this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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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.’

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[–] MataVatnik -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Simply, Coronavirus is airborne, not transmitted through surfaces or dead meat. While one of the first persons may have been in the wetmarket but it is highly unlikely that it's where it originated. Chinese government also had heavy oversight over the investigation and did not allow investigations to go beyond the wetmarket. The narrative of the wetmarket was never scientifically verified, it was just something that was published in the early days of the pandemic and taken as fact. The only american allowed into the investigation had a serious conflict of interest with his stake in research in the Wuhan virology lab and was the person who pushed through the wetmarket hypothesis and politically assisnated any scientist that brought up the possibility of a lab leak (even just to discuss). There were more problematic things revolving this person including rejected research proposals in the US with DARPA related to gain of function with coronavirus (there is more there than im saying). In wuhan, the closest bats with this virus live 100s of miles away from the city, there were no cases of this virus seen in the countryside in the early days. The Wuhan lab had a library of coronavirus genomes, 3 years later they still haven't published it. This would help pinpoint the origin of the virus.

It's been a couple years since I dove into this, but there is way more. Especially on the side of the Wuhan virologylab. Point is, we can't say it's from a wetmarket any more than it's from a lableak. The Chinese government hasn't been cooperative in the investigation so well never be able to draw solid conclusions.

[–] ultranaut 6 points 1 year ago

The market where it's believed to have originated kept live animals. It's never been claimed that the initial infection was via "dead meat" or from a contaminated surface.