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.’
this thread appears to have attracted keyword-seeking bad posters. these fine posters have been escorted to the egress and may continue to enjoy their subthreads on other fediverse servers and not this one.
to clear up any confusion: if you’re a drive-by poster we’ve never seen before and you’re posting bullshit covid theories instead of anything related to what we discuss on this instance (Sam Altman being a fucker, for example), we can’t tell you apart from someone keyword searching threads to spread conspiracy bullshit en masse and the very funny part is, we don’t actually care how you got here
garbage is garbage, don’t post your trash here
we should post keyword honey pots every few months for culling
I have been meaning to make a vegan pitbull thread for just such an occasion
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
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.
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.
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.
There is an institute of virology in Wuhan, but it is most likely that Covid-19 spread naturally from bats to humans.
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Bat coronaviruses are common in the South China - Thailand - Myanmar region, and viruses jump host species all the time.
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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.
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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.
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?
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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.
What
synthetic virus bad
Im sorry, this is an anti-memetic zone. You seem to have used a thought ending memetic sentence, please report to the blue room for punishment. You are to sit in the black chair. Your social standing has decreased.
This is an automated message, further replies to this message can and will increase the severity of your punishment. They also will be ignored.
They’re lemmy.ml users, best course of action is to just ignore and move on.
Thx, I’m kinda new to the lemmyverse so I haven’t really figured out who is worth listening and replying to.
Everyone who is saying virus spread from bats to humans - you do realize there were people researching on bats in Wuhan, right? If it’s from a bat, that doesn’t automatically mean from a bat in nature.
your stupid ass found this old thread by searching for covid (no this shit isn’t in all anymore) and this is the best you can do? fuck off.
holy fuck. for anyone still reading this thread, check that post history
Randomly capitalizing “FIAT”, the mark of a true Coiner.
@gerikson Or an Italian.
Holy shit, that shitshow in the Elon thread.
I think it’s a fairly credible claim, that the coronavirus originated in a lab. There’s been leaks in the past, of similar pathogens - once in the USA and once in Taiwan, I think. Not a very interesting conspiracy theory. Equally, animal agriculture is ripe for the development of zoonoses, regardless of the country. I don’t think it’s especially important, ultimately, unless it informs better practices in both areas.
Now that he needs to be cancelled such things are popping up like crazy!
Who gives a fuck. Let’s not turn this guy into a new Elon Musk.
