position: there’s no evidence for it having been a leak. This second hand story about a low-confidence classified report doesn’t push me much in either direction. It is possible, though.

What do we do if it leaked? Dangerous thing are handled in labs. We should double check the handling protocols based on the unknown possibility that it was a leak, just to be safe. I bet there are more dangerous things than COVID in all sorts of labs.

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