Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’

  • tetris11@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Wait, I’ve been out for a bit - what was the actual consensus on Covid? I genuinely thought there was a Wuhan Lab that this all originated from?

    I’m not a nut job, I can be reasoned with, i just need to update my beliefs with new info

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I believe the scientific consensus is that it originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

      The “lab leak theory”, while not impossible, is also shorthand for a morass of conspiracy theories grounded in racist attitudes towards China. It somehow conflates that the pandemic is China’s fault, if not an outright attack from China, while simultaneously downplaying any efforts to mitigate such an attack.

      • tetris11@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        The racist connotations about the lab I knew about, but I didn’t think it made it less true.

        That being said, I just checked wikipedia:

        Most scientists agree that, as with many other pandemics in human history,[1][2][3] the virus is likely derived from a bat-borne virus transmitted to humans via another animal in nature or during wildlife trade such as that in food markets.[11] Many other explanations, including several conspiracy theories, have been proposed.[12][13][14] Some scientists and politicians have speculated that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory. This theory is not supported by evidence.[15]

        SARS-CoV-2 has close genetic similarity to multiple previously identified bat coronaviruses, suggesting it crossed over into humans from bats

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_COVID-19

        and I think I remember seeing a study that showed the similarity of the sequence to other known sequences and it wasn’t that dramatic a change.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          The racist connotations about the lab I knew about, but I didn’t think it made it less true.

          this is an absolute fuck of a sentence and seeing as how you keep JAQing off in a way that platforms conspiracy bullshit, you can just fuck off too

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        grounded in racist attitudes towards China

        I don’t understand why that’s considered racist? Why is a conspiracy theory that China has a world class biolab capable of a global pandemic racist?

        A crazy conspiracy that a foreign power has biotech superiority isn’t racism.

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        I guess most people aren’t up to date with this subject. There has been plenty of discussion with experts that point to the possibility of a lab leak. The wet market hypothesis has so many holes in it that it’s impossible to take seriously.

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      There is an institute of virology in Wuhan, but it is most likely that Covid-19 spread naturally from bats to humans.

      • Bat coronaviruses are common in the South China - Thailand - Myanmar region, and viruses jump host species all the time.

      • Labs that handle human pathogens are maintained under very high security. The one in Wuhan is BSL4, the highest security rating, and had prior experience handling coronaviruses. Also, the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes. Even if they somehow got out of the building, it would be possible to find and quarantine all those exposed to it.

      • If it was released on purpose, then we can narrow the list of suspects down to the countries that can reliably make bioweapons and antidotes with close to 100% certainty. That’s the US, China and maybe Russia. The US and Russia were among the worst affected, and China wouldn’t have released the virus in China.

      So the most likely explanation is that it is a bat virus that jumped hosts.

      • Evinceo@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes.

        Is that true? Once the virus replicated in a cell, the new copies wouldn’t be tagged, right?

        • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          The new ones wouldn’t. But the original radioactive atoms would still be in your body, and they can be detected (within a reasonable amount of time).

          Edit: But if the new viruses infect another person, they wouldn’t have the radioactivity. So usually, in case of a leak, the plan would be to quarantine anyone exposed to the viruses (as detected by radioactivity) and anyone who has been with them that day.

          • Andrew Wade@hachyderm.io
            2·
            1 year ago

            @emergencyfood @Evinceo Naw. People have some radioactive atoms in their bodies all the time. But the viruses are marked in another way: they have particular genetic sequences. And with the march of technology the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have sequenced the viruses they were studying and been able to compare the sequences on file with the Covid-19 pathogen.

      • Ibex0@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes. Even if they somehow got out of the building, it would be possible to find and quarantine all those exposed to it.

        China wouldn’t have released the virus in China

        You don’t know that. Nobody knows that, because China destroyed all the evidence. If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! “Behold our innocence!!” Why didn’t that happen?

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      In come the posters who never posted here before to explain that the leak theory is true!

      While I have no real input re the whole lab leak conspiracy theory, I do have a fun anacdote from then. I remember pretty quickly after the lab leak option was dropped somebody came with proof for it saying ‘we have the telephone data, and the day virus started all the telephones from the lab stayed in one place clearly manipulated!’. This story has a few holes, note first the whole ‘we have the telephone data’ which is already weird (esp as china refused to cooperate), then also we don’t have just one day, perhaps this behavior of phones in a lab is normal. Almost like people are forced to put their personal phones in storage when they suit up (iirc often standard practice in those kinds of rooms). Of course the person bringing up the phones theory didn’t think about this. I knew we were in for a wild ride of conspiracies after that one, as it was ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks’ contrarian theories land. (a thing you often see after a tragedy happens, extremely common in far right circles when the far right does an atrocity, where it is often sort of ingroup signal and signal of cruelty). Anyway, that is just an interesting thing I remembered which I wanted to share, on the subject at hand my opinion is I doubt it was a lab leak, but I also don’t think we will ever know for sure, and also we will never find enough evidence that it wasn’t a lab leak to convince the people who convinced themselves it was one.

    • Blapoo@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I’m on your page at least - best evidence we had was that it leaked from a Wuhan lab.

      Not sure what the conspiracy here is, other than “Rich man has thoughts that come close to an opinion on vaccines. Get the pitchforks!”

      Missing the forest for the trees, it feels like - The man has a good point about synthetic viruses.