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Comment by firesteelrain | Hacker News Reader

This only strengthens the argument that COVID-19 was a lab leak. Whether gain of function was used we don’t know. But if it happened in China, then likely this child was near a parent or someone on like public transportation who worked at the lab who inexplicably gave the virus to the child.

There really should be a UN level inspection regime on the order of like nuclear non proliferation that sets standards and audits labs. If it does not exist already

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I’ve been saying this since the beginning.

We know it had a leak; workers from the lab got sick with COVID symptoms a month before the initial cluster of infections.

At least some of the people from the initial cluster had no link with the Wuhan market.

COVID has only been found in human samples from the market, not in animal samples.

Conveniently all databases and files regarding the research got deleted and lost.

Instead of it originating from the lab 1km away from the wuhan market, researching exactly this particular form of sars, we have to believe a bat from 3500 miles away ended up on the market, infected an unknown intermediate species, without any trace of animal being infected, immediately jumped to people and became increasingly more infectious.

I fail to see how this could ever be more likely.

2/4 US Intelligence agencies agree that is was most likely a lab leak[1].

Unfortunately, it is impossible politically to police this area of research. All that would happen is it would happen in more secretive government labs. The only reason we know about it happening is because the research was published.

Its not like this problem is exclusive to China. The anthrax in the ~2001 anthrax attacks was linked to a strain from US Biological weapons research[2]. Different circumstances, but lack of regulation and moderation in this industry is clearly a problem that has potentially world-destroying possibilities. Covid left a huge mark and had less than a 1% fatality rate.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66005240 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

>Unfortunately, it is impossible politically to police this area of research

Just because it's hard to police something, doesn't mean we legalize it. Murder is hard to solve, in some cases. Lab leaks cause way more harm than several murders. Electric chair for mass murder is a proper sentence

>Electric chair for mass murder is a proper sentence

Only (at most) 28% of the countries in the world agree with this. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country?...

Do you think Putin shouldn't get the chair either?

I think the political impossibility was that somehow "lab leak" got coded as right/Trumpist. I seem to remember a lot of scientists signing a big open letter that it definitely wasn't a lab leak and to say otherwise was a potentially racist conspiracy theory.

Coming back from that is, in my opinion, the "politically" impossible bit.

A scientist who picks politics over science is no scientist. Simple as

Theoretically feasible, but practically impossible.

Please go to the CIA/DoD/FBI/(whatever the relevant chinese agencies are called) and tell them how to do their jobs so it will "never again" happen.

We actually do know gain of function research on coronaviruses was done in Wuhan, because there are public papers covering that research, which directly discuss gain of function techniques used. And those papers have Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, listed as an author. EcoHealth is the organization that the NIAID (Fauci’s agency) gave funding to for coronavirus research, and that grant is also public. This is all pretty easy to prove, but mainstream media did not investigate it at all, and social media banned discussion of it by independent journalists.

The big problem was that China denied any site visit to WIV for almost a year, probably so that no evidence would exist. And then the WHO, probably under the CCP and Fauci’s direction, rejected Trump’s nominations for a representative for the US to visit WIV, and instead sent Peter Daszak. Basically the WHO sent the person who should have been under investigation for causing the pandemic.

To be fair, there is a difference between "accidentally leaked from a lab" and "deliberately promoted later by MAGA brainless puppets (and other agents)".

We all had seen groups of people roaming to tear off the masks that other people were using and -assuring- the most wide spread possible. Has anybody questioned this people why? I can't see how Fauci would be guilty of that part, when people was doing exactly the opposite that he asked for.

Not saying they are right, but I believe the argument was that for most people it would only manifest as a regular flu, and make them immune, thereby making the virus run its course rather quickly.

Of course the official policy was the exact opposite; namely to flatten the curve to lower the load on healthcare.

Curve was flattened but restrictions continued for at least 2 years. That's beyond the initial flatten the curve. Restrictions got way out of control. Some people are still deathly afraid to this day.

Well you'd have to get the US to sign up and the US doesn't really sign up for stuff like that.

It was always a thoroughly plausible argument that was needlessly politicized. SARS leaked from a lab in China twice in the early 2000s, and both times the PRC admitted it. [1]

That said, every country in the world has regular lab leaks, yes, including America. There's a Wikipedia page with some choice examples. [2]

There was a 2022 leak of Polio in the Netherlands that was only caught by wastewater monitoring. [3]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/an-eradicated-form-o...

The US has chopped and changed a bit as to what it'll sign up to. It began a bioweapons program in 1943, then in the 1970s stopped that and ratified the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention international treaty. Then after the 9/11 attacks defence money got transferred to Fauci, probably so they could do iffy research covertly (Redfield talking about that https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=1225)

They can't really sign up for inspections of dangerous research when they are doing it themselves. Maybe things will change a bit post covid?

>Maybe things will change a bit post covid?

I doubt it. I firmly believe that one of the reasons that we've never had a serious investigation into the origins of Covid is that the trail would lead back to people and agencies in the US, which would be highly embarrassing.

That argument will never go anywhere because if C19 was a lab leak (which by the way I believe it was), it was a lab leak funded by Metabiota and Fauci, and those folks seem untouchable. 7 million deaths worldwide is a bit of a tough accusation to swallow even for the US or China.

The funding thing is unclear. Some money from the NIH did go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology but probably the bulk of their funding came from China and the DEFUSE grant got turned down.

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