[nafix]

Hasn't there been lots of evidence in the past year suggesting that Covid was created in a lab? If we were to go down this path:

1. Covid created in a lab (not proven, but high enough probability to be considered a reasonable option):

https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-origins-hearing-wr...

2. If Covid was created in a lab, this de-facto means that Covid has potential as a biological weapon. I don't see how this could be framed any other way. Even if researching novel viruses is in good faith, it doesn't eliminate the reality that they will always have inherit value as biological weapons.

3. Can someone explain to me why there isn't an extremely aggressive campaign to pin down: a. Where it came from b. All parties involved in it's funding and creating c. Passing laws and sanctions to eliminate further continuation of said research. If it was done by China, then they should publicly be held accountable and action should be taken until that is done by all countries.

In this line of assuming Covid was created in a lab, it was one of the most devastating events to the human race in recent history. Many people died and many more people will likely suffer from effects of long covid. It completely warped the global economy.

Is there no attempt at pinning this down and holding people accountable because it can't be proven that it was lab created 100%?

There's a million lesser events every single day that seemingly get more time, money, and energy spent on holding people accountable for infinitely smaller mistakes, accidents, and wrong doings.

[Analemma_]

> If Covid was created in a lab, this de-facto means that Covid is a biological weapon.

That's not even remotely true. I agree that lab-leak is something like 60-70% likely, but even the lab-leakers are in unanimous agreement that it was an accidental release of GoF research, not a biological weapon. However poorly justified this research was, it's not the same thing as a bioweapon agent.

> Can someone explain to me why there isn't an extremely aggressive campaign to pin down: a. Where it came from b. All parties involved in it's funding and creating c. Passing laws and sanctions to eliminate further continuation of said research.

Because this would make China really, really angry, and for better or worse, that's considered not an acceptable cost for the benefit. But note that, very quietly, there have been some tacit admissions that lab leak is probably real. The Biden administration recently cut all funding to the WIV, for instance, which I don't think can be read any other way, so you actually are getting the c) you asked for. I think in the long run GoF research is very much on the chopping block as well; that seems to be the way the discourse is trending.

[wredue]

No. There has not been more evidence that Covid was lab created.

Republicans who already support conspiracy theorists suggest that because China did what china always does (suppress information), it must be a lab leak. The fact that china is suppressing information on Covid does not lend credibility to the conspiracy hypothesis. Suppressing information has been a Chinese government position for decades leading up to Covid and is not out of the ordinary behavior, so cannot be used as evidence that something is awry.

The next bit of evidence that people who already support the lab leak conspiracy state is that “ventilation was being upgraded”. Which. Okay? I mean. Is it credible that a chinese lab was not sufficiently scrubbed for ventilation workers? I have no answer, but it also doesn’t explain why the virus appears to have jumped multiple times in a somewhat short period at the wuhan markets.

All things considered, it is possible that the virus leaked from the lab. But even if that were the case, it doesn’t lend any credibility to the conspiracy, which makes some pretty radical claims (that it was intentionally leaked, that Pfizer paid for the leak, that it was a leftist plot to destroy half the population for some reason, that it was a precursor to injecting people with 5g nanobots, etc)

Even if the conspiracy group accidentally landed on the correct place that the virus originated (and that’s suspect. The evidence is conspiracy oriented itself), it doesn’t lend any credibility to it being a plot to kill everyone with a killer vaccine.

[ricksunny]

I haven't downvoted, but origins is off-topic from this thread, so the downvotes it appears you're in the course of receiving will only serve to stigmatize that topic in the HN commentariat context. If you're looking for leads into l̶a̶c̶k̶ o̶f̶ origins investigations, recommend browsing through US Right to Know, and the House Select subcomittee on coronavirus origins - link (partisan, unfortunately) https://www.twitter.com/covidselect

Disclaimer: I help with BiosafetyNow (which is also another source for content, advocacy & activism on the topic).

[MajimasEyepatch]

No, there is little evidence suggesting it was created in a lab. There is evidence that it may have "leaked" from a lab that studies coronaviruses, but that doesn't mean it was engineered. The leading lab leak theory states that it could have been a sample collected from the wild, e.g. a bat colony, that was taken to the lab, and then someone at the lab was exposed.

US intelligence agencies have clearly stated that they do not believe that SARS-CoV2 was created by the Chinese government and that it should not be considered a biological weapon. While I understand why people doubt US intelligence sometimes, I can't see what incentive they would have to go easy on China in this case.

I also have no idea how you intend to hold a sovereign nation, let alone a borderline superpower, accountable for something that can't even be proved.

[Workaccount2]

1. Very well could have been.

2. Virologists have legitimate reasons for wanting to study more dangerous forms of viruses before they appear in the wild.

3. China.

[TacticalCoder]

> 1. Covid created in a lab

There's not lot of evidence of that. There's lots of evidence (including at first a massive coverup, with the help of complicit media -- media who now changed their tune) that it leaked from a lab.

If it leaked from a lab (which now many officials, including US officials, says is the most likely possibility: so now there's a >50% chance that it was a lab leak according to officials [0]), the other question that remains is: is it an unmodified sample that leaked or one on which GoF research had already been applied?

[0] which is quite funny because if you dared to say so when the outbreak happened, you were labelled a conspiracy theorist just as crazy as those believing the world is run by lizards taking human forms

[SomeCallMeTim]

What would that even accomplish?

And no, even if it were created as part of vaccine or coronavirus research, that would not equate to it being a biological weapon. That's an absolutely unjustified leap. Do you know how virus research works? Clearly not. They still have smallpox viruses sitting around in labs. I don't know if there is any active research related to improving the smallpox vaccine, but if there were, and there were a release, in what way could you possibly classify vaccines as biological weapons?

But back to the original point: WHY? There is ample evidence that this particular lab had lax safety protocols that might have resulted in a leak of the virus. There is also evidence that similar viruses existed in the wild animal population of the area. They may or may not have been studying one of those viruses in the lab, but that alone doesn't prove where it first infected a human.

But say you have incontrovertible proof. What does that change?

People who died will remain dead. People with long COVID will remain ill. We can rattle sabers at China, but they're likely to continue to deny it was their fault. So what does happen? We can extrapolate from the past:

1. People of Chinese (or any east Asian) ancestry will be treated badly or even killed in twisted "revenge" fantasies of various idiots around the world.

2. The saber rattling could escalate to actual hot war, and more people would die.

3. Say I'm wrong and China does admit the lab screwed up. What then? They'll fire and/or execute people who were responsible. And...? It's not like they're going to pay compensation to everyone who lost a loved one around the world. They'll perform some political theater, and after a news cycle it will fade away.

I don't see an upside unless you're hoping for #3 and think that killing or jailing a few more people will somehow even the scales? Killing or jailing people for incompetence seems cruel and unusual to me. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.