I've spent my entire career as a scientist and yes, I'm pretty careful about what I state as fact or proven knowledge. That was re-enforced in 2020 as we learned more and saw more published material come out at an ever-increasing rate. In addition, I was involved in several nightly clinical roundtable reviews (what did we do today? What did we learn today?) where we gleaned a lot of clinical pearls that played into published reports from cases or case series, uncontrolled drug trials, etc. There were literally days where I would change my opinions on treatment protocols, or even relatively hard data (test results and case numbers were never really hard data, despite protestations from a lot of social media pundits)several times in a 24 hour period simply because new, well-documented information came to my attention.
Why this admission? Because I was accused of not being truthful despite explaining my changes of opinion every time I made such a change. This was both in social media posts (Twitter was seeing a lot of science-exchange traffic) and in my updates to a large non-profit I supported. It was difficult to convince even people who generally believed me, and trusted my evaluations, that the landscape was changing that fast.
And to date, I've not seen evidence SARS-CoV-2 originated as a GoF lab experiment, nor that it emerged due to an intentional or accidental lab leak, but I've seen suggestions bordering on evidence (CCP transparency leaves a little to be desired) that the epicenter and index case did originate in the wet markets.

To the best of my knowledge, Tony Fauci did not, nor does he hold a patent on any vaccine, but Moderna had been working with NIAID for years on mRNA technology. But not on a coronavirus vaccine.

Doubt is key to science. I've not seen evidence of basic or gain-of-function research at WIV, but that doesn't specify or deny they were working on it. The CCP would prefer not to comment and that silence is likely to keep us in suspense re: WIV involvement.

The Trump administration's several decisions re: NIH and CDC contributed to the myriad failures in pandemic response and origin determination. As for GoF testing, adding ANY capability to a virus to study it better comprises GoF, not simply making it more virulent. Without GoF testing, we'd have a lot more difficulty studying potentially dangerous pathogens (beyond and including viruses). GoF testing for a bad rap during the pandemic because of a bit of misinformation regarding its uses.

No. The small outbreaks were not ignored but we didn't have the surveillance infrastructure in place to sequence them rapidly. And if we had sequenced them, we'd have gone, "Oh, damn, coronavirus" because we didn't have a sufficient index of suspicion for a novel coronavirus with multiorgan involvement that could rip through the population.

All depends on the type of work being done. If you were working on classified material (and had appropriate permissions to do so from home, you DID have to work on your work laptop. I was at NOAA during the Pandemic and didn't have a "work" laptop, but had requested a work desktop for home and was told to use my own personal system (computational modeling). When the VPN decided to stop playing with Linux, we played the game again, and I was denied again. So O created a work-around that exceeded security requirements, and got it approved by our in-house, and subsequently the NOAA security process. But it was all on personal hardware. I wasn't working on anything with any level beyond CUI.

Having spent a few hours of my life since 18 JAN 2020 looking at COVID-19 (the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2) and being somewhat familiar with coronaviruses, although I'll admit I know MUCH more now than I did then, it's pretty fair to assume SARS-CoV-2 originated in China, in Hubei Province. There's evidence that it was actually circulating in the US, and around the world... and certainly in China... somewhat earlier than the official date placed in early March for the US, and certainly well before the US initiated travel restrictions. Blood bank samples have found evidence of specific antigen and antibodies, and several unexplained outbreaks of non-influenza viral pneumonia were seen in 2019.
Whether the virus was under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology we may never know due to the removal of US National Institutes of Health personnel somewhat before this outbreak. In fact early reports of the outbreak came through an Australian connection, and a Tweet from a Chinese clinician that was subsequently removed. It became pretty obvious that, once the Chinese Communist Party apparatus understood the potential magnitude of the outbreak they shut down communication, and attempted to defeat the disease internally, but too late.
But really, where the virus came from doesn't matter, as we can't put the genie back in the bottle. And China had more illnesses and deaths, proportionately, than the US did, and took more draconian measures than the US ever contemplated. And they were unsuccessful, even with a Zero-COVID policy, in stopping spread.
Most of the information held by the US regarding COVID origins has been pretty publically accessible, and openly discussed on multiple forums. For the most part, the GOP lawmakers have been responsible for attempting to hide accurate information on the disease, efficacy of masks and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, and vaccines. If there's a conspiracy, I suspect they should look in their own house.

Likely forced by a bunch of bean counters.

These two yutzes cause a crash on the freeway and they don't even bother to stop and check if the other people are injured?

They don't even bother reporting the crash to the authorities, they just driiive on back to HQ and hush it up?

"Former Top Waymo Engineer Altered Code To Go On Forbidden Routes" is not the headline I would have chosen for this story, folks.

Gracious me, that sounds like an Orwellian nightmare. You should definitely keep this one at the top of your talking points, as ordinary people will undoubtedly share your horror at the thought of living in a society that tries to minimize the number randos carrying deadly weapons.

I'll say it again:

Eventually, there'll be too many people with a personal stake in this for you to beat.

I learned about this when my mom texted me to let me know that she and my dad were both safe, her being out of town, dad being at home and hearing but not thinking much about the sirens down the way. My nephew's school was still on lockdown (despite it being miles away, better safe than sorry, I suppose.)

My parents live right near this place. They ride their bikes past it regularly. Middleton ain't a big place.

I can't decide if I'm relieved, livid, or just numb to it. Probably a bit of all three.

All you folks who get red in the face at the thought that maybe, just maybe, we could stand to have fewer guns in this country:

Eventually, there'll be too many people with a personal stake in this for you to beat.

Even if you decide to 'exercise your second amendment rights.'

I think a big part of it is how the rest of society keeps showering bonkers amounts of adulation and money on them. Why try to be a better person if it seems like everybody loves you? Heck, you probably are the better person, and all these SJW whiners who say otherwise are a) jealous of your awesomeness and b) can't comprehend the very unique and not-at-all-applicable-to-any-other-industry-out-there challenges and pressures of the tech world.

I'd imagine medicine faces similar pressures–I'm thinking particularly about the 'rockstar' surgical positions–and I know that science has similar issues, but neither of these disciplines seems to suffer from nearly the same degree of fandom as the tech world does...

I've had a personal epiphany

oh yeah and there may possibly also be a story about me and this subject coming out in a major publication in a few days too

There was a time in living memory where this argument would have applied perfectly to job postings for doctors, lawyers, accountants, and scientists. Advertising has long been used to define and amplify what you should be doing with your life based on your demographic peculiarities–regardless of what you actually want to do or are capable of doing.

Let me try: it is fundamentally wrong that the number of women in computing has plummeted even as the number of women in other major technical professions–including law, accounting, medicine, and scientific research–has approached parity. Women are excluded from programming not because they can't do the job–they're excluded because the community is comfortable prioritizing our abusive, "brutally honest" Mamet-esque dick-swinging over professionalism. That's evil.

You're exactly right! We are trying to unmake ourselves, if by "ourselves" you mean "society's long-standing tradition of blithely excluding entire swaths of people from consideration for professional roles based on wholly unrelated things like gender, race, or sexual orientation."

That is a good thing that society should do. We should want to fix this, not wallow in it.

This is great. Now other people in need can benefit from Bezos' magnanimity, just like his warehouse employees do.

It has a whole zero syllables more than "Galaxy Note 9"

Great job Apple