Color me even more skeptical now of the DOE assessment on the COVID origins.

in doe •  2 years ago 

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We already knew the lab was studying bat coronaviruses. And we know among the publicly available viruses they were working on all were too distant to be progenitors of SARS-COV-2.

It would be one thing if there was evidence of an undisclosed virus sample, but the DOE's assessment is "low confidence", so I doubt that's the case.

This doesn't matter in the grand scheme in how we safeguard labs and research, or manage human-animal close contact, and so forth. Both happen at enough frequency that we should care about both from a disease control perspective.

But I think given China's response to the pandemic this has taken on significant political dimensions.

Outside of politics it would be good to know the origins simply for disease control and future planning. If we find the intermediate animal for a zoonotic spillover it would inform surveillance for pandemic coronaviruses. If it is a lab leak it would inform biosafety at Chinese labs and in general.

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