[ExI] Garbage In Garbage Out

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 5:35 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> *Cities, labs, and wet markets are **discrete entities *


No, their occurrence is not completely independent, in China both are far
more likely to exist in regions of high population density.

> *One hypothesis says it happened because Wuhan has a wet market. The
> other says it happened because Wuhan has a virus lab.*


The lab theory can not explain any observable phenomenon that the market
theory can not, and the measures taken to prevent contagion in a Chinese
Level 4 Biosafety Lab are VASTLY greater than the safety measures taken in
a Chinese wet market, so one theory is VASTLY more likely to be true than
the other. And wet markets have long been known to be dangerous, they
caused the SARS epidemic in 2002.

> *There is nothing special about the wet market in Wuhan.*


Except that Huanan had the largest wet market in central China and one of
the largest in the world with 1000 filthy shops selling crap and all
crammed into an area of only 50,000 square meters. If you want to blame
China for something, and I'm quite certain you do, then blame them for not
shutting down those virus distribution centers called "wet markets" decades
ago, and for continuing to use unscientific procedures and ridiculous
ingredients in traditional Chinese "medicine", such as Pangolin scales for
example. Now that's a conspiracy theory I can get behind!

John K Clark
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