<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ShannonLimiter</author><text>&amp;gt; 1) Understanding the origin doesn&amp;#x27;t change the consequences or response to the pandemic&lt;p&gt;I have the opposite opinion.&lt;p&gt;If there was a lab leak and a coverup, this meant that the Chinese government likely knew earlier and had more information about the nature of the virus and how it spread. That could have saved millions of lives.&lt;p&gt;We spent the first several months of the pandemic under the belief that it wasn&amp;#x27;t airborne. This ended up being false.&lt;p&gt;If this was a lab leak, it means that this kind of research is far more dangerous than we&amp;#x27;ve been lead to believe and continuing without appropriate safeguards puts us at great risk.</text><parent_chain><item><author>stetrain</author><text>I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn&amp;#x27;t a media fixation during the pandemic itself.&lt;p&gt;1) Understanding the origin doesn&amp;#x27;t change the consequences or response to the pandemic&lt;p&gt;2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the world in every airport before anyone has even identified it.&lt;p&gt;So in the big picture this type of outbreak seems inevitable, not anomalous or inherently preventable.&lt;p&gt;Understanding the origin, either by cross-species origination or a laboratory containment breach, is indeed important and significant and should be pursued, but I also understand why the search for that answer isn&amp;#x27;t at the top of the 24-hour news cycle.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?</title><url>https://unherd.com/2022/06/what-happened-to-the-lab-leak-hypothesis/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>hammock</author><text>&amp;gt; I also understand why it wasn&amp;#x27;t a media fixation during the pandemic itself.&lt;p&gt;You list some reasons, and I have in my mind a different reason.&lt;p&gt;There was a media blackout on the lab leak hypothesis because China put the kibosh on it, and since the US is dependent on Chinese exports for healthcare, PPE, defense and other critical supply lines, we did not want to piss them off.&lt;p&gt;Direction to the media for this blackout came from the US State Dept, and Mike Pompeo confirmed as much in semi-public comments that I will link if I ever find them again.&lt;p&gt;edit: this isn&amp;#x27;t the source I was thinking of, and it fingers the IC not State. I will keep looking &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newsweek.com&amp;#x2F;mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-lab-leak-cover-1597494&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newsweek.com&amp;#x2F;mike-pompeo-intel-officials-wuhan-l...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>stetrain</author><text>I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn&amp;#x27;t a media fixation during the pandemic itself.&lt;p&gt;1) Understanding the origin doesn&amp;#x27;t change the consequences or response to the pandemic&lt;p&gt;2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the world in every airport before anyone has even identified it.&lt;p&gt;So in the big picture this type of outbreak seems inevitable, not anomalous or inherently preventable.&lt;p&gt;Understanding the origin, either by cross-species origination or a laboratory containment breach, is indeed important and significant and should be pursued, but I also understand why the search for that answer isn&amp;#x27;t at the top of the 24-hour news cycle.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?</title><url>https://unherd.com/2022/06/what-happened-to-the-lab-leak-hypothesis/</url></story>