Comment by DoreenMichele

Comment by DoreenMichele 10 hours ago

Thank you for the context. My reasons for thinking it was credible have nothing to do with "math I didn't understand."

I actually think the larger problem is how it spread via travelers and that some of the actions taken nominally for purposes of controlling the spread actually made things worse. People were herded together in airports to be checked or some nonsense.

We may never know the origin story and I still don't know what to suggest in practical terms for preventing something similar from happening again, but I do think it needs to be addressed someplace other than "wear face masks and use hand sanitizer" while otherwise doing the same stuff that helped spread the virus around the globe.

tripletao 9 hours ago

I hadn't read your top-level comment here before I wrote mine, but I think you're responding to a different question from the one the authors intended to answer. The paper's language is rather muddy (even vs. the preprint), I assume because Cell required the authors to weaken their claims. The authors' comments to the popular media express their intent more clearly:

> "This paper slots into many other studies over the last few years that have been building the case for this very clearly being a natural virus that spilled over, very likely at the Wuhan seafood market," Kristian Andersen, co-corresponding author and professor at Scripps Research, told Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-shed-light-wildlife-spec...

This paper is about that initial introduction of the virus into humans, not about subsequent human-to-human spread. The authors are arguing that SARS-CoV-2 was "very clearly" natural, and thus not a research accident. This forms the basis for arguments that additional regulation of high-risk biological research is unnecessary, since it's much harder to say that with the possibility that such research just killed ~30M people.

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amy-petrik-214 6 hours ago

>This forms the basis for arguments that additional regulation of high-risk biological research is unnecessary >such research just killed ~30M people. It was a lab leak.. I should know. The Chinese government has admitted it in secret and let's say they have made agreements to make affected nations whole, behind closed doors and with diplomacy. This in turn has trickled into media and social media indirectly and directly from China inducements, making sure that the lab leak theory is both underplayed and framed in a "we can't know for sure" light. Textbook water muddying where all sides have something to gain. If it's any consolation the party responsible for screwing up and killing more people than Hitler, Genghis Khan, and Stalin combined.... they have been dealt with appropriately by China

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DoreenMichele 8 hours ago

I didn't assume it was some kind of rebuttal of my comment. I'm generally looking for genuine, meaty discussion.
The pandemic impacted the entire globe and a lot of internet comments were driven by fear, not genuine curiosity or interest in problem solving.
While I understand why that is, it doesn't go good places.
I am perfectly happy to accept your assertion that context suggests this is basically a politically motivated piece trying to dismiss claims that it originated in a lab.
I wrote a piece elsewhere that boils down to "Christmas travel brought us the global pandemic." Regardless of where the issue originated, it spread globally and didn't remain a local crisis thanks to global travel and how that gets handled.
I don't have answers but I don't like the way the whole thing was handled and it's nigh impossible to have meaningful discussion of that with anyone anywhere on the Internet.
And given the lack of quality discussion, it's impossible to develop a good framework for how to even see the problem space.
My marriage was a case of opposites attract and we were once shopping for a bookcase and I hated the bookcase he wanted and he hated the bookcase I wanted. So I finally had the sense to ask why he liked it.
I wanted something pretty. He wanted something sturdy that wouldn't collapse under the weight of the books.
Armed with this information, it was possible to find a bookcase we both liked.
Decades later, most internet discussion seems to still be stuck in that space before I asked that question where we both thought the other person was clearly an idiot. Only I don't know how to get past it online.

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