Louis Gossett Jr
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2012
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I think the problem with it came from a lab is it gives oxygen to the more crazy conspiracy shit like it is man made or a bio weapon so if you give an inch those dumb as shit people will run with it. The ideas of where it came from are
1. It’s a natural acquired event, the host animal is a bat, the intermediate animal is undetermined and just because that is so doesn’t make it any less likely, for other coronaviruses that jumped species it took a significant period of time to determine where it came from, for some viruses it actually has never been 100% confirmed. The chances that a population of billions encounters an infected animal is a high probability. As stated the genetics are highly homologous to bats.
2. The virus is a natural virus that is found in bats, those samples were collected, brought to the lab, and that virus managed to infect someone working with it. Most probable lab theory because samples from bats are collected all the time, accidents happen because of lack of training, etc…
3. The virus is a natural virus that was experimented on doing gain of function research. That is where you experiment to determine if a virus can become more virulent, less virulent, sequences to look for in nature, etc.. It is done all the time for flu, about 10 years ago a pandemic flu was created at the CDC and I believe University of Wisconsin, the research was buried so that people couldn’t use it for bad purposes.
Gain of function research for a bat coronavirus would be a pain in the ass because to do it you usually pass a virus back and forth between a host, ferrets for flu, not easy between bat species so once again would need an intermediate host, not easy between snakes, and don’t think enough pangolins even exist in the world. This also then requires poor lab practices, an accident and escape. Additionally, this research would be critical for development of a vaccine, treatments, etc… yet Chinas vaccine relatively sucks so if they had this information they were really dumb with it.
4. The virus is the China virus bio weapon designed to take down, I don’t know Trump I guess who the fuck knows. It would be the shittiest bioweapon ever designed. It has no hallmarks of direct genetic manipulation. For example if I was going to bioengineer a bat coronavirus to infect humans would I use a viral spike binding protein that binds to the ace receptor kinda poorly or better idea I just take the ace receptor ligand and put it into the virus for 100% efficient binding. This is the dumb you breath to life by giving any ground to the lab idea
With all that says what actually changes response wise, pretty much only the last option really matters because thats intentional, but it’s also the least likely crazy as fuck idea with no proof. All other options have no effect for you day to day, it would be better regulation of markets, animal human interactions, monitoring and global warning systems. Option 2-3 would be changes to laboratory practices and the operation of research labs.
Also for any option global health security is something that requires constant investment be it at a country level to simply monitoring of disease status of individuals presenting with unknown symptoms. Natural infections will emerge more often through climate change and population growths. Technology advancements have also made bioweapon ideas more probable but it doesn’t need to be a global power like China, it can be a guy in a garage with 50 pet store ferrets. Hell there was a study a few years ago where a group recreated smallpox by ordering chunks of DNA sequences from different companies then linking together and putting into cells.
1. It’s a natural acquired event, the host animal is a bat, the intermediate animal is undetermined and just because that is so doesn’t make it any less likely, for other coronaviruses that jumped species it took a significant period of time to determine where it came from, for some viruses it actually has never been 100% confirmed. The chances that a population of billions encounters an infected animal is a high probability. As stated the genetics are highly homologous to bats.
2. The virus is a natural virus that is found in bats, those samples were collected, brought to the lab, and that virus managed to infect someone working with it. Most probable lab theory because samples from bats are collected all the time, accidents happen because of lack of training, etc…
3. The virus is a natural virus that was experimented on doing gain of function research. That is where you experiment to determine if a virus can become more virulent, less virulent, sequences to look for in nature, etc.. It is done all the time for flu, about 10 years ago a pandemic flu was created at the CDC and I believe University of Wisconsin, the research was buried so that people couldn’t use it for bad purposes.
Gain of function research for a bat coronavirus would be a pain in the ass because to do it you usually pass a virus back and forth between a host, ferrets for flu, not easy between bat species so once again would need an intermediate host, not easy between snakes, and don’t think enough pangolins even exist in the world. This also then requires poor lab practices, an accident and escape. Additionally, this research would be critical for development of a vaccine, treatments, etc… yet Chinas vaccine relatively sucks so if they had this information they were really dumb with it.
4. The virus is the China virus bio weapon designed to take down, I don’t know Trump I guess who the fuck knows. It would be the shittiest bioweapon ever designed. It has no hallmarks of direct genetic manipulation. For example if I was going to bioengineer a bat coronavirus to infect humans would I use a viral spike binding protein that binds to the ace receptor kinda poorly or better idea I just take the ace receptor ligand and put it into the virus for 100% efficient binding. This is the dumb you breath to life by giving any ground to the lab idea
With all that says what actually changes response wise, pretty much only the last option really matters because thats intentional, but it’s also the least likely crazy as fuck idea with no proof. All other options have no effect for you day to day, it would be better regulation of markets, animal human interactions, monitoring and global warning systems. Option 2-3 would be changes to laboratory practices and the operation of research labs.
Also for any option global health security is something that requires constant investment be it at a country level to simply monitoring of disease status of individuals presenting with unknown symptoms. Natural infections will emerge more often through climate change and population growths. Technology advancements have also made bioweapon ideas more probable but it doesn’t need to be a global power like China, it can be a guy in a garage with 50 pet store ferrets. Hell there was a study a few years ago where a group recreated smallpox by ordering chunks of DNA sequences from different companies then linking together and putting into cells.
