I find it continually frustrating that discussion of the "lab leak" hypothesis is tainted by the xenophobia and racism spread by Trump and others early on in the pandemic. This piece from Zeynep...
I find it continually frustrating that discussion of the "lab leak" hypothesis is tainted by the xenophobia and racism spread by Trump and others early on in the pandemic.
This piece from Zeynep Tufekci does a good job of going through what we actually know, without engaging in unfounded speculation, or any anti-Chinese bullshit.
A few things I learned from this that I hadn't heard before:
There seem to be lax safety practice for researchers working with bats, because of a belief that bat-human virus transmission is impossible. And yet...humans working with bats without proper PPE would provide a perfect environment for such a virus to evolve that ability.
In a 2018 blog post that was later removed, Dr. Shi said that the job was “not as dangerous” as everyone thought. “The chance of directly infecting humans is very small,” she wrote. “In most cases only ordinary protection will be taken,” unless a bat was known to carry a virus that might infect humans. She repeated something similar in a 2018 TED Talk-style video, according to The Washington Post, noting that “simpler protection” — illustrated with slides of unmasked or surgically masked colleagues with bare hands — was appropriate because it was believed that bat pathogens usually required an intermediate host.
The other thing I hadn't heard before is that in December 2019, the Wuhan CDC moved locations:
This March the W.H.O. reported that the Wuhan C.D.C. lab “moved on 2nd December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market.” The W.H.O. report said there were “no disruptions or incidents” during the move. Given the Chinese government’s lack of candor, that raises suspicions that lab samples, if not bats themselves, were being hauled around near the market at the time of the outbreak.
It seems thoroughly plausible to me that the workers doing the move, not being virus researchers themselves, may have been inadvertently exposed or mishandled bats or virus samples. Doesn't need to be a genetically engineered bioweapon as some of the more out-there lab leak theories think.
We'll never know the origin with 100% certainty...but I think one thing we should learn from this pandemic is that we should have much more international oversight and better safety standards of labs doing virology research. It should be possible to definitively rule out the "lab leak" hypothesis if a future pandemic emerges in Wuhan, or Atlanta, or anywhere else with a nearby research lab.
I don't think the move workers even need to be part of the conversation when Dr.Shi and her staff has demonstrated multiple times to have an absolutely cavalier attitude toward the infectability...
It seems thoroughly plausible to me that the workers doing the move, not being virus researchers themselves, may have been inadvertently exposed or mishandled bats or virus samples. Doesn't need to be a genetically engineered bioweapon as some of the more out-there lab leak theories think.
I don't think the move workers even need to be part of the conversation when Dr.Shi and her staff has demonstrated multiple times to have an absolutely cavalier attitude toward the infectability of the viruses in her lab. It's not like the movers are cracking open virus storage vials for a sniff when moving the lab. To me it sounds infinitely more likely that one of the many zero-PPE-wearing researchers carried it with them out of the lab than a move worker picked it up during the move.
I find it continually frustrating that discussion of the "lab leak" hypothesis is tainted by the xenophobia and racism spread by Trump and others early on in the pandemic.
This piece from Zeynep Tufekci does a good job of going through what we actually know, without engaging in unfounded speculation, or any anti-Chinese bullshit.
A few things I learned from this that I hadn't heard before:
There seem to be lax safety practice for researchers working with bats, because of a belief that bat-human virus transmission is impossible. And yet...humans working with bats without proper PPE would provide a perfect environment for such a virus to evolve that ability.
The other thing I hadn't heard before is that in December 2019, the Wuhan CDC moved locations:
It seems thoroughly plausible to me that the workers doing the move, not being virus researchers themselves, may have been inadvertently exposed or mishandled bats or virus samples. Doesn't need to be a genetically engineered bioweapon as some of the more out-there lab leak theories think.
We'll never know the origin with 100% certainty...but I think one thing we should learn from this pandemic is that we should have much more international oversight and better safety standards of labs doing virology research. It should be possible to definitively rule out the "lab leak" hypothesis if a future pandemic emerges in Wuhan, or Atlanta, or anywhere else with a nearby research lab.
I don't think the move workers even need to be part of the conversation when Dr.Shi and her staff has demonstrated multiple times to have an absolutely cavalier attitude toward the infectability of the viruses in her lab. It's not like the movers are cracking open virus storage vials for a sniff when moving the lab. To me it sounds infinitely more likely that one of the many zero-PPE-wearing researchers carried it with them out of the lab than a move worker picked it up during the move.