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Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

rootclaim.com

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Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#101

Post by cle »

bearbin wrote: post #36

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…

In the US, it's because this claim, or rejection of it, is strongly tied to political identity. Because the US is highly polarized right now, once political identity comes into play, you've left the realm of rationality and entered the realm of tribalism.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#102

Post by sargun »

Unfortunately, I do not have the chops to debate against this, but the political ramifications would be immense. The bet (https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge) requires that (a) you have $100k (b) are able to successfully debate it.

I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and validate that this is actually refutable). This is valid until 2021-03-01.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#103

Post by eznzt »

MattGaiser wrote: post #14

> When you see a reliable public betting challenge with real stakes, you can be very confident the claim is true at a probability that is significantly above 50% (assuming 1:1 odds are being offered). This makes the assumption that the overall stakes are even. What if Alex Jones puts up 100K that boiled frog eyes cure COVID? He could be absurdly wrong, but the additional credibility offered by this may let him sell a…

Is this a joke on his 'I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!' famous sentence? Because it's true: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4612

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#104

Post by skinkestek »

One thing I wonder is:

How did the UK virus suddenly get 17 mutations at once if it's not a new engineered release by someone?

I'm not a biologist, but that part had me wondering.

Any biologists here who want to explain for a layman?

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#105

Post by eznzt »

adamcstephens wrote: post #76
delbarital wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liability of China is the main question here. If it was released from a lab (and I don't think it was), China is liable to this world pandemic which is a huge thing.

But liable to what end? What international jurisdiction will force China to “pay”? America destroyed Iraq on lies, but what has that liability cost them?

Really, you are going to compare the destruction of "Iraq" to the hindering of the activities of the entire civilised world?

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#106

Post by nl »

This is nothing more than cheap (effective!) content marketing for the prediction platform (rootclaim) that it is on.

I ran a large forecasting research project for 4 years so know this field quite well.

The "willing to bet" thing seems nonsense - there are no bet resolution criteria stated anywhere I can see.

They seem to be using a "Superforecaster"-like method of breaking down a prediction into smaller parts, and trying to work out the liklihood of each.

But their approach for doing it is crazy. The "escaped from lab" odds increase the most because they guess (and it is a guess) that the Wuhan lab does "20% of the gain-of-function research in the world"

That only makes anything resembling sense if they can establish that C19 is caused by gain-of-function research - but they haven't done that.

The whole hypothesis chain is full of this weak reasoning. For example the "lab dissociated itself from bat research" claim uses an unreferenced article by Miranda Devine in the NYPost as a source. Devine is an Australian columnist who left Australia after being forced to apologise for making up a story that a 9yo boy with dwafism was running a scam[1]. If this site was being honest in their approach they'd include that as evidence her claims on this story might be made up too.

Edit: and in (sarcasm) astonishing news, they also think the Syrian chemical attacks weren't carried out by the Syrian regime[2].

[1] https://junkee.com/miranda-devine-apology-quaden-bayles/2715...

[2] https://www.rootclaim.com/claims/who-carried-out-the-chemica...

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#107

Post by SpaceRaccoon »

js2 wrote: post #91
bearbin wrote: post #36

Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…

> evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground What are you talking about? Zoonotic origin is the source of the majority of viruses: > Approximately 60% of the known infectious diseases and 75% of the new emerging or re-emerging diseases infecting humans came from animals. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest addition to the seven coronaviruses found in humans, and experts said that all of these viruses either came…

One can conclude you believe it purely coincidental that the Wuhan Institute of Virolgy specialized in research on bat coronaviruses?

A paper in the lancet early in the year reported that the Wuhan Seafood market not only did not sell bats, but that many of the early patients reported never visiting the market.

At this point, it may be too late to ever discover the true origin of the virus.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#108

Post by newdude116 »

Please don't take this as science. This is a marketing gag.

I am not a virologist but not far away from it. It is well possible that the virus escaped from a lab. But never claim maliciousness for something that can be easily explained by stupidity. When working with Chinese in the lab I experienced them as never working very clean (e.g. with radioactive stuff).

"There is some weak evidence regarding lax security and procedures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." No, there is actually strong evidence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...

This alone shows the guys don't know what they are talking about.

There is no evidence that the virus was artificially altered (But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

This being said, it seems to me that Corona COULD be used as a weapon. China is coping much better then the EU or the US with the virus. We know this now. How about 3 more viruses in the next three years? Will the west survive this? While I STRONGLY believe that China is not really to blame for the outbreak, I am sure the development has raised eyebrows in China.

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#109

Post by Wowfunhappy »

eznzt wrote: post #103
MattGaiser wrote: post #14

> When you see a reliable public betting challenge with real stakes, you can be very confident the claim is true at a probability that is significantly above 50% (assuming 1:1 odds are being offered). This makes the assumption that the overall stakes are even. What if Alex Jones puts up 100K that boiled frog eyes cure COVID? He could be absurdly wrong, but the additional credibility offered by this may let him sell a…

Is this a joke on his 'I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!' famous sentence? Because it's true: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4612

Well, "to" would imply it was intentional, which I don't believe is the case here. :)

Re: Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it

#110

Post by katmannthree »

eznzt wrote: post #103
MattGaiser wrote: post #14

> When you see a reliable public betting challenge with real stakes, you can be very confident the claim is true at a probability that is significantly above 50% (assuming 1:1 odds are being offered). This makes the assumption that the overall stakes are even. What if Alex Jones puts up 100K that boiled frog eyes cure COVID? He could be absurdly wrong, but the additional credibility offered by this may let him sell a…

Is this a joke on his 'I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!' famous sentence? Because it's true: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4612

Atrazine causing feminization in frogs is an undisputed fact, but the statement as given ("they put chemicals in the water TO turn frogs gay") is absolutely not. Atrazine is used because it's a cheap and effective herbicide, frog feminization is a side effect which doesn't factor into decisions about its use.
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