[ExI] possible explanation of what happened

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 
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>...The researchers would richly deserve this of course, but with this accelerated technology-assisted evolution, perhaps a mild variant of covid can be developed with out actually accidentally unleashing the whole planet shattering pandemic, slaying millions and such unpleasantness as that...spike



Eh, I (partially) repent of having written that flight of fancy in such a way to implicate the researchers, who were likely just doing what their boss demanded.  That business about selling the dead bats with the more deadly strain we called the alpha variant of covid-19 was pure speculation.

That we must do such horrifying things to beasts in a quest to discover medicines and therapies for our selfish species pains me.  Wild beasts already have so many problems, and anything we do to further increase their suffering adds to the ethical burden we non-vegetarians already bear.  We kinda deal with it by imagining cows peacefully grazing their way to adulthood, in full contentment until the day it all unexpectedly ends.  Swine have it even better, so we can make ourselves believe farm beasts have a short but contented life which ends mercifully.

Research beasts on the other hand... I would prefer to not ponder it too much.  That accelerated evolution notion, the serial passage business, would cause bats to have the coronavirus continually for weeks if not months, presumably suffering the entire time.  If there is any other way to get to the answers, it would be so preferable.  Even knowing we cause them untold suffering, I know of no alternative means to study disease besides using living host creatures.

I am so eager to load my consciousness onto silicon or some alternative substrate so I no longer need to slay and devour living things.

spike