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Comment by tastyfreeze | Hacker News Reader

People are selfish. COVID may have started in China as a lab leak but the US likely funded it. Plenty of selfish reasons for people in government to squash the idea that COVID was a lab leak.

If the lab leak turns out to be true I could see people demanding that the gallows be dusted off.

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Even if it was accidentally leaked?

That's extreme. I work with transgenic, not viruses, but mistakes happen and the death penalty for researchers is crazy.

Yes, for the coverup. If it was a lab leak, we had the director of NIAID covering it up on national news. That is the kind of thing the people demand blood for.

There was a specific legal ban on this type of research, yet, the researchers continued anyways. It may have been "an accident," but that really doesn't afford them any excuse.

We do this research everyday. Mutating a virus is not illegal, why do you even say that.

The death penalty is a merciful punishment for going out of one's way to circumvent research bans that would have completely prevented a leak in the first place.

Should we tolerate a culture of accidents and face preserving around nukes, grey goo (which this falls under?) there are things you only get to fail once..

We fund this research in a few countries around the world where their procedures are more lax so leaks are even more likely than they are in US based labs Plum island, fort Dietrick, etc). Still if US officials are responsible for lax oversight or funding poorly run labs they should be held responsible.

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