We've Been Talking About the Lab-Leak Hypothesis All Wrong

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/opinion/lab-leak-energy-department-covid.html

No paywall
https://archive.is/UkPdg

Imagine yourself, if you can, in the months before the Covid-19 pandemic. Imagine being told then that a novel virus would emerge in China that would then spread around the world, infecting much of the global population, by some estimates killing more than 20 million people, and upending much of humanity’s social, political and economic life along the way.

Imagine you were then told that some experts believed that this new virus raised questions about the safety of certain kinds of scientific research, in which virologists collected rare viruses out in the wild, brought them to facilities in or near cities and in some cases tinkered with them there to help prevent or better respond to future pandemics.

Imagine that none of this was presented to you in partisan or nationalistic terms. Imagine that Donald Trump had not been president and that nobody used the term “bioweapon.” And then imagine that a question was put to you: What would the chances have to be that a lab accident was the origin of the pandemic to justify a broad and public conversation about the safety of that research?

What would you say? That a lab-leak theory would have to be proved definitively, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to prompt such a pointed conversation? Or that it would have to be simply likelier than not — a “preponderance of evidence” standard, as lawyers sometimes put it — to generate a global reckoning over lab safety procedures and the wisdom of doing research, called gain-of-function, that can make pathogens more dangerous?

*snip*

[RockRaven]

1. What ruined this avenue of discussion from the beginning -- and remains unruined -- is that

TFG/MAGATs/Repukes don't actually want to have a useful discussion about microbiology lab research, and personal protective equipment, and safety protocols, and international rules/standards and collaborations...

They want to scream "not it!" and dodge-blame/pin-blame-on-others. Half of the country -- and half of the media, or more -- haven't got the slightest bit of interest in anything other than assigning blame to someone else. And as a consequence, the other half of the country -- and other half, or less, of the media -- is preoccupied with refuting their voluminous bullshit rather than addressing whatever few things they say which may be accidentally coincident with reality.

If it was a lab leak, name one fucking Repuke who is talking about that in public because they arrived at that conclusion only after a thoughtful, rational review of all available information and have formulated -- by the same mechanism -- public policies to address the issues exposed by this event.

Yeah, there may be something true about some of the lab leak stuff. Yeah, there may be something that could possibly be done about that. Good fucking luck getting anything useful done if any Republican can possibly get in the way (which is usually always)!

[Celerity]

2. A big diffrence with many, many of the MAGAts, both early in and now, is that they claim is wasn't

a leak, but a wiful release of a bioweapon, plus they ludicrously screech it was done with the aid of Fauci, the NHS, the CDC, Soros, Bill Gates, the 'woke' military, the Dems, and the left in general.

They are both bad faith actors and lunatic broth-drinking conspiracy theorists. It goes without saying they are also evil motherfuckers.

[NJCher]

3. +1

I have always regretted the damage their “position” takes on public discourse. It has deprived us of so much. It is like constantly having to deal with an errant child, but in this situation it is deliberate and very, very damaging.