This is a good point. I can’t help but see in this situation another example in a long line of skepticism in the power of evolution. It’s as if we don’t think nature is smart enough to create a virus capable of causing a pandemic, so it must have been some evil genius in a lab. And yet contrary evidence is everywhere, from bats developing sonar millions of years before the Americans to our frequent failures in stopping flu outbreaks. Spillovers happen. With or without the aid of close contact in a lab, they happen.
Like so many things it started with Trump. Trump blamed it on China and lab leak so his supporters and republicans, even ones that don’t support him, have an affinity to this argument. Then liberals automatically reject lab leak theory because it as advanced by Trump.
I look at it this way, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. A lab these types of viruses are studied is located in the area of the original out break. While the lab may not have been tinkering with the genetics of the virus we know labs routinely experiment with different variants of viruses by naturally having many many viruses replicated in a effort to have new strains emerge which are then studied. Compare that to a roll of the evolutionary dice roll in a wet market where a new virus emerges and spreads to enough people rapidly it goes worldwide in weeks. Nothing to do with politics here for me. Your observations are not inaccurate for many however.
A virus like this has never come out of a lab before this. Quite a few dangerous viruses have come from wild animals. The odds favor this one having come from an animal.
The Jon Stewart argument. I think that argument has cause and effect backwards. The lab is based in Wuhan because it is proximate to locations with wet markets and other areas that have infected wild animals. The location is not likely an accident. So by your logic any disease that originates from the Wuhan area you are going to assume is a lab leak.
Simplest answer is often the correct one not to mention this particular lab had a long history of sloppy safety. There are other bio labs in China, are they all located near wet markets? I also recall reading a while back bat coronavirus samples were collected from caves far from Wuhan and transported to that lab for study in 2017/2018. It’s been quite some time so I don’t recall the specific source.
The most egregious political interference in the CDC came from the Trump administration not from Democrats. ‘We Were Helpless’: Despair at the C.D.C. as the Pandemic Erupted
Couldn’t it be both? The scientist took a specimen from the wet market and it escaped. That could explain how it got overseas so quickly. It hitched a ride on a scientist going to a conference somewhere.
Amazing how quickly the Overton Window shifted. It went FROM prohibiting suggestions of lab leak on pain of censure TO required to posit lab leak on pain of censure.
Yes, something like this point was nicely made by @VAg8r1 that even a lab leak likely required a natural spillover event. I hadn’t considered a specific connection between the wet market and the lab. My guess would be that their lab protocols wouldn’t smile on such a thing, but if the market represented an easy way to obtain samples, perhaps some extracurricular activity was possible.
I have largely avoided the thread because it was always going to be political. But I would trust the scientists over the politicians (especially a low confidence political assessment), and most of what I have read still had the scientists believing it came from the wet market. So that’s where I’ll stay for now.
It is going to be almost impossible to get a 100 percent absolute true answer here. At some point it’s going to be best guess. Did it originally originate in a bat or a raccoon dog or maybe an unknown animal? These are things to study and learn from. Nobody learns anything from Facebook or YouTube.
Lab Leak is nothing more than a back door effort to keep the narrative alive. Anything not to admit that the US worked hand in hand with China, Russia and the rest of the world to frighten its citizens into supine terror. There are no heroes here. This is the world we live in.
A study has likely figured out the animal that the transmission came from, and even potentially the specific stalls in the wet market it started in. Have we found the 'animal origin' of Covid? Have we found the 'animal origin' of Covid?
