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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Replying to @BeijingPalmer
Your reasoning is flawed in two ways here. First, it would go through if there were regular novel virus pandemics, but they are rare, and so you can't make this inference. Second, lab accident release does not preclude zoonotic transfer as the original origin.
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Replying to @Pinboard
novel viruses are rare but there have been a lot! novel viruses that produce pandemics is a tiny category. on the second, sure, it's possible but ... why imagine an extra step that we have no evidence for, instead of just good old, has happened a bunch zoonotic transfer
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Replying to @BeijingPalmer
*Pandemics* are a tiny category so you can't reason back the way you did. On the second point, there's a virus lab that studies these viruses in the NYC-sized city where the pandemic started. This is not the remote wilds of Yunnan where weird animals abound. That's suggestive.
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Replying to @Pinboard @BeijingPalmer
A lot of this discussion implies that there's a perfectly well-documented zoonotic pathway that is being shouted down by conspiracists but that's not my understanding. The virus lab leak hypothesis answers the difficult question of how a weird zoonotic strain ended up in Wuhan
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Replying to @Pinboard
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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Replying to @BeijingPalmer @Pinboard
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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Replying to @BeijingPalmer
Chance brought it to a major city far from the habitat of the putative animal host, but one that happens to have a research facility for the study of exactly this family of viruses. If there's a trail of early disease leading out to someplace remote, we should track that down.
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It boils down to this: 1. Viruses jumping species happens a lot. 2. Lab leaks unfortunately happen a lot. 3. The evidence here is equivocal. 4. There may be enough new evidence obtainable to be dispositive.
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