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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  1688 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Let me restate that you are correct that human error would be a better cause if and only if we can contain and kill the thing. That's a big if. But in that case, we can presumably put the genie back in the bottle and design and adhere to international safety standards going forward. My fear is that we have created something unkillable. Time will tell, to use a banality.





goobster  ·  1687 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"If we can contain and kill the thing..."

Are we talking like polio, here?

b_b  ·  1687 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I guess something like that. Obviously it's a bit early to be talking in those terms, since we don't even have good testing, let alone a vaccine. At least if we had testing, we could probably use convalescent serum (antibodies from patients who are recovered), and it might confer some immunity. That's under testing right now, but I don't have a lot of faith even in that, because to do that properly you need to be able to titrate the dose. That's impossible without relatively precise serology. I keep reading that it's going to be online "next week" and then that week comes and goes with nothing to show.

veen  ·  1688 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

Hope you don’t get lost in this news rabbit hole too long, if only for your sanity’s sake.