thing that has happened a reasonable amount: lab accidents thing that has not happened before: lab accidents resulting in the release of a previously unknown virus thing that has happened a lot before: zoonotic transfer producing previously unknown viruses
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This is not a convincing argument at all that the virus was released from a lab. But it is absolutely a plausible candidate explanation in the same realm of probability as direct transfer, which is not how you are framing it. We need evidence to decide which (if either) is true
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I think the mistake here is in assuming "same realm of probability" because the evolutionary throughput of nature/in-the-wild dwarfs all laboratories on earth combined. Similarly total amount of catalogued and/or captive organisms and sequences is a sliver compared to nature.
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this is not a difficult question! the virus was detected in a major city *because it's a major city.* if it originated in the countryside, a handful of people getting sick would be noise.
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also, we *know about it in the first place* because some chance brought it to a major city. if it had burnt out in some mountain village - as lots of new viruses have done in unrecorded centuries - we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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It took 14 years to nail down exactly how zoonotic transfer of SARS happened, also from bats. It's normal not to have an answer to this right now.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9?fbclid=IwAR0BJ3kvY599gjeqaCqA-rIV4065OB9pG6k46-uY1-PQEoBpNHlo--pZfaA …
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Completely agree that not having the answer is the correct stance here.
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"How in the world would a communicable disease make its way to the transport hub of a vast, populous region?"
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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I'm really surprised this version of 'accidental lab release' didn't get any traction. The same guy takes off his PPE in the cave during their promotional videohttps://twitter.com/OSINTHK/status/1228921280243490816?s=19 …
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Something that it's weird to see get left out of the discussion is the high baseline rate of containment failures overall. In the US, according to DCD data, there were *two a week* in 2010 at high containment level facilities. These kinds of screw-ups are absolutely routine.
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“Why didn’t we see it until it hit a major population centre?” isn’t difficult to answer. It’s a function of host density (exponential takeoff), healthcare system sophistication/test availability (delayed identification), virus causing mild disease in most (occult spread).
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What luck that the coronavirus lab was right there to help identify it!
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