I don’t see how it would be possible to determine what happened, with any kind of reasonable certainty that is.
Lots of circumstantial “facts”, but gauging if it is incidental or accidental that’s just hard or impossible.
And we won’t ever have access to the information that could prove if it leaked from a lab, that information is now lost, and telling the difference between “The Chinese government burned it” or “Did not happen, so no information exists” seems to be an impossible [1]task.
So that leave us with could we get enough evidence for a natural origin? That also seems unlikely, not in the least because this happened in China, and they purposefully withheld information and still do, and likely also bungled everything to the point that even if you got 100% access, you still couldn’t make the case with sufficient confidence.
We could ask the NSA for record copies from all the BSL-3 and 4 labs in and around Wuhan. But I doubt they would even respond with a “No such records exist”
We could ask the NSA for record copies from all the BSL-3 and 4 labs in and around Wuhan.
The virus most likely leaked from the gain-of-function experiments that they were doing under BSL-2 and not from the BSL-3 or BSL-4 labs.
The NSA is not in the habit of telling the world how they surveil people and that’s what they would need to do so to do that publically.
We however know a bit about the results of surveillance data from the letter that the NIH sent the EcoHealthAlliance.
Disclose and explain out-of-ordinary restrictions on laboratory facilities, as suggested, for example, by diminished cell-phone traffic in October 2019, and the evidence that there may have been roadblocks surrounding the facility from October 14-19, 2019.
Diminished cell-phone traffic seems the kind of thing that the NSA picked up.
When it comes to that strain of data, the House Committee could let whoever decided to do the training exercise on the Coronavirus to testify.
Asking them whether they were aware of the unusual activity in Wuhan and whether it made them decide on Coronavirus might provide interesting answers.
The virus most likely leaked from the gain-of-function experiments that they were doing under BSL-2 and not from the BSL-3 or BSL-4 labs.
Third scenario: bat-to-researcher transmission during field work at bat caves or from the bat repository/colony or unaltered bat viruses at the labs in Wuhan.
I don’t think any evidence of that nature would push you into any certainty.
Personally I think it did leak from a lab, and I have held that belief for some time. But that does not mean that I am in any way confident it is right, its just the least uncertain explanation as far as I can can gauge.
And the amount of data I would need to go from “very uncertain” to “very certain”, is something I won’t get access to.
After thinking about it for a while, I realized that it didn’t matter. Lab leak or not, gain of function is what I should worry about.
Obviously if I had evidence that GoF and a leak was the root cause of the pandemic, that would be helpful if I was to try and influence people to do something about GoF. Unfortunately reality seems to be uncooperative.
I don’t see how it would be possible to determine what happened, with any kind of reasonable certainty that is.
Lots of circumstantial “facts”, but gauging if it is incidental or accidental that’s just hard or impossible.
And we won’t ever have access to the information that could prove if it leaked from a lab, that information is now lost, and telling the difference between “The Chinese government burned it” or “Did not happen, so no information exists” seems to be an impossible [1]task.
So that leave us with could we get enough evidence for a natural origin? That also seems unlikely, not in the least because this happened in China, and they purposefully withheld information and still do, and likely also bungled everything to the point that even if you got 100% access, you still couldn’t make the case with sufficient confidence.
We could ask the NSA for record copies from all the BSL-3 and 4 labs in and around Wuhan. But I doubt they would even respond with a “No such records exist”
The virus most likely leaked from the gain-of-function experiments that they were doing under BSL-2 and not from the BSL-3 or BSL-4 labs.
The NSA is not in the habit of telling the world how they surveil people and that’s what they would need to do so to do that publically.
We however know a bit about the results of surveillance data from the letter that the NIH sent the EcoHealthAlliance.
Diminished cell-phone traffic seems the kind of thing that the NSA picked up.
When it comes to that strain of data, the House Committee could let whoever decided to do the training exercise on the Coronavirus to testify.
Asking them whether they were aware of the unusual activity in Wuhan and whether it made them decide on Coronavirus might provide interesting answers.
Third scenario: bat-to-researcher transmission during field work at bat caves or from the bat repository/colony or unaltered bat viruses at the labs in Wuhan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html
I don’t think any evidence of that nature would push you into any certainty.
Personally I think it did leak from a lab, and I have held that belief for some time. But that does not mean that I am in any way confident it is right, its just the least uncertain explanation as far as I can can gauge.
And the amount of data I would need to go from “very uncertain” to “very certain”, is something I won’t get access to.
After thinking about it for a while, I realized that it didn’t matter. Lab leak or not, gain of function is what I should worry about.
Obviously if I had evidence that GoF and a leak was the root cause of the pandemic, that would be helpful if I was to try and influence people to do something about GoF. Unfortunately reality seems to be uncooperative.