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The ripple effect of the Yan report that as I said before has done more to discredit the lab origins hypothesis than all of the peer-reviewed natural origins papers combined. What is new from this article is the interview of Dr Fauci, who seems to think lab origins are possible.. https://twitter.com/natgeo/status/1307320805571932160
.. but he asks does it matter whether it’s from a lab if the virus was not deliberately mutated, ie was taken from nature?
I think it does matter, if lab activities have a high risk of resulting in outbreaks, and would have implications for future pathogen sampling expeditions.
I think it does matter, if lab activities have a high risk of resulting in outbreaks, and would have implications for future pathogen sampling expeditions.
Let’s say a future expedition to Myanmar, Laos or Vietnam finds a virus that is even more closely related to SARS2 than RaTG13. It still doesn’t answer the question: how did that virus break out in Wuhan city, 1000s of miles away. Was it wildlife trade, travel, or lab activities?
By producing such a fantastical lab origins scenario, Yan has (unintentionally) provided a straw man for natural origins proponents to tell the media that lab origins are conspiracies theories - without qualifying that they are unable to rule out lab escape of a natural virus.
For example, in this case of an outbreak stemming from a vaccine factory leak, it is irrelevant whether the pathogen had been deliberately mutated. What matters is finding and correcting the leak to stop more people from being infected. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/asia/china-brucellosis-outbreak-intl-hnk/index.html
The media/scientists have to balance not panicking the public with being honest about what you know or don’t know. I’m worried that this could signal to rogue actors that as long as they use unpublished viruses in GOF work, no one can/will call them out. https://onezero.medium.com/how-do-we-know-if-a-virus-is-bioengineered-541ff6f8a48f
It could incentivize research groups around the world to become even less transparent and accountable for the pathogens they’re sampling. So that, in the case of lab escape, you couldn’t be held responsible as people don’t know about your private collection of natural viruses.
