How is that relevant to SARS-CoV-2? There is no evidence that it was genetically modified, or ever in the lab to begin with. It’s also a political hack job from a Republican politician, not a release from a credible scientific source.
The safety concerns dealt with the type of research, not the safety protocols for bench work. It certainly has nothing to do with air handlers.
The May 20, 2020, letter from the NIH is a “political hack job?”
The webpage you linked to that selectively quoted the letter from the NIH is a political hack job.
And all of this is irrelevant since there is no evidence that the virus came from a lab, much less the lab in Wuhan. It’s a red herring. They could have had the worst safety conditions in the world and it still isn’t evidence that the virus came from their lab.
Intelligence agencies still disagree with you, but you know that.
You deny that is evidence, and we disagree on that point.
So we should agree to disagree.
Science works from data, not opinions, but you know that.
In science, conclusions aren’t evidence. Perhaps in the non-scientific arena of online conspiracy theories an opinion is evidence, but not in science. Nullius in verba.
It is interesting that this means I should not take your word for anything you say.
To live in a world in which an individual can know nothing until he has analyzed all the evidence himself is untenable in modern society.
And I am sure, whether you can admit it or not, that you believe certain things without analyzing all the evidence.
We rely on the expertise of others in all manner of areas.
In short, you set up a standard you cannot meet. And in most areas of your life you don’t try to meet that standard.
No, you shouldn’t. You should look at the data.
If you would look at just some of the data it would be an improvement.
You are projecting.
I have looked at the data. I have read the papers where the data is presented. Again, you seem to be projecting your own refusal to look at the evidence onto me.
Since the topic of letters warning of safety issues, here’s a paper warning about the dangers of wet markets, and how those wet markets gave rise to the spread of SARS-CoV-1 in 2002.
Some have asked us to believe that it’s just a coincidence that a virus leaked from a lab just happened to result in the spread to large number of humans in a wet market. We have known for a long time that wet markets are a prime source of zoonotic spillover, including the spillover of a coronavirus from civets to humans in a wet market.
I wasn’t writing about Covid. I was making the point that you accept and trust the opinions of others in a wide variety of areas.
Of course, you are free to claim you check all the data on every area of life and don’t accept anything that you have not personally reviewed all the evidence.
Such a policy would make it very difficult for you at the doctor’s office, at church, when your appliances or cars breakdown, house repair, at tax time, and a wide range of other areas.
“Take no one’s word for it” would be a tough row to hoe in every aspect of your life.
People always have a lack of knowledge in some areas and must rely on expert opinion.
Even when you see evidence, you are taking someone’s word that the evidence is real.
So your “take no one’s word for it” is an unsustainably exhausting fantasy.
Provisionally, sure. If I think one of those experts is wrong or if there is a debate that interests me, then I dig into the evidence. If you are motivated enough to claim a grand conspiracy to cover up a lab leak that resulted in a massive global pandemic, then you had better have your ducks in a row.
Also, the experts are saying it was a zoonotic spillover event. This conclusion isn’t shared by 100% of scientific experts, but it is certainly the overwhelming majority. The only places where the lab leak conspiracy seems to have the most life is amongst non-experts and people who feel they can benefit from the political controversy.
My biology prof back in university said the next big pandemic would come from a wet market – so we’ve known for at least four decades.
It is good to remember that wet markets may not be the places where novel viruses are created. The virus evolves somewhere else and the wet market is just the place where it can more easily jump to other species, including humans. A wet market may be one of the starting points of an epidemic in humans although it would not be a starting point of a zoonotic virus.
It may also happen that an epidemic that starts to spread from a wet market jumps from a seller to customers, rather than directly from the animals. The seller of the animals may have got the virus while keeping the animals that are later sold in the wet market.
A risk assessment of the zoonotic diseases in the changing world predicted that there will be more epidemics and new zoonotic diseases because habitat destruction and the spread of settlements brings humans in closer contact with such wild animals that have viruses and bacteria that can jump to humans. That can happen without other human activity that increases the contacts between humans and the species that are kept in farms or wet markets. There are also cases where eating of wild animals (bushmeat) have spread deadly viruses to humans, for example in Africa.
In China and elsewhere in Asia, there are farms that keep several animal species in close contacts. Remains of dead individuals are often fed to other species. Greatest concern has been from farms keeping both pigs and ducks in close contact because they can be incubators of new influenza viruses. However, many other species are also kept in the farms, including species such as civets and raccoon dogs. Mutated viruses may emerge in such conditions and then spread when some animals are brought to wet markets.
At the moment, however, the biggest risk for another pandemic is coming from American dairy herds infected with H5N1 flu.
My personal favorite theory is that the Covid virus was probably circulating awhile at a low grade intensity from the wet market, undetected, until a mutation arose, or more likely a series of mutations, that changed it from a poorly transmitted virus, indistinguishable from the noise of common viruses, to one more easily transmitted. We have seen how quickly it mutates in the wild, much like flu viruses. It is unlikely it was arose in wild animals or farmed animals in its final form, but rather in a human host.
That is a significant risk, especially in USA. It seems that the virus has not yet evolved to something that could start a major pandemic globally.
The next major pandemic with significant mortality may be a strain of flu or it might be a mutated form of a virus that is not yet a major threat or is completely below radar at the moment. My guess is the latter option.
There will come new variants of flu and these are likely to spread globally but at the moment, none of the known variants seems to form a major threat to people that have had previous contacts with the other variants. Many old or otherwise weak people may die but otherwise, not a major risk at the population level.There is probably a need for multiple mutations before a strand of the flu viruses would become able to cause significant mortality globally.
Edit:
I am not an expert of viruses and have not updated my scientific knowledge about the topic during the last two years, so I may be wrong. Evolution of viruses may happen fast so two years is a long time period.
Domestic animals can be just as much of a risk, as discussed in the Lancet article where influenza was being transmitted from chicken populations. Domestic animals can also serve as an intermediate between wild populations and humans.
It can also work in reverse. Humans actually infected mink populations with COVID. Subsequently, the virus evolved in minks and then moved back into humans.
you all got it wrong. It was a trial run of AI and the benefit of social media as a weapon of mass distraction. It got out of hand when they tried American and British spell checking simultaneously
That has to be one of my favourite conspiracies. 
I had heard this years back, but nice review of how the virus infecting an immunocompromised patient can evolve in that one host into a more virulent strain. Who knows, that may be what happened initially.
Exactly…your aunt made a choice and paid the price for her own stupid choice.
My grandmother demise was at the hands of another asshole who made a stupid choice despite my grandmothers wishes to stay safe.
Thst is the difference here and its a difference the antivaxers, anti mask wearers and anti isolaters didnt care about.
We go to great lengths to talk about caring for others…but not in this arena (covid)
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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