one can almost successfully pseudo-converse with the text of a book; picking high-hanging technological fruit is becoming exponentially harder; pundit reliability falls over time; iphone security...
Chait and others who are fixated on the lab leak hypothesis are simple fools who cannot see the trees in the forest (or is it the forest amidst the trees). Lab leaks happen; it happened to me a long time ago when I was working at NIH and I had a flask of log phase whooping cough bacteria shatter dousing me. Fortunately, a 20 minute shower and double washing of the clothes I wore that day resolved the situation and neither I, my wife or our six month old daughter who had not received her first vaccine dose got sick. I also did a daily Covid-19 newsletter for the first nine months of the pandemic so I have some background on the subject (you can find the archives if you are an astute user of Google).
The Wuhan Lab has a long history of studying coronaviruses and researchers there have done lots of field work collecting new viral specimens from a number of natural sources. The researchers there are well trained (some did post-doctoral work here in the US) and there were multiple international collaborations. "If" the pandemic strain of Covid-19 came from a lab leak, that strain had to come from somewhere and that WOULD BE a natural source. So whether it was a lab leak or natural occurrence through inappropriate mixing of wild animals and people in a 'wet market' is really irrelevant. At some point the Covid-19 virus was going to infect somebody, cause illness and perhaps even a pandemic. Note that two earlier coronavirus events (MERS and the original SARS) happened totally outside the lab in nature, the same way that various influenza epidemics have. This stuff happens and will continue to happen and we need to stay vigilant.
Most readers of this Substack may not even know that there are small numbers of bubonic plague cases each year that are easily treated by antibiotics. There are lots of tick born diseases not to mention the fun ones Ebola and Marburg. Nature is a bitch and worrying about lab leak scenarios is a waste of time since most of the morbidity and mortality comes from natures own mixing bowl.
Chait and others who are fixated on the lab leak hypothesis are simple fools who cannot see the trees in the forest (or is it the forest amidst the trees). Lab leaks happen; it happened to me a long time ago when I was working at NIH and I had a flask of log phase whooping cough bacteria shatter dousing me. Fortunately, a 20 minute shower and double washing of the clothes I wore that day resolved the situation and neither I, my wife or our six month old daughter who had not received her first vaccine dose got sick. I also did a daily Covid-19 newsletter for the first nine months of the pandemic so I have some background on the subject (you can find the archives if you are an astute user of Google).
The Wuhan Lab has a long history of studying coronaviruses and researchers there have done lots of field work collecting new viral specimens from a number of natural sources. The researchers there are well trained (some did post-doctoral work here in the US) and there were multiple international collaborations. "If" the pandemic strain of Covid-19 came from a lab leak, that strain had to come from somewhere and that WOULD BE a natural source. So whether it was a lab leak or natural occurrence through inappropriate mixing of wild animals and people in a 'wet market' is really irrelevant. At some point the Covid-19 virus was going to infect somebody, cause illness and perhaps even a pandemic. Note that two earlier coronavirus events (MERS and the original SARS) happened totally outside the lab in nature, the same way that various influenza epidemics have. This stuff happens and will continue to happen and we need to stay vigilant.
Most readers of this Substack may not even know that there are small numbers of bubonic plague cases each year that are easily treated by antibiotics. There are lots of tick born diseases not to mention the fun ones Ebola and Marburg. Nature is a bitch and worrying about lab leak scenarios is a waste of time since most of the morbidity and mortality comes from natures own mixing bowl.
I need to now do some deep breathing exercises.