![]() ![]() If anything should escape from a lab, would it be something old or something new? Hard to quantify, but the enthusiasm of studying something entirely new and the lack of knowledge as to the appropriate biosafety level somewhat adjust the probability towards one of the options. The concept “novel pathogen developed in a lab” is, well, novel, so we don’t have historical data, but if every third escape is that of a novel pathogen we have 1:1 prior odds. So the event “epidemic caused by a novel pathogen” happens about four times per century, while “escape of a pathogen from a lab” happens 12 times per century. The list doesn’t include Ebola, I wonder why-maybe it doesn’t cause epidemics per se, being so lethal? Out of those 51, there seem to be only four novel pathogens: HIV, Kuru and vCJD (the two are related) and possibly Nipah (could it have been present for a long time but only discovered recently?). ![]() Which is interesting, because it’s only 51 in the entire 20th century. So is that research smart preparation or a self-fulfilling prophecy?Īs for the relevance to Covid 19, I don't think I could personally explain it well enough, but there have been several prominent scientists (most noteably/publicly Bret Weinstein) who have explained the ways that the evolutionary path Covid-19 took once jumping to humans appeared to be extremely unnatural, and several properties of the virus appeared to directly contradict its drive to propagate. The second and more obvious problem is that human beings will be working with viruses that have been deliberately made more dangerous, and if someone makes a mistake, or suffers a PPE failure, or otherwise allows the virus to "escape" you're Basically guaranteeing that the worst-case scenario actually happens. The first is that the worst-case-scenario seems to rarely occur naturally, and while it's always good to be prepared in case it does, many times our imagination exceeds the virus' natural ability to evolve or mutate. There are two theoretical problems to this. ![]() The idea being that by studying how it would evolve in a worst-(for humans)-case scenario, the better prepared you can be in the event that the virus ever naturally makes the leap to humans and begins mutating. So I think covid appeared naturally, but I also think if it didn't, we probably wouldn't find out.īasically GoF testing involves taking a naturally occurring virus and either exposing it to specific stimuli or altering it's genetic make-up in order to force rapid evolutionary changes. But even that can probably be accomplished without a public announcement, through a combination of relying on China's selfish motives (they weren't spared by the virus) and secret negotiations. The remaining motivation is deterrence - to motivate China to either stop such research entirely or at least to be more careful. What's left? Economic sanctions? Those are going to hurt everyone who participates the overall effect might be more harmful to the USA than to China. (Even if China were willing to pay, the cost of the epidemic is more than it could realistically afford.) And military action is out of the question. But China isn't going to pay reparations - you'd be lucky to get a token gesture. If you make it public, voters will demand action against China. The CIA presents you with incontrovertible evidence that the virus was accidentally released from a Chinese lab. Maybe I'm going to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think that if covid were man-made, it would be in the best interests of both China and other countries to conceal that fact. More by Scott AlexanderĪ reader has created a web app web that allows SSC readers to place themselves on a map. Regular threadsĪ blog by Scott Alexander about human cognition, politics, and medicine. A user also maintains an unofficial registry of bans. When making a claim that isn't outright obvious, you should proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.įeel free to report comments or message the mods with your thoughts. Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize. See the Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite comment policy: comments should be at least two of. Companion subreddit for Slate Star Codex.
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