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Comment by bobbylarrybobby | Hacker News Reader

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I appreciate the clarification, but please remember this is an unproven fact. There is reasonably convincing evidence for both the lab leak theory and the animal origin theory of COVID-19. In both cases, the only available evidence is circumstantial and indirect.

Fact? It's frankly discrediting to refer to the lab-leak hypothesis as such because GOF is definitely a huge risk vector that we should address even without high-confidence conclusions like "fact" regarding COVID's origin (which we don't currently and probably never will have anyway).

GOF is dangerous and should be stopped regardless of its causal relationship to COVID in particular.

I.e. if we were ever to find certain evidence COVID was not caused by GOF research, it would still be a very good idea to ban GOF research.

Lets also not forget the danger of pinning the blame rather than finding the facts. Its like watching people leave in the bottom of the third cause they're just that cocky about their pet theory winning

Yeah I've encountered people like, "hey well if we find out it was China then there should be consequences." Uhh like what? Are we going to invade a nuclear adversary who the whole world is 100% dependent on and with a population of 1.4 billion people to shut down their labs that maybe produced a virus?

The best payback for millions of accidental deaths: a billion purposeful ones all over the globe and very possibly the destruction of human civilization itself.

It is possible the reorganisation of supply chains post covid will be punishment enough in the long run. But a government that would unleash a biological attack on the world (not claiming they actually did, idk more than anyone else) is an existential threat itself. So an international effort of sanctions and pressure for regime change even at great risk might make sense, yes. A war would probably not risk ending civilisation more than a government which releases deadly bioweapons.

This is just fucking absurd. Are you serious suggesting its remotely possible the Chinese government would release a deadly bioweapon in their own city without even developing and distributing a vaccine first? Because I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but maybe I'm not following the same news sources that you are.

To be clear, I don't think they would develop a vaccine and virus first either, but the idea of "just release it lol" is pants on head crazy.

No, I don't think it is remotely likely they did it on purpose. But if it were proved absolutely they did, then I don't think retaliation would be off the table, which is what I responded to. The virus was most likely either natural or an accidental lab leak (I lean slightly towards latter). If anyone released it on purpose, which is unlikely, China's government would not even be my first bet...I am simply saying that if it were found a government entity anywhere did release a massively transmissible bioweapon on purpose, then I think a grave response would be warranted despite possible huge risks.

The extremely watered down version of the pants on head "they did it on purpose" theory I've heard is they didn't close outbound travel and did some other non-actions so that the rest of the world would be equally screwed in this zero sum game. Even that I find to be national-narcissism. Not everything China does is about you OK.

Its not actually zero sum. Some people just think in those terms.

(puts on tinfoil hat): the cia could have done it in order to display the over-reliance of supply chains on China causing a correction to more robustness. Plus they get to roll out some new tech and divert a bunch of money to their friends. (takes off tinfoil hat): bats are gross and labs are very leaky. hanlon's razor says something stupid happened.

And now we're to the next rung of "lab-leak hypothesis is utterly useless to talk about," which is when people start mixing in the deliberate lab-leak hypothesis.

Good god.

It is you who brought up that hypothetical of a deliberate leak (when referencing "people youve met), not me. It is veey unlikely it was deliberate. What probably was deliberate is the initial Chinese response, deleting data, not being open, other aspects of their response. For this there should be consequences, but of course they don't have to mean anything like war.

There's no evidence for a lab leak, while there's evidence supporting direct zoonotic transmission.

It hardly matters if there's evidence for or against.

Gain-of-function research is ludicrously dangerous anyway!

You need only three facts to take 100% of the action that would ever reasonably be taken:

1) We are doing GOF research that could produce something like (or worse than) COVID.

2) Humans and lab operations are fallible and mistakes will happen at high enough scale over long enough time periods.

3) With MRNA therapies and modern genomic science, GOF research likely provides almost zero benefit in the event of a new virus.

Just goes to show that you'll never stop the march of science.

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