Thread by @rocza

Here's a neatly threaded "oh fuck no" of my response to the @nymag's cover story of irresponsibility, asking "but what if" nCov2019 really was a lab escape.

Protip, @nymag: leave What If to Marvel. #bioethics #gof #durc #biosecurity #biosafety #COVID19 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Seems @nymag wanted to get “most irresponsible article of 2021” locked up early. Tho is beyond irresponsible; it’s an admitted flight of fancy ignoring the work of multiple scientists carefully explaining, repeatedly, as to why #covid19 is not a lab escape. #durc #gof #biorisk

The odds, as #durc and #gof expert @neva9257 has repeatedly explained, are pretty good, given that China is where most of the the bats natively live. “Oh no, what are the chances of bat diseases originating in places with bats?!” 🙄🙄🙄

No, he didn’t come to believe this. He believed it from the beginning, as the article notes, because of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Baker just wrote a book about bioweapons that covers lab accidents, so naturally, that’s what he sees everywhere 🙄🙄🙄

https://twitter.com/NYMag/status/1346083776594636804

Oh sure. Come tell that to the BTWC. Science is fucking political, and so are lab accidents. If they weren’t, the US would actually carefully track them. They don’t, I know, I have the FOIAs. #biosecurity #biosafety #durc #gof

This is fiction dabbling in the what if’s of conspiracy. What if? Sure, what if the tides radically switched tomorrow? What if gravity stopped in 5 minutes? This is not the basis for a story. Especially when you reach out to & then ignore the people who disagree with your what if

This article is a walking logical fallacy of “just asking questions,” an intellectually dishonest tactic that makes wild accusations by framing them as questions; it shifts the burden of proof to people who disagree and poisons the well in the process. #biosecurity #durc #gof

And for the added final statement, here, read @neva9257 on where these coronavirus conspiracy theories really come from. Don't encourage respectable news orgs to "but what if" one of Alex Jones' favorite topics. #durc #gof #biosecurity #covid19
slate.com/technology/202…

Oh no. One more thing: this article conflates the idea of a recombinant virus with a lab escape. They’re not the same thing. 🙄