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.’

  • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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    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.

    • Ibex0@lemmy.world
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      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?

      • zogwarg@awful.systems
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        1 year ago

        One (simpler) explanation is that proving an absence of something is almost impossible, and that attempting too hard would make them look a heck of a lot guilty.

        There is a good reason why the burden of evidence is “innocent until proven guilty”, and yes this extends to the (in your eyes) untrustworthy.

        Prove to me you never stole candy from a store as a child (or if you did, replace that accusation with any item of higher value until you hit something you did not steal)

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          1 year ago

          There is also the whole ‘why would we have to prove anything? We are fucking China!’ stance all big hegemonic countries have.

          • Shitgenstein1@awful.systems
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            1 year ago

            It’s not just big hegemonic countries in general but specifically the particularly image-obsessed character of geopolitics in East Asia. Mianzi is a real concern in Chinese diplomacy.

      • Shitgenstein1@awful.systems
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        1 year ago

        because China destroyed all the evidence.

        lmao, if you don’t have evidence for X, you don’t have evidence that X is being suppressed. You just lack evidence.

      • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        You don’t know that.

        Yes, but we can reason based on what we know.

        If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! “Behold our innocence!!” Why didn’t that happen?

        Most likely the municipality were trying to cover up corruption in the regulation of the wet markets. Maybe they ignored health and safety laws in return for bribes, and didn’t want that to come out.