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1. Infected Moomin (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Friday, 28-May-2021 01:41:03 JST Infected Moomin
   it feels like the fact-checkers have backed-off the covid-19 lab-escape theory, they're probably hedging their bets rather than be completely wrong when the whole truth comes out.
   • バツ子（痛いの痛いの飛んでけ;; (shmibs@tomo.airen-no-jikken.icu)'s status on Friday, 28-May-2021 01:40:57 JST バツ子（痛いの痛いの飛んでけ;;

     in reply to

     • Really Whipping The Llama's Ass
     • profoundlynerdy
     @feld @profoundlynerdy @Moon a weaponised virus could do any number of things to be more deadly, something with an absurdly-high mutation rate like hiv that makes vaccination difficult-to-impossible (coronaviruses have big genomes, like the edge of what's feasible for rna, and an additional correction mechanism during transcription that decreases the number of mutations so assembly is more reliable), or make it an edited retrovirus that intentionally inserts something unpleasant into peoples' dna if you're just doing whatever with it
   • Really Whipping The Llama's Ass (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Friday, 28-May-2021 01:40:58 JST Really Whipping The Llama's Ass

     in reply to

     • profoundlynerdy
     @profoundlynerdy @Moon I don't believe a "weaponized strain" would have been any different. If the research was to see how dangerous a coronavirus could be so we are prepared to defend against it, that's the same goal as weaponizing it.We're already beating the American 1918 pandemic top score (675k) handily and they didn't even have vaccines to slow it down!
   • profoundlynerdy@mastodon.technology's status on Friday, 28-May-2021 01:41:03 JST profoundlynerdy

     in reply to

     @Moon For me the hardest part is to get people to understand: "Escaped from Lab" != Weaponized Strain. If it were, the pandemic would have been *much* worse.

     Also "lab" here could be a government or an academic lab. Further, it seems plausible that at least a few grad students have at home biology labs. That could also be a factor — who knows. (Can some actual biology students comment on such a setup? I'm analogizing from IT where at home labs are pretty common.)