Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Sure, but how do you get competent people to live in a place like that?
Bio-hazard safety protocols can be tightened... this isn't the 5th century, we absolutely have the technology to contain a virus in a lab, it just takes discipline on management's part. Fund the right equipment, staffing, and protocols and that will mean lower productivity for a given funding level. Maintain worker discipline and a safety culture.
I think the lab theory gets so much traction because it's more entertaining... something out of a science-fiction novel as opposed to just boring bio-science.
Also the bug was not engineered in any way... that kind of hacking leaves obvious genetic markers, and was ruled out very early on by simple inspection of the virus genome. It would be hypothetically possible to use selective breeding to try and achieve specific characteristics without any genetic engineering but if you're trying to make a virus more dangerous and contagious in humans, you'd have to use human hosts... LOTS of human hosts, possibly millions. Not even remotely practical.
I didn’t claim it was engineered. In fact, for the other escaped viruses in the article I cited, the very fact that their genome WAS so closely identical to the original was evidence that this WAS a lab escape because the random mutations that would have been expected if it hadn’t been stored in a freezer for a few decades simply weren’t there. And the problem is that they plainly WERE NOT maintaining worker discipline and a safety culture. Not with the frequency of incidents that have occurred in the past.
https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/huma...ndemic-threat/
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral....ht-20040427-03
And how do you get competent people to live somewhere like that? Seriously? Do you think the Chinese HAVEN’T shipped people to Outer Mongolia? That they don’t do so routinely when it suits their interests?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/uighurs/
But yeah, the Gobi Desert suggestion was sort of tongue-in-cheek, but clearly there are areas that aren’t in towns with an 11 million populations that are major rail, River, and airline hubs where they could put these labs.
