[absalom01]

I know I said I would ignore you, but it's a slow day.

Look, I am aware of the material that you reference, and have actually met David Baltimore a few times. He's a very smart guy, and his opinion is certainly worth adding to the pile of evidence.

But you simply have not made the case that you are advancing. And oddly, the opinion that I offered does not contradict your case in the least. So the energy you're putting in to this little flame war seems strange. And, at your request, as previously noted, I looked at your posting history. You are on a hair trigger to launch invective at long-time FReepers with long rambling rants that just never seem to get to the point.

And by the way, I didn't ask you for a link or any outside resources, and I don't have a preferred narrative. Never advanced one.

What I was trying to ask was how the opinion I posted, that this is a CCP bioweapon, in any way contradicts your opinion that it is a bioengineered bioweapon. The first statement can be validated simply by looking at the behavior of the CCP from November of 2019 on. The second is a valid line of inquiry that is not yet proved.

Why are you hyperventilating when there appears to be no actual point of disagreement?

[grey_whiskers]

...because if it *is* a bioweapon, allowing the final word to be "well, it was just a little lab oopsie, nothing to see here" is a monumentally low-percentage move: not for rhetoric, but for the long-term survival of the country.

(that is how I read your "...though that does not necessarily mean that it escaped from a lab, or even that it was “engineered” or the product of “gain of function” research." from this post.)

It's a fine line. Because people jump to two conclusions about the coof being a bioweapon.

1) The perfection argument -- this was also used to try to argue against it being engineered ("look! molecular modeling shows the spike protein isn't the tightest possible binding configuration to the human receptors! It *can't* have been manmande"). This argument goes, "If it were a bioweapon, it would have killed tens of millions in the US, or more. Since it didn't it must be natural!"

That's not necessarily true; people jump to that conclusion from watching too many James Bond movies. US policy has been for a long time, to consider that type of thing a "weapon of mass destruction" and to respond with nukes.

But a lower-level virus that just gums up our economy and makes politicians chase their tails -- and allows mail-in ballots and voter fraud -- that's not so clear-cut.

2) If it's a bioweapon, it must have been intended to be released in this form.

That doesn't necessarily follow. It might be the Chinese were still investigating, and the famous Chinese quality control happened, and a less-lethal, early version still being played with, got loose.

The reason it's so important to the survival of the country is this.

Our government, (remember the $1.5 billion deal with Hunter Biden before the election, solely because of "who he knew"?; remember DiFi's driver being a Chicom spy; remember Eric Shartswell on the House Intelligence Committee doing the BangBang with Fang Fang), and our Universities, and many businesses, are infested with Chicom spies.

China likely has visibility to US responses while we're still developing the response.

As far as my posting history, you pointedly didn't look for scientific links, even though that's what you originally said you wanted, and what I invited you to look for.