# PM brings in strategies to protect against future lab leaks



## Amity Island (Feb 23, 2022)

On Monday, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons that the U.K. biosecurity strategy would be refreshed to protect against *“natural zoonosis and laboratory leaks”*, in a public acknowledgement of the threat from insecure research facilities.

and

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an expert on chemical and biological counter-terrorism and former British Army officer, has submitted evidence for the strategy.

He said: “I think the official view [within Government] is that it is as likely as anything else to have caused the pandemic. A lot of people like myself think it is more likely. I think attitudes have changed a little bit. The zoonotic transfer theory just didn’t make sense.









						Wuhan lab leak theory ‘accepted as likely behind closed doors at No 10’
					

Biosecurity expert helping Government to prevent future pandemics claims ministers consider leak as most likely origin of Covid pandemic




					www.telegraph.co.uk


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## Drummer (Feb 23, 2022)

I remember that there was at least one series on TV - it started with a flask falling and smashing on the floor of a lab, and followed the lives of those left alive after the consequences - it might have been called Survivors. It was probably half a century ago now, I do reflect that if there was a catastrophic event, there are far fewer people these days who could keep themselves alive afterwards.


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## travellor (Feb 23, 2022)

28 days later.
That's all we need to watch. 
Must have been based on fact.
I used to live near a farm that bred guinea pigs for animal testing.
Someone broke in and let them out.
We heard farmers shooting after that, maybe something had spread to the rabbits?


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## travellor (Feb 23, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> One for all those coincidence theorists out there...
> 
> Here we have this week from the government regarding preventing a (lab leak) pandemic.
> 
> ...



Ironically, how can a story from behind closed doors, quoting the government advisors actual secret words, that is behind a pay to view firewall, that exists behind no where else on the the internet, actually be taken seriously by anyone other than conspiracy theorists?


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## travellor (Feb 23, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Travellor,
> 
> "how can a story" "that exists behind nowhere else on the the internet"
> 
> ...



"I’m really sorry that the lab leak has become such a distraction for so many people because frankly, we still don’t know," Collins told host Bret Baier. 

So funny, that's actually in your link!


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## Bruce Stephens (Feb 23, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> It seems to boil down to the furin cleavage found in the spike protein.


Because something about the furin cleavage site hadn't been seen in coronaviruses before. But I thought since then some examples had been found? (Though I forget where. Quite likely in bat coronaviruses, since bats have lots of coronaviruses and, along with other viruses in wildlife, they're not that well explored. A good reason to be supportive of labs like the one in Wuhan: we need to be studying the viruses out there.)

The description of https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/ suggests it might discuss the furin cleavage site, amongst other things. It's from a while ago, so there may well be new information since then. Another couple, https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-734/ and https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-751/ also look relevant.

In general (I've listened to about half of the episodes from the last couple of years, I think) they don't think the lab leak hypothesis is all that likely (maybe 10% probability). It's possible that the virus was collected and somehow leaked, but more likely that this is a natural zoonotic event. And it's really, really, unlikely that it was engineered in any way: virologists (they believe) just aren't interested in doing that (doesn't produce great papers, for one thing: much better to do things in pseudo viruses and the like) and even if anyone wanted to engineer the virus they don't think any virologists have the necessary skills (and it's not close).


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## travellor (Feb 23, 2022)

Martin.A said:


> That's true - there's no evidence the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. It's equally true that there's no evidence that it didn't. That was also the conclusion of the authors of _Viral._



No evidence?

Bit like witch burning then.
No evidence they are innocent.
Burn the witch!!!
Really?
Let's go for the conspiracy theory.
What century are we in?


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## travellor (Feb 24, 2022)

So, our takeaway from the conspiracy theorists.
Boris has issues.
Boris totally messes up.
A secret number Ten meeting blabbed all over the news channels.
Oh, it's a conspiracy. 
Someone else did it, and Boris did well.
Really.
And the sheep go "vote Boris"
Really !!!!
Go the UK


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## Bruce Stephens (Feb 24, 2022)

Martin.A said:


> it evolved naturally or it leaked from a lab


In the mainstream virologist community, the two options seem to be that no lab was involved, or it was collected and then leaked from a lab. In both cases it evolved in the wild, the difference is just how it got to humans. (A large part of that is that they don't think anyone knows how to engineer such a virus. Maybe minor challenges: try to get it to replicate in other animals, or challenged with antivirals. But those are tricky (and potentially dangerous) to do with the real virus. So there's a significant risk you'll end up with something you really don't want on your CV.)


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## Bruce Stephens (Oct 28, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> GOP members of the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions reviewed hundreds of studies into the origins of Covid and interviewed “several dozen” experts over the past 15 months.




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585727835289063424

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585846395814412290

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585937125618294784


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## Vamppir8 (Oct 30, 2022)

Solved.


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## Bruce Stephens (Oct 30, 2022)

Bruce Stephens said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585727835289063424
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585846395814412290
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585937125618294784




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1586384704022151168


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