That article's an awfully long winded way of declaring yourself an arrogant snob who's intolerant of those having an opinion he doesn't like.
Actually, to the layman on the street, both origins are reasonable, according to common sense.
Everyone's made a slip up at work before. We have prior examples of labs accidentally leaking biological materials before. That lab happened to be experimenting with the same type of viruses as corona. It also happened to be right next to where the first cases emerged. And after, the authorities wouldn't allow an investigation.
You'd have to be out of your mind to not view that as a plausible origin.
If you think there's reasons that isn't the origin, and you've proof it definitely came straight from the jungle, the professional approach is just to keep presenting your case. Not having a tantrum like a little child because other people are maintaining opinions different to yours.
1) Natural origin, natural transmission to humans.
2) Natural origin, sampled for the lab an escaped.
3) Artificial origin in the lab (like a genetic modification) and then escaped.
4) Evil artificial origin and on purpose release.
Ignoring 4), one of the problem is that people mix 2) and 3). I read many post with "proofs" of 3) that were debunked one week later, and then people claimed that it also debunked 2).
Disclaimer: I think there are many similar cases of 1), like a covirus local epidemic every 10 years, or a flu variant every 5 years, so for me 1) is the natural explanation.
From the article:
> In the USA in particular, they have produced amateurish reports that have even misrepresented work published in The Lancet Microbe.
They are angry because people (they don't like) is misquoting them in the Internet. It's very common to be misquoted (if you are famous enough) and it's very common to get angry about that.
I am not expert in biology but it would seem that an organization dedicated to the public safety when it comes to fighting viruses actually caused the largest global outages of all time. CrowdStrike did not of course intend to do this but it nonetheless happened and we should try to understand why it happened.
I think the editors are right that overconfident statements by people with no particular expertise are a problem. But the thing I’m wondering though is… well, have you seen the Internet? There’s no way to get them to stop.
Inevitably, due to world events, people are going to be suddenly become curious about things that only experts previously cared about. They’re going to need explainers that go beyond the basics, however deep they want to go.
I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump colluded with Russia.
That sentence up there is a comment from HN during the 2016 election - based off of nothing more than hearsay and nonsensical allegations, in a thread of much the same. Go read it yourselves it’s probably the #1 thread about him on HN. Emotionally charged drivel in an ocean of.
SA title was right - the internet does make you stupid.
Taken out of context, there’s no information there (it’s a random opinion). But if you want to drill down further on something that rhymes with colluding with Russia, see:
> To be frank, the fanciful ideas put forward by self-described free thinkers are more in keeping with popular movies than the realities of working with pathogens
This seems like kind of a weirdly dismissive take. Is the idea that a lab in China lacked proper implantation of safety protocols really that "fanciful"?
I think its beyond obvious that covid was created in the lab in Wuhan from experiments with bat viruses and leaked into the wet market via an incompetent employee. In other words, both the lab leak and the wet market are true. That's the Occam's Razor hypothesis but it can't be confirmed because the totalitarian dictatorship that runs China has likely erased the evidence.
After leaking from the lab, it was extremely deadly at first and this was made worse by the overuse of ventilators. It gradually mutated into basically another virus that causes the common cold over the course of 2 years.
It will likely remain an extremely controversial topic and I doubt there will be an objective history of the pandemic period within our lifetimes. It became a culture war issue and each side dug in on their respective positions, facts be damned.
Also SARS-CoV-2 lineages are still much more deadly and cause many more hospitalizations than the common cold. They haven’t magically mutated to be less significant, those who survived have more and wider spread partial immunity and we have, over time, developed better treatment protocols. In a hundred years or more SARS-CoV-2 won’t be killing a significant number of the elderly and the immune-compromised every year, but right now it’s still a leading reaper.
Most people pushing alternative explanations claimed that COVID was genetically engineered or made much more powerful by gain-of-function research. The idea of it being a natural sample leaked in a lab accident has always been recognized as possible, but most of the self-styled freethinkers never really picked it up because it didn’t shift the blame for a poor response away from the President they backed, and the lack of supporting evidence means most of the people for whom it isn’t a political issue are no longer talking about it because there isn’t much to talk about unless new evidence emerges.
It’s not anonymous, it’s if anything pseudonymous; it’s clearly labeled as an editorial piece and it’s ascribed to the publication itself, which means it’s the opinion of the publication, and authored by either the editor themselves (if an individual fills that role) or the editorial board / team (if no individual holds the role exclusively).
This is extremely common practice in print journalism, and has been for centuries.
An email to editorial@lancet.com with reference to the DOI will get you through to the author(s).
With an open country might be. With china, this assertion from lancet just discredited it. Does it actually have access to chinese lab and market freely and without any cover up effort. Truth is it is not sure because it is china. I am not saying it is a or b. I just saw a cover up and close to real scientific investigation issue. It is not that they have not leaked Sar-1. If push I still think the evolution line lab funded by USA but tested in wuhan is most likely possibility, on top of cave bat testing actually bought the virus accidentally.
Actually, to the layman on the street, both origins are reasonable, according to common sense.
Everyone's made a slip up at work before. We have prior examples of labs accidentally leaking biological materials before. That lab happened to be experimenting with the same type of viruses as corona. It also happened to be right next to where the first cases emerged. And after, the authorities wouldn't allow an investigation.
You'd have to be out of your mind to not view that as a plausible origin.
If you think there's reasons that isn't the origin, and you've proof it definitely came straight from the jungle, the professional approach is just to keep presenting your case. Not having a tantrum like a little child because other people are maintaining opinions different to yours.